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This war started without justification, and it has produced atrocities without accountability. Don Lemon joined me for Two Brothers Talking this week, and we went straight to the thing everyone should be talking about: the U.S. strike that killed 165 Iranian girls at an elementary school in Minab, the shifting war rationales from an administration, and what the press owes this moment. We did not hold back.
What struck me most in talking to Don is how clearly he named the mechanism. It is not just that much of the media is missing the story, especially right-wing media. It is that much of the media has been structured, through ownership, through fear of accusation, through the normalization of false equivalence, to be incapable of telling it straight at times.
The New York Times's visual investigation and its reporting on a preliminary military investigation are the reasons we know what we know about the U.S. responsibility for the school strike. That work matters, and it should be acknowledged. But we need clear-cut coverage from the rest of the mainstream media that does not give false credence to this war. The question is what happens next, and whether the rest of the press follows this story toward accountability or retreats.
Every day of this war, the body count rises. Every day, the justifications and objectives shift. Every day, the same analysts go on the same panels and declare the military strikes a success. We are not going to do that here. This is why independent media is necessary.
You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.
The School Strike Should Be The Lead Story
The school strike is not a side story to the Iran war. It is the story. 175 people are dead at a girls’ elementary school in Minab, 165 of them children, reportedly hit using targeting data that was ten years out of date. The building had been converted from a military facility to a school a decade ago, according to The New York Times. That update was never made in the military data. And this happened under a Defense Secretary who has explicitly said the military needs more lethality, not “tepid legality.”
Don made the point directly: the girls’ school should be the dominant news every day. He said if this strike had happened in the UK, in Israel, anywhere in Europe, there would be war tribunals, court-martials, and international investigations. I made the point that it would be bigger than Pearl Harbor if this happened to a school near a military base in the U.S. The fact that it happened in Iran and is not receiving universal outrage is a reflection of whose lives the political class has decided count as meaningful.
I raised the targeting data failure because it cannot be separated from the broader context of how this war is being conducted. Pete Hegseth has talked about removing the rules of engagement. He said publicly that the military needs to prioritize lethality over legality. When you strip those guardrails, and you are working with decade-old intelligence, you get 165 dead girls. The question of what broke down is not a bureaucratic one. It is a moral and legal one the Trump Administration must be forced to answer.
Don raised what I think is the most underreported consequence: the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has made the school strike the personal centerpiece of his vow of revenge. His family was killed in the strikes targeting the Supreme Leader. And now 165 girls from a small town are dead. Don said plainly that he is worried that this comes to American shores. A more hardline leader with a more personal grievance and a more justified one in the eyes of his people is now in power. That is what the “strategic success” crowd is not accounting for.
How The Mainstream Media Should Be Covering This War
Don spent years as a network anchor covering every major story for decades. When I asked him how mainstream media should be covering this war, his answer was pointed and it was specific. The press is covering this like these are normal times. They are not.
Don’s core argument is that there is no justification for this war, and the media keeps covering it as if there might be. He cited Marco Rubio’s slip as the moment the actual rationale was revealed: Rubio said the US struck because Israel was going to strike, and the US didn’t want Iran to retaliate against Israel. Don’s response was precise. If the imminent threat was Israel striking Iran, the answer was to stop Israel from striking, not to strike Iran yourself. What Rubio described was not an imminent threat from Iran. It was an imminent action by an ally. That distinction has been almost entirely absent from mainstream coverage.
Don named the anti-Semitism conflation as one of the primary reasons the media pulls its punches. Journalists and anchors are afraid that any criticism of Netanyahu’s government or of Israel’s military conduct will be labeled anti-Semitic. I chimed in on this point. I’m married into a Jewish family. The Jewish people I know were criticizing Netanyahu long before I was. Criticizing a far-right government conducting strikes that have decimated Gaza and displaced 700,000 people in Lebanon is not anti-Semitism.
Don pointed to corporate ownership as the structural root of the problem. Skydance, which is acquiring Paramount and will soon own CBS and CNN, is run by Trump allies. Don was clear that personal ideology or financial ties should never trickle into the newsroom. But the pressure exists, and journalists feel it. The result is coverage that softens its edges exactly where it should be sharpest. The New York Times visual investigation on the school strike showed what honest accountability journalism looks like. The question is whether the broader press follows that standard or retreats to false balance.
The Real Reason This War Started
The official justifications for this war have shifted so many times that they have become a tell. Imminent threat. Nuclear capability. Iranian aggression. Each one has been walked back or contradicted by the administration’s own prior statements. The actual reasons are more straightforward and more cynical.
I laid out the political desperation timeline. Netanyahu has an election later this year. He needs war to survive politically and has needed it for years. Trump disagreed with the April strike, reportedly, but then Israel conducted its own operation in June. Trump watched it play well on Fox News and joined. Then he got high on Venezuela. And now this. What Don and I both noted is that Trump’s desperation level finally met Netanyahu’s, and the result is a war that they think serves both of their political needs while producing a humanitarian catastrophe neither of them is being held responsible for. But in Trump’s case, it is backfiring big time.
The intelligence contradiction is something Don raised, and it has not gotten nearly enough attention. Just months before this war began, the Trump administration’s own intelligence assessment said Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon had been annihilated. Then months later, the administration was claiming an imminent nuclear threat. You cannot hold both of those things at the same time. One of them is a lie. The press should be pressing that contradiction every single day.
Don pointed to Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu as the connective tissue that explains the rest. Trump has said Netanyahu should be pardoned for everything. The ideological alignment between the two goes beyond alliance into something closer to coordination. That context belongs as part of the Iran war coverage.
A Hornet’s Nest With No Exit
The people going on panels declaring this war a strategic success are not accounting for what comes next. Don and I both landed in the same place: this is a hornet’s nest. Trump went in with a broomstick and hit it with no plan for the next step.
The new Supreme Leader is more hardline than his father. His father had previously agreed to the JCPOA. He watched his family die in U.S. strikes. Then, 165 girls from a small town died in a school. Don said the school strike, in particular, is what makes the revenge personal in a way that the military strikes alone would not have. That is the strategic failure that the success narrative is papering over.
I raised the radicalization pipeline because it is the part that more people should be talking about. Minab is a small town. Everyone knew those girls. There are now young men in that region, brothers and neighbors, who have a concrete, personal grievance against the United States. We saw this in Iraq and Afghanistan. We saw it in Syria. Destabilize a region, produce a generation with rage, and then act surprised when extremism resurges. We are repeating it. A commenter’s point about the next leader always being more extreme is exactly right, and it applies not just to the Supreme Leader but to the broader population this war is radicalizing.
The Lebanon situation also deserves more coverage. More than 700,000 people are displaced by Israeli strikes. A migration crisis is building in real time. The conditions that produced ISIS are being recreated with a new grievance and a broader geographic footprint. That is not a fringe analysis. It is the predictable outcome of the policy being executed right now.
Bottom Line
165 girls are dead. The president lied about who killed them. Too many in the media are covering this like it’s normal. Don Lemon and I are not going to pretend that any of this is normal.
The moral case against this war needs to be made loudly, and it needs to be made by everyone who has a platform and a conscience. Democratic leadership should not be hiding behind process arguments about congressional approval while children are being buried. The press should not be softening its coverage because of who owns the network. And the national security analysts declaring success should be asked, every single time, to explain how killing 165 girls with outdated intelligence on a building that had been a school for a decade constitutes success.
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