From Washington: The Oval Office on Tuesday was thick with diplomatic friction. Seated alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, US President Donald Trump did not confine his sharpest words to Tehran. He turned them on London.
Hitting out at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during the White House meeting, Trump said "this is not Winston Churchill we are dealing with" as he condemned the prime minister for choosing not to join the US and Israel in striking Iran. Starmer had initially blocked the US from using British military bases, specifically Diego Garcia, for strikes against Iran during Operation Epic Fury. The PM eventually changed his position after Iran began bombing countries across the Middle East, putting British lives at risk.
Starmer defended his decision to stay out of the conflict, saying the UK was "not involved in the initial strikes against Iran, and we will not join offensive action now" but that "in the face of Iran's barrage of missiles and drones, we will protect our people in the region," in an address to Parliament on Monday. "President Trump has expressed his disagreement with our decision not to get involved in the initial strikes, but it is my duty to judge what is in Britain's national interest. That is what I've done, and I stand by it," Starmer said.
The conflict began on 28 February 2026, when Israel and the United States launched coordinated joint attacks across Iran, codenamed Operation Roaring Lion by Israel and Operation Epic Fury by the United States, targeting key Iranian officials, military commanders and facilities, with regime change as an explicit aim. The operation included the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose compound was destroyed, as well as Ali Shamkhani, former head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and several other Iranian officials. Trump had outlined four military objectives: preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, destroying its missile arsenal and production sites, degrading its proxy networks, and annihilating its navy.
"This was a massive, overwhelming attack across all domains of warfare, striking more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. "To be clear, this is not a single overnight operation," Caine said. "The military objectives CENTCOM and the Joint Force have been tasked with will take some time to achieve, and in some cases will be difficult and gritty work."
Hackers as First Movers
One of the more striking revelations from the Pentagon briefing was how openly officials discussed the digital dimension of the campaign. In what may be the most public acknowledgment of US cyber capabilities to date, the Pentagon confirmed that cyber soldiers are playing a key role in its attacks on Iran, with General Caine discussing cyber operations in the same breath as traditional military domains during the Monday press conference.
Ahead of the kinetic strikes, US Cyber Command and the Space Force conducted cyber operations to disrupt and "blind Iran's ability to see, communicate and respond" when major combat operations began, Caine said. "Across every domain, land, air, sea, cyber, the US Joint Force delivered synchronised and layered effects designed to disrupt, degrade, deny and destroy Iran's ability to conduct and sustain combat operations," Caine said. The Pentagon declined to provide further specifics, citing operational security.
Caine's acknowledgment, though lacking detail, signals a continued willingness by US leaders to publicly describe cyber capabilities as an embedded element of large-scale combat operations, rather than as a separate, covert matter. According to The Register, the heavy integration of kinetic and non-kinetic strategies is not just an opening salvo in a new paradigm of cyber-first warfare, but something likely to continue during the Iran operation and beyond.
The Cost Counted in Classrooms
Beneath the Pentagon's briefing language, the human toll has been severe. On 28 February 2026, the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, was destroyed, reportedly by a missile, during the first day of the Israeli-United States strikes on Iran. Iranian authorities have put the final death toll at 165 people, most of them girls aged between 7 and 12, with at least 95 others wounded in the attack.
"The onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it," UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a Geneva press briefing. "This is absolutely horrific," she said, adding that images circulating on social media captured "the essence of the destruction, despair and senselessness and cruelty of this conflict." UNESCO said the bombing of the primary school constituted "a grave violation of humanitarian law."
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US forces "would not deliberately target a school." Israel has said it is investigating the incident. The BBC reported that the school was located near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base that had been the target of a separate airstrike the same day.
Alliances Under Pressure
The Starmer-Trump confrontation is more than a personality clash. The so-called special relationship between the two Second World War allies is largely built on long-standing defence cooperation and intelligence sharing, but any potential military action in the Middle East is politically sensitive in the UK following former prime minister Tony Blair's disastrous support for the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Trump also threatened to cut off trade with Spain after Madrid barred the US military from using its bases. "Spain has been terrible," Trump said, adding that he had instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to "cut off all dealings" with Spain. "We're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain," he said.
For its part, just before the strikes began, on 27 February, Oman's Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi said a "breakthrough" had been reached and Iran had agreed both to never stockpile enriched uranium and to full verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said Iran had begun recent nuclear talks by insisting on its "inalienable right" to enrich uranium, rejecting a US proposal for zero enrichment.
The economic stakes are considerable. According to Kent Smetters, director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the total economic cost of the strikes could reach as high as $210 billion. A direct hit to US taxpayers of around $65 billion is the likely cost for military operations and the replacement of equipment and munitions, a figure that rises sharply if the war lasts beyond two months.
For Australia, the conflict carries direct strategic weight. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has longstanding warnings in place for Australians in the Middle East, and two oil tankers have been targeted off the coast of Oman, with 150 freight ships, including many oil tankers, stalled behind the Strait of Hormuz as Iran threatens to close the waterway entirely. Energy markets and Australian exporters with exposure to Gulf trade routes are watching closely. The Parliament of Australia has yet to formally debate the conflict's implications for Australian foreign policy or the AUKUS partnership.
There are no clean hands and no simple answers in this conflict. Trump's administration has a legitimate argument that Iran's nuclear ambitions and proxy aggression posed a genuine threat to regional stability. The critics, from Starmer to anti-war members of the US Congress, have an equally legitimate argument about legal process, civilian casualties, and the unpredictable cascades of large-scale military action. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend found that only one in four Americans say they support the US strikes on Iran, including just one in four Republicans who believe Trump has been too willing to use military force. The costs, fiscal and human, are still being counted. What they add up to will define the Trump administration's legacy long after the last bomb has fallen.