War with Iran — Week 1

As week one of the war with Iran draws to a close, a few observations.

First, the US and Israel achieved strategic surprise on the morning of February 28 when they launched the successful decapitation strike against Iran’s Supreme Leader.

It now appears that this was aided by deliberate misdirection, with President Trump appearing at midnight on Friday at a celebration at Mar-a-Lago, just minutes before the missiles hit Khamenei’s bunker, and Israeli military leaders tweeting out Shabat greetings, ostensibly from home.

There is also speculation that there may have been a CIA or Mossad agent within the Supreme Leader’s entourage, or perhaps, within the entourage of his son, Mojtaba, who is now being touted as his successor. Initial reports that Mojtaba had been killed with his father turned out to be false. Wonder how he escaped the fate of his father?

Second, Iran’s missile and drone launch capabilities have been rapidly degraded. On Day One of the war, Iran launched 350 ballistic missiles, mostly against Israel, and 294 swarms of drones. By today, Day Eight, they were down to 15 missile launches and just 12 drone swarms.

Because the US and Israel now own Iranian airspace, our planes and surveillance drones can loiter over suspected missile launch sites. Whenever a launcher pops out of an underground bunker, we can take it out within minutes.

Third, the impact on world oil prices has been dramatic — but not as bad as many had feared. Oil prices reached $90/barrel on Friday, and could rise more, but I believe they will begin to drop early next week as the U.S. Navy begins escorting supertankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

As of noon eastern time on Friday, the Strait was totally empty of commercial traffic — as it has been for the past three days. However, a number of supertankers were underway with full loads of oil, presumably from the UAE, Saudi, Kuwait, or Iraq, heading for China and South Korea. As they transit the Strait successfully, more will follow.

Fourth, Iran’s strategic gambit of intimidating its Arab Gulf neighbors into staying out of the war has backfired. Saudi Arabia, which issued an official communique just one week before the war began that it would not allow its territory or air space to be used for offensive operations against Iran, made an about-face after Iran attacked its oil refinery at Ras Tanura and announced it was fully joining the war effort.

All the other Gulf states – Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, and even Qatar — have likewise joined the war effort. And on Friday, the UAE announced it would freeze Iranian assets held in Dubai and Abu Dhabi banks — estimated at a whopping $350 billion. That is the kind of step the US Treasury Department has been trying to get the Emiratis to take for years. And now it’s done. So that is the end of the biggest IRGC money-laundering operation in the world.

Democrats in Congress failed in efforts to pass a War Powers Resolution that would cut off or severely limit the President’s ability to conduct this war. They claimed that the President had “no plan” for the war, and was conducting it in a “chaotic” manner.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is truly remarkable that just one Democrat in the Senate – Jon Fetterman of Pennsylvania – and four in the House rejected those efforts.

How in the world can Democrats with a straight face support a regime that for forty-seven years has been targeting and killing Americans? Their affliction with Trump-Derangement-Syndrome is just mind-boggling.

Some Democrats went even further. In a video posted to X apparently filmed in Iran, a former staffer for Senator Mark Warren of Virginia, Calla Walsh, praised the regime’s drone and missile strikes against the “genocidal Zionist entity.” That girl should be arrested upon her return to the US, her passport confiscated, and tried for treason.

Already, we are beginning to see signs of cracks between the regular army (“artesh”) and the Revolutionary Guards, with officers pledging their units to defend the people against the IRGC. The US and Israel have very pointedly not attacked regular army units, and their barracks have become de facto safe havens, especially in Iranian Kurdistan and Sistan-va Balouchestan.

Americans mistakenly refer to Iran as “Persia,” the name it used before Reza Shah changed it to “Iran” in 1935. Reza Shah’s grandson, Reza Pahlavi, appealed to Iran’s minorities this week to join in the fight to free their country from Islamic tyranny. As I like to say, Only 50% of Iranians are Persian, but 100% are Iranians.

For the first time in 47 years, freedom for the Iranian people now appears to be realistically in sight.

I discuss this, as well as the impact of the war on Russia and China, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.

As always, you can tune in live at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. If you miss us live, you can listen to the podcast later on here.

Yours in freedom,

©2026 Kenneth R. Timmerman. All rights reserved.

Website: kentimmerman.com

Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. 

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.