A Watchkeeper drone on display in 2010 (Photo: Jack Sullivan / Alamy)
Exclusive: Elbit Systems profiting from doomed drone programme which cost UK taxpayer £1.5 billion.
MoD splurged £1.5bn on doomed drone programme
Israel’s largest arms firm now benefitting from that deal
Dozens of drone components sent from UK to Israel last year
Those parts should be re-exported but are remaining in Israel
Airfield in illegally occupied territory likely being used to test the drones
Revelations suggest UK drone exports to Israel unlawful
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Shipping records obtained by Declassified reveal U-TacS has sent dozens of drone components including Watchkeeper engines to Elbit in Israel over the past 18 months.
Advanced radar systems used by the Watchkeeper have also been exported to Israel by Thales in Crawley.
This information might help to explain why the value of UK arms exports to Israel skyrocketed between October and December 2024, totalling more than the 2020-23 period combined.
Under UK arms export regulations, any Watchkeeper components sent to Israel should have been re-exported to Romania.
Yet they appear to have remained in Israel, with Elbit filing a “force majeure” declaration in its contract with Romania while testing the drones at a “secret airfield” in “northern Israel”.
Open-source information analysed by Declassified now indicates this airfield is located in the Golan Heights, a region of southwest Syria that has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
The UK government acknowledges that Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights is a violation of international law, suggesting the export of Watchkeepers from Britain could be unlawful.
People are seen at the site of the February 28, 2026 bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran. (Photo by Mehr News Agency/Wikimedia Commons)
“This harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict.”
Amnesty International on Monday published an investigation that found the United States violated international humanitarian law by failing to take measures to avoid harming civilians before bombing a girls’ school in southern Iran last month and killing around 175 people, most of them children.
Evidence gathered by Amnesty “indicates that the school building was directly struck, alongside 12 other structures in an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound, with guided weapons,” the group said. “This points to a failure by US forces to take feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm in carrying out the attack, which is a serious breach of international humanitarian law.”
“The fact that the school building was directly targeted and was previously part of the IRGC compound raises concerns that US forces may have relied on outdated intelligence and failed in their obligation to do everything feasible to verify that the intended target was a military objective,” Amnesty added.
NEW: Our in-depth investigation finds that US has violated international humanitarian law by failing to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. US is responsible for deadly attack on school in #Minab packed full of children.
Satellite imagery analyses confirmed eyewitness accounts that the February 28 attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab was a “triple-tap” airstrike, in which an initial bombing was followed up with two additional strikes meant to kill survivors and rescue workers.
Fragments of a Tomahawk cruise missile found at the school and marked with the names of US weapons companies, a Pentagon contract number, and “Made in USA” added to the body of evidence pointing to the United States as the perpetrator of what numerous experts have called a likely war crime.
President Donald Trump, who initially blamed Iran for the attack, later said he is “willing to live with” whatever the military’s investigation concludes.
“US authorities must ensure that the investigation they have announced is impartial, independent, and transparent,” Amnesty said. “Investigations into the strike must consider the intelligence gathering and assessments, targeting decisions, and precautions taken, as well as how artificial intelligence may have been employed in each of these steps, to evaluate how targeting decisions were made. The results of the investigation should be made public.”
Both the US and Israel have increasingly relied upon artificial intelligence systems to select bombing targets, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) having first used Gaza as what on expert called “a live-fire, live-ordnance lab experiment on people.” Proponents of these systems note that they can select targets and approve strikes exponentially faster than humans, enabling more strikes, but critics warn such targeting methods are inherently more dangerous, pointing to higher error rates which translate to more civilian casualties and less accountability.
In the case of the Minab strike, Amnesty said, “Where sufficient evidence exists, competent authorities should prosecute any person suspected of criminal responsibility. Victims and their families have the right to truth and justice and should receive full reparation, including restitution, rehabilitation, and compensation for civilian harm.”
Erika Guevara-Rosas—Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns—said in a statement Monday that “this harrowing attack on a school, with classrooms full of children, is a sickening illustration of the catastrophic and entirely predictable price civilians are paying during this armed conflict.”
“Schools must be places of safety and learning for children,” she said. “Instead, this school in Minab became a site of mass killing. The US authorities could, and should, have known it was a school building. Targeting a protected civilian object, such as a school, is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
“If the attackers failed to identify the building as a school and nevertheless proceeded with the attack, this would indicate gross negligence in the planning of the attack and would point to a shameful intelligence failure on the part of the US military and a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” Guevara-Rosas continued.
“On the other hand,” she said, “if the US was aware that the school was adjacent to the IRGC compound and proceeded to attack without taking all feasible precautions, such as striking at night when the school would have been empty, or giving effective advance warning to civilians likely to be affected, this would amount to recklessly launching an indiscriminate attack which killed and injured civilians and must be investigated as a war crime.”
“For their part, Iranian authorities must immediately remove, to the extent feasible, civilians from the vicinity of military objectives and allow independent monitors into the country,” Guevara-Rosas added. “They must also restore internet access to ensure that the 92 million people in Iran have access to life-saving information and be able to contact their loved ones.”
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying only 9 days ago that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of Peace
The United States and Israel are, for the second time in less than a year, committing “the supreme international crime” against Iran (FAIR.org, 7/3/25). Editorials in three of the United States’ most prominent newspapers, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, offered varying degrees of support for the aggression.
The Times waffled about bombing Iran, the Journal enthusiastically supported it, and the Post had fewer concerns about the war than the Times but more than the Journal. Crucially, however, all three papers rationalized the US/Israeli assault.
The Journal provided full-fledged endorsements of the unprovoked attack, writing in its first editorial (3/1/26), headlined “It’s Too Soon for Iran ‘Off-Ramps,’” that “the first two days . . . have been a striking success.”
“The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon,” it said.
The Journal (3/2/26) took the same approach in its next editorial, “Trump Enforces His Red Line on Iran,” calling the aggression a “necessary act of deterrence.” “It carries risks as all wars do,” the piece read, “but it also has the potential to reshape the Middle East for the better and lead to a safer world.” The editors reiterated that their “main concern is that Mr. Trump may stop too soon.”
Killing upward of 175 Iranians at a girls’ elementary school (FAIR.org, 3/2/26) didn’t temper the degree to which the US/Israeli aggression was a “striking success,” nor was the possibility of similar massacres a “risk” or a “concern” of the editors.
‘Seeing this through’
The Washington Post (2/28/26) warned of “the danger of lobbing some bombs without seeing this through.”
The Washington Post (2/28/26) expressed some reservations about the choice to go to war under the headline “Trump’s Iran Gamble,” but they seemed to be largely related to questions of success and procedure: whether the war would turn into a “quagmire,” “what happens to US troops throughout the region,” and that “it’s essential that the people’s elected representatives get to vote on whether these strikes are justified.”
The paper’s remaining concerns echoed the hawks at the Journal, worrying Trump might not go far enough. The editors fretted about “the danger of lobbing some bombs without seeing this through” and warned that “freedom for the people” might not be achieved “without some US boots on the ground…. Yet Trump appears to lack any appetite for doing so.”
While the Post appeared to have doubts about Trump’s leadership and strategy, at no point did the paper say that he shouldn’t have started the war, nor made mention of the prohibition under both US (The Hill, 6/23/25) and international law (Conversation, 3/20/22) on assassinating heads of state.
‘A successful outcome’
The New York Times (2/28/26) maintains that “Iran’s government presents a distinct threat because it combines…murderous ideology with nuclear ambitions”—but Trump didn’t announce he was attacking them the right way.
Meanwhile, the New York Times’ strongest criticism (2/28/26) of the US/Israeli attack was that
Mr. Trump’s approach to Iran is reckless. His goals are ill-defined. He has failed to line up the international and domestic support that would be necessary to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. He has disregarded both domestic and international law for warfare.
While the authors were correct to suggest that the war is illegal, they nevertheless implied that a “successful outcome” to this war of aggression is desirable. That ending the war as soon as possible would be a “successful outcome” was not part of the Times’ calculus.
Like the Post, the Times’ criticisms were mostly based on proceduralism. The Times (2/28/26) complained that Trump
started this war without explaining to the American people and the world why he was doing so. Nor has he involved Congress, to which the Constitution grants the sole power to declare war. He instead posted a video at 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, shortly after bombing began, in which he said that Iran presented ”imminent threats” and called for the overthrow of its government.
Thus, the Times was more concerned with how Trump explained his war aims to the American public than with those aims themselves. Indeed, as we’ll see, the paper dedicated considerable space to shoring up the rationale for the US/Israeli attack.
‘Positive consequences’
For the New York Times (2/28/26), Israel’s ability to continue its genocide in Gaza (Amnesty International, 11/27/25) without resistance from Hamas appears to be a “positive consequence” of bombing Iran.
One trait the propaganda in all three papers shared is the notion that Iranian foreign policy means that there are upsides to launching the all-out war with Iran. The New York Times‘ headline (2/28/26) called the attacks “reckless,” but the analysis bolstered the argument for the war about which they professed to be concerned:
Israel has reduced the threats from Hamas and Hezbollah (two of Iran’s terrorist proxies), attacked Iran directly and, with help from allies, mostly repelled its response. The new recognition of Iran’s limitations helped give rebels in Syria the confidence to march on Damascus and oust the horrific Assad regime, a longtime Iranian ally. Iran’s government did almost nothing to intervene. This recent history demonstrates that military action, for all its awful costs, can have positive consequences.
These “positive consequences” include a genocide in Gaza that, despite a so-called ceasefire, hasn’t ceased (Amnesty International, 11/27/25; Palestine Centre for Human Rights, 2/4/25). Sectarian massacres have followed the fall of Assad in Syria (FAIR.org, 6/2/25); similarly, in the first year of post-Assad Syria, Israel bombed the country even more than it had the previous year, and increased its theft of Syrian territory (Al Jazeera, 11/20/25). Nearly 4,000 Lebanese people were killed in the 2023–24 US-backed Israeli war on the country, Human Rights Watch noted, which included
Subsequently, Israel has violated a sham ceasefire in Lebanon more than 10,000 times, during which “positive consequences” continue to accrue, such as the killing of 12 people in late February attacks (Democracy Now!, 2/23/26).
For a generation, Iran has been the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, backing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other proxies as they wreaked havoc and killed Americans.
Linguistic choices used to rationalize war and genocide need to be rigorously scrutinized, and nowhere is this more necessary than when the word “terrorism” is being deployed to rationalize the mass murder of Muslim-majority populations. As Edward Said (New Left Review, 9–10/88) wrote:
The most striking thing about “terrorism,” as a phenomenon of the public sphere of communication and representation in the West, is its isolation from any explanation or mitigating circumstances, and its isolation as well from representations of most other dysfunctions, symptoms and maladies of the contemporary world…. [Terrorism has been] stripped of any right to be considered as other historical and social phenomena are considered, as something created by human beings in the world of human history.
Hamas’s violence against Israelis on October 7, 2023, came in the context of Israel killing more than 7,000 Palestinians over the previous 23 years, including more than 2,000 children (B’Tselem). Israel has for decades occupied, besieged and ethnically cleansed Palestinians (Electronic Intifada, 7/26/18), and is now committing genocide against them (UN, 9/16/25).
Hezbollah came into existence as a result of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s (Electronic Intifada, 1/16/24), and went on to win wide popular support in the country, as demonstrated by its winning more seats than other party in elections (FAIR.org, 10/10/24).
Yemen’s Ansar Allah, known at the Houthis, arose as a rebellion against Ali Abdullah Saleh, the nation’s US-backed dictator (BBC, 12/4/17, 3/25/25). It gained power and prominence by continuing to struggle against his successor, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and then the “catastrophic” US/Saudi war on Yemen (In These Times, 4/13/23). Both Ansar Allah and Hezbollah are, it’s worth noting, guilty of helping the Palestinians resist the US/Israeli genocide (FAIR.org, 1/24/25).
If the Post wanted to help its readers make sense of the world, the paper would make some effort to explain who Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansar Allah are, and the contexts in which they have engaged in political violence, as well as the vastly more deadly and injurious violence initiated by the US and Israel they have faced. Instead, the paper offers a simplistic, ahistorical demonization of these groups as ideological scaffolding for “the supreme international crime” against Iran, as well as the slaughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni people.
‘Main threat to the entire region’
The Wall Street Journal (3/2/26) finds it “hard to imagine instability greater than what the [Iran’s] revolutionary regime has promoted for nearly five decades.”The first Wall StreetJournal (3/1/26) editorial claimed that Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Arab states where US forces are based, and from which attacks on Iran are being carried out, underscore that Iran “is the main threat to the entire region.”
The second (3/2/26) called the US/Israeli aggression “a necessary act of deterrence against a regime that is the world’s foremost promoter of terrorism.” The piece responded to the view that the war could lead to “new conflicts among other powers in the region” by saying, “Events are impossible to predict, but it’s hard to imagine instability greater than what the revolutionary regime has promoted for nearly five decades.”
It’s nonsensical to say that Iran is “the main threat to the entire region” and that “it’s hard to imagine instability greater” than that which Iran has “promoted in the region.” None of Iran’s alleged, unspecified crimes in the region come close to the actual bloodshed (not its mere “threat”) and “instability” the US and Israel have wrought in the “greater Middle East,” not only in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, but in Afghanistan (FAIR.org, 8/19/21), Iraq (BBC, 10/16/13; Guardian, 3/4/00) and Libya (Alternet, 12/5/17).
‘The danger of lobbing some bombs’
All three papers also lent credence to the idea that it would be legitimate to conduct a war on Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. The Washington Post (2/28/26) asserted:
Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Trump insisted that last summer’s bunker-buster bombs totally “obliterated” Iran’s enrichment program, but now he says it needs to be “totally, again, obliterated.” It’s always been clear he was exaggerating the success of Operation Midnight Hammer, and Iran has remained unwilling to give up its goal of proliferation. The danger of lobbing some bombs without seeing this through is that Iran’s leaders could become more determined than ever to get a bomb to deter future strikes.
Yet the day before the US/Israeli aggression commenced, it came to light that Iran had agreed to not stockpile enriched uranium (CBS, 2/27/26). Without such nuclear fuel, it’s impossible to make a nuclear bomb. Contrary to the Post’s suggestion, Iran apparently was not “unwilling to give up” its alleged “goal of proliferation.”
The Wall StreetJournal (3/2/26) acted as if this Iranian offer had not taken place, saying that Trump “gave Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ample chance to strike a deal on nuclear weapons and its missile force, but the ayatollah refused.” The editorial praised the US/Israeli campaign, saying that even if the Iranian government survives, “the nuclear program will be difficult and expensive to rebuild.”
Yet on February 18, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi said the organization had not seen any indication that Iran might currently be working to develop a nuclear weapon (CBS, 2/19/26). How Iran might “rebuild” a program that it may not have in the first place is anyone’s guess.
A ‘worthy goal’
“Preventive strikes…have no basis under international law,” noted the Australian Institute of International Affairs (7/3/25). “Strikes cannot be justified solely on the grounds that a future attack is believed inevitable—as it is impossible to determine whether such a condition will ever come about.”
Even though the New York Times (2/28/26) noted that “Iran does not appear close to having a nuclear weapon,” the paper described “the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program” as a “worthy goal.” The paper added:
American presidents of both parties have rightly made a commitment to prevent Tehran from getting a bomb.
We recognize that fulfilling this commitment could justify military action at some point…. The consequences of allowing Iran to follow the path of North Korea—and acquire nuclear weapons after years of exploiting international patience—are too great.
“Prevent[ing] from getting a [nuclear] bomb” could not, in fact, “justify military action.” Pre-emptive or preventative wars “clearly” violate international law (Australian Institute of International Affairs, 7/3/25), so even if Iran was on the cusp of having a nuclear bomb, that would not be grounds to attack them.
None of the editorials in the Times, Journal or Post mentioned that, in the run up to the US/Israeli aggression, the IAEA said it had no evidence that Iran was working on nuclear weapons development, or that Iran had agreed to an arrangement under which it couldn’t develop a nuclear bomb. Instead, the papers implied that a nuclear-armed Iran was a near-term possibility, and that such a prospect would warrant bombing the country.
When scholars and students look back on 2026 and study how some of the US’s most prominent papers responded to the war of aggression on Iran, the main takeaway won’t be that the Journal offered unhesitating applause while the Times and the Post equivocated. It will be that all three defended the indefensible.
Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of PeaceDonald Trump warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog, says that it’s easy atm, she only needs to report war crimes supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Gas prices over $5 a gallon are displayed at a Mobil station on March 11, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“If high costs weren’t already bad enough, Donald Trump’s unnecessary war in Iran has sent gas prices through the roof,” said one House Democrat.
Data released Friday showed that US consumer sentiment hit a new low for 2026 and the American economy expanded by just 0.7% in the fourth quarter of last year, indicators that experts said are only going to get worse due to the cascading impacts of President Donald Trump’s deadly, illegal, and expensive war on Iran.
“President Trump is flooring the gas pedal as he drives our economy over a cliff,” Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said in response to the new data, some of which was collected before the US and Israel launched their assault on Iran, sparking a regional conflict, sending oil prices surging, and destabilizing the global economy.
“As bad as this week’s data is,” Jacquez added, “it understates reality for exhausted consumers who have been hit with even more price hikes caused by the president’s intentional turmoil in the weeks since this data was collected. Instead of working to bring down ever-increasing prices at the pump, the grocery store, and the doctor’s office, the president is betraying working families as his illegal war with Iran stokes inflation.”
Figures released Friday by the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) showed that real gross domestic product increased at half the rate predicted by previous government estimates.
“Real GDP was revised down 0.7 percentage points from the advance estimate [of 1.4%], reflecting downward revisions to exports, consumer spending, government spending, and investment,” the BEA said in a news release.
NBC News noted that “economists had expected the revision to go the other way—and show stronger growth.”
The BEA also published data showing that the personal consumption expenditures price index, a key inflation reading, rose at an annualized rate of 2.8% in January.
“Families across the United States are struggling to make ends meet in Donald Trump’s economy,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement. “If high costs weren’t already bad enough, Donald Trump’s unnecessary war in Iran has sent gas prices through the roof.”
A Harris Poll opinion survey conducted for The Guardian and released Friday found that more than 70% of US voters believe Trump’s tariff regime has driven up their costs.
“In the short run, the economic impact of a sustained loss of Gulf oil could be very ugly.”
Consumer sentiment, meanwhile, continued its steady decline in March, falling about 2% compared to last month, according to the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers. Roughly half of the interviews conducted for the consumer sentiment report were completed before the US and Israel began attacking Iran on February 28.
Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, noted that “interviews completed prior to the military action in Iran showed an improvement in sentiment from last month, but lower readings seen during the nine days thereafter completely erased those initial gains.”
“Gasoline prices have exerted the most immediate impact felt by consumers, though the magnitude of passthrough to other prices remains highly uncertain,” Hsu noted. “A broad swath of consumers across incomes, age, and political affiliation all reported declines in expectations for their personal finances, down 7.5% nationally.”
“Interviews completed after February 28 exhibited higher inflation expectations than those completed before that date,” Hsu added.
The first six days of Trump’s war on Iran cost US taxpayers over $11 billion, and the price tag is set to rise exponentially as the administration deploys thousands of additional troops to the Middle East and continues aggressively bombing Iran, which has retaliated in part by closing the Strait of Hormuz—choking off the flow of oil through the critical trade route and sending prices surging.
The Trump administration has sought to downplay skyrocketing oil prices even as it takes emergency action in an attempt to bring them down. The International Energy Agency said Thursday that the US-Israeli assault on Iran sparked “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.”
Economist Paul Krugman warned Friday that “oil prices could easily go much higher,” noting, “The US and other major economies are a lot less oil-dependent than they were in the 1970s, and even at $100 a barrel oil prices are not high enough to provoke a major crisis.”
“In the short run, the economic impact of a sustained loss of Gulf oil could be very ugly,” Krugman wrote. “I’ve seen some alarmists warn that a long war in the Gulf could lead to oil at $150 a barrel. That looks low to me.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Orcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says “Wish someone would lock him up”.
