Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez holds a press conference at the end of a special European Summit in Brussels, Belgium, on January 23, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Europe should close all of the US bases on its soil,” said one US foreign policy critic.
The Spanish government has blocked the US military from using its bases to launch attacks on Iran, forcing American aircraft to leave the country.
Speaking at the annual Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona on Sunday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez denounced that US war on Iran, which was completely unprovoked.
“Remember that one can be against a hateful regime, as is the case with the Iranian regime,” Sánchez said, “and at the same time be against a military intervention that is unjustified, dangerous, and outside international law. That one should be against a war initiated without authorization from the US Congress or the UN Security Council.”
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Iran:
“Remember that one can be against a hateful regime, as is the case with the Iranian regime … and at the same time be against an unjustified, dangerous military intervention outside of international law.” pic.twitter.com/Nv0V4pfXeG
According to a Monday report in the Guardian, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares emphasized after Sánchez’s speech that Spanish military bases will not be used “for anything that is not in the agreement [with the US], nor for anything that isn’t covered by the UN charter.”
In the wake of the Spanish government’s announcement, anti-war campaigners demanded that other European nations take similar stances.
“Europe should close all of the US bases on its soil,” wrote David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International. “There can be no ‘strategic autonomy’ while the United States maintains the ability to commit wanton violence from imperial installations on European territory.”
Alex Soros, chairman of Open Society Foundations, said that more nations should follow in Spain’s footsteps in trying to curb US aggression.
“Why aren’t more Europeans standing up to an illegal war!” Soros wrote. “Same with Canada! They make nice speeches at conferences, but do little. Spain is becoming the leader of the free world!”
Clare Daly, an Irish former member of European Parliament, encouraged her country to do its part to deny the US a base for airstrikes.
“Spain has denied the US military any use of its territory to carry out unlawful acts of aggression against Iran,” Daly wrote. “Yesterday [Human Rights Organization] Shannonwatch documented two US Air Force Hercules C-130H aircraft landing at Shannon Airport. Is the government going to do anything to uphold Ireland’s international responsibilities?”
Alan McLeod, senior staff writer at MintPress News, quipped that the Spanish government “continues to provide more resistance to Trump’s agenda than all Democrats combined.”
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Smoke is seen billowing skyward during US-Israeli bombing of Tehran, the Iranian capital, on March 1, 2026. (Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“This is carpet-bombing, which has struck everything from playgrounds, to an emergency services HQ, schools, media buildings, and medical facilities,” said one observer.
US and Israeli forces were accused Monday of “seemingly indiscriminate” bombing of Iran as the country’s Red Crescent said that at least 555 people have been killed amid reports of fresh mass casualty attacks across the country.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society said at least 555 people have been killed so far during three days of a US and Israeli war of choice aimed at toppling Iran’s long-ruling Islamist government. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday continued to insist that the war is not about regime change, but rather enduring yet bogus claims that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons.
Those killed include many civilians as well as former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and dozens of senior government and military officials. Iranian counterattacks have killed half a dozen US troops, 9 Israelis, and a handful of people in Gulf nations allied with the United States.
An attack on the Abbasabad Police Station—where anti-government protesters were allegedly tortured during the recent deadly crackdown—in Niloofar Square in central Tehran killed at least 20 people, local media reported.
“This is carpet-bombing, which has struck everything from playgrounds, to an emergency services HQ, schools, media buildings, and medical facilities,” documentary filmmaker Robert Inlakesh said in a social media post showing the aftermath of the strike.
Local residents said that the site was attacked for the second time in three days. This was part of broader US-Israeli strikes on Tehran, including attacks on the Revolutionary Court, Defense Ministry, other government sites, and civilian infrastructure including at least eight medical facilities and state media outlets.
Carpet bombing in Iran is stark reminder of how air superiority shapes modern warfare. In May 2025, Pakistan faced similar escalation from India—yet credible air defense and a combat-ready air force altered strategic calculus decisively. Invest in air power, instead of proxies! pic.twitter.com/H3rx2tYS7T
Video footage of another attack on central Tehran—this one in Ferdowsi Square—showed devastation from what political analyst Trita Parsi called “seemingly indiscriminate” bombing.
“Increasingly, Israel and the US appear to be following the Gaza playbook, having failed to achieve a quick regime implosion,” Parsi said on social media.
Parsi also shared video of a distraught woman who described an apparent so-called “double-tap” strike, a common tactic used by the US, Israel, and other militaries in which an initial bombing is followed up with a second one in a bid to kill and injure survivors and first responders.
“They killed everyone,” the woman said of the attackers. “They dropped the first bomb, then when people went to help, they dropped another bomb.”
Local and international media reported at least 35 people killed in multiple attacks on targets in the southern Fars province, which neighbors Hormozgan province, where the deadliest massacre of the young war took place on Saturday. Officials said at least 175 people—mostly children—were killed in a strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab.
Several hours later, a missile strike on a gymnasium in Lamerd, Pars province, where dozens of teenage girls were playing sports reportedly killed at least 18 people.
“Like the destruction of the school in Minab, basic protections to safeguard the lives of civilians in war either failed or were disregarded, leading to catastrophic loss among Iran’s civilian population,” the National Iranian American Council said in a statement Monday.
There is serious evidence of war crimes against the Iranian people in only three days of war, including bombings of protected civilian sites including hospitals and schools.
NIAC demands a full, independent investigation and a halt to this illegal war. https://t.co/zZTSZwxJa5
Iranian Red Crescent chief Pirhossein Kolivand said in a video posted on social media Sunday that “the Minab school incident has no comparison with any other incident, even in Gaza.”
Comparisons with Gaza—where Israel’s genocidal assault has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing since October 2023 and the coastal strip in ruins—have been numerous.
Condemning what it called the “barbarous” and “treacherous” US-Israeli attacks on Iran, Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based resistance group targeted by Israel during the Gaza war, said, “This aggression confirms the full and direct partnership between America and Israel in planning and execution, not only in the war against the Islamic Republic, but also in all the wars and crimes the region is facing, in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.”
Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political analyst, said that, in Israeli society, “there’s a sense of triumphalism, of having attacked an enemy regime.”
“Not really because we’re greatly invested in the future of the Iranian people, but because, through the genocide on Gaza, we’ve devalued human life,” he added.
Parsi said that “Israel appears to be going Gaza on Iran.”
The renewed US and Israeli attacks on Iran follow last year’s limited war on the country that left thousands of Iranians dead or wounded, including at least 436 civilians killed and over 2,000 others injured, according to officials and activists.
Addressing the Minab school strike, UNESCO—the UN’s educational, scientific, and cultural agency—said that “the killing of pupils in a place dedicated to learning constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law.”
UN Messenger of Peace and Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai asserted that “all states and parties must uphold their obligations under international law to protect civilians and safeguard schools,” adding that “every child deserves to live and learn in peace.”
In the United States—where Democratic and a handful of Republican lawmakers are reportedly drafting a war powers resolution in a bid to rein in President Donald Trump’s aggression—Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) took to social media to note the “over 555 Iranians already killed by US-Israeli bombs, including at least 165 at a girls’ elementary school.”
“At least four US service members are dead,” she also wrote, before that figure rose to six. “Any member of Congress who votes against the war powers resolution is voting for more of this.”
The Not Above the Law coalition was among the civil society groups urging Congress to pass an Iran war powers resolution.
“President Trump has launched deadly military strikes against Iran without congressional approval, in flagrant violation of the Constitution,” the coalition’s co-chairs said Monday. “Article I, Section 8 is crystal clear: Only Congress can declare war. Yet Trump has secured neither a declaration of war nor congressional authorization for military force.”
“Trump’s reckless unilateral action puts American lives and global security at risk while trampling the foundational principle that no president is above the law,” Not Above the Law added. “Congress must act immediately. Pass war powers resolutions to reject this unconstitutional power grab and reassert its authority over matters of war and peace. The rule of law demands it.”
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US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference on US military action in Iran at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on March 2, 2026. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
The defense secretary suggested that “the US went to war because Iran has ballistic missiles and drones it has used as a deterrent or to respond to US/Israeli attacks,” said journalist Jeremy Scahill.
In the Trump administration’s first public remarks to reporters on the strikes the US and Israel launched in Iran over the weekend, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blamed the Middle Eastern country for the attacks that have killed at least 555 people there as well as at least four US soldiers—and suggested Iran posed an imminent threat because of its defensive military capabilities.
Hegseth said the strikes that began early Saturday morning and included deadly attacks on children attending school were “retribution” for Iran’s “savage, one-sided war against America” that has played out for “47 long years” as the country has waged proxy attacks on the US.
“We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump we’re finishing it,” said Hegseth.
Despite the fact that hours before President Donald Trump announced the US and Israeli attacks, the Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi reported that diplomatic talks he was mediating were making significant progress toward a peace deal, Hegseth asserted that Iran had a “conventional gun to our head” and suggested the US had no choice but to wage war.
Pentagon officials said in a congressional briefing Sunday that Iran had not been planning to strike any US military targets in the region unless it was attacked first, according toCNN.
The defense secretary also claimed Monday that Iran was “not negotiating” and said it was “stalling” in the talks with the aim of rebuilding missile stockpiles.“
“To be clear,” said journalist Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News, “he is claiming the US went to war because Iran has ballistic missiles and drones it has used as a deterrent or to respond to US/Israeli attacks.”
Iran has weapons that exist to defend itself that are conventional, just normal military capability. By this logic, any country with a military has a gun to America's head. He's admitting the US considers any defensive capability in anyone else's hands unacceptable.
Drop Site noted that Hegseth made no mention of “the 1953 US-backed coup in Iran,” US support for autocratic rule there from 1953-79, “or that the US and Israel launched the February 28 strikes.”
On the UK talk radio show “Leading Britain’s Conversation,” British journalist Jon Sopel said Hegseth was making “the exact argument that [former President] George W. Bush made in 2003 with the weapons of mass destruction and ‘They could be launched in 45 minutes.’”
Promises to end the US government’s penchant for embarking on endless regime change wars, added Sopel, were part of “what propelled Donald Trump to the presidency, and yet Donald Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu have launched these strikes against Iran.”
‘“America didn’t start this.” Well, yes, you did.’ @jonsopel unpacks the US narrative shift on the war in Iran, a familiar playbook from Iraq in 2003. pic.twitter.com/uGhn5zP4G9
The defense secretary attempted to contrast the operation in Iran—dubbed Operation Epic Fury by the US military—to protracted wars like those the US has waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The conflict will not be an “endless war,” Hegseth said.
He claimed at one point in the briefing that the clear-cut objective of the attacks is to “destroy the missile threats, destroy the navy, no nukes” and scoffed at a reporter’s question about Trump’s Sunday statement in which he said he expected the conflict to be resolved in “four weeks or less.”
“President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up, it could move back,” said Hegseth.
Hegseth spoke alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who appeared to temper expectations of a quick resolution to the war started by the US and Israel.
“To be clear… this is not a single overnight operation,” Caine said. “The military objectives [US Central Command] and the Joint Force have been tasked with will take some time to achieve, and in some cases will be difficult and gritty work.”
Caine added that the military objective is “to protect and defend ourselves, and together with our regional partners, prevent Iran from the ability to project power outside of its borders.”
Law professor Jennifer Taub denounced Hegseth’s remarks as “utter nonsense” and condemned his claim that the US and Israel are hitting military targets “surgically.”
“Shameless,” she said. “We or Israel bombed a girl’s school on Saturday when school was in session, killing 175.”
Along with Hegseth’s claim that Iran was to blame for the strikes launched by the US and Israel, his comment that the US will expedite the operation by not getting bogged down in “stupid rules of engagement” alarmed observers.
Hegseth: No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don't waste time or lives. As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always… pic.twitter.com/7Zpg2UkcrO
“’No stupid rules of engagement’ means no Geneva Conventions or other international humanitarian laws, which the US signed and supported for more than a century,” said journalist Mark Jacob. “Hegseth and Trump are pro-war crimes.”
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