Comedian Dave Columbo parodies the Trump administration’s rational for the Iran war in a video that has gained millions of views across social media. (Photo: Screen grab via X)
“Our goal from day one was for Iran to open the strait that didn’t close until after we attacked.”
Comedian Dave Columbo on Wednesday released a parody video that lampooned the Trump administration’s contradictory and constantly changing rationales for its unconstitutional war with Iran.
In the video, which was first posted on Instagram and has since gone viral on other social media platforms, Columbo assumes the role of a White House spokesperson trying to explain what the US has achieved so far with its war, which Trump illegally launched without any congressional authorization more than a month ago.
“This is a victory for the US,” Columbo says at the start of the video. “Because our goal from day one was for Iran to open the strait that didn’t close until after we attacked, which was completely controlled by their military that we had total dominance over. And it was a waterway that we could have taken over, but instead we asked for help that we didn’t need, but we’ll remember our allies did not give us.”
— Barney Panofsky's Best Intentions (@mynamesnotgordy) April 8, 2026
Columbo then explains that this purported victory has only come about due to “a FIFA Peace Prize recipient’s threat to annihilate a civilization in order to liberate them.”
The comedian next touts the administration’s success in changing the Iranian regime from “an old man who hates us to his younger son, who hates us for those reasons, and that we killed his father.”
Columbo acknowledges that the administration is unsure about “the status of Iran’s nuclear capabilities that we obliterated last year, but were going to be a problem in two weeks,” before boasting that Iran now has “more money and control over the strait than they had when they made the old deal that we ended because it was terrible.”
While Columbo’s video is intended as satire, much of it simply relies on arguments that the Trump administration has made throughout the course of the war, such as the president’s demands that NATO allies give help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that he also says is unnecessary given US military strength.
As of this writing, the Iran War has cost US taxpayers more than $45 billion, and the Strait of Hormuz has still not reopened.
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Pope Leo XIV leads his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Squarein Vatican City on April 8, 2026. (Photo by Maria Grazia Picciarella/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The US “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” a top official told the Vatican’s US representative. “The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
Pope Leo, the first American to be named the head of the worldwide Catholic Church, has spoken out against President Donald Trump’s policies frequently this year as the US has invaded Venezuela and Iran and threatened Cuba’s 10 million people with an oil blockade that has crippled the island’s economy and healthcare system—and according to new reports, his criticism has followed a warning from a Pentagon official who demanded the Vatican take the “side” of the White House in foreign disputes.
The Free Press originally reported this week that after the pope’s “State of the World” address on January 9, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby called Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s US diplomatic representative, to Washington.
Colby told Pierre that the US “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world.”
“The Catholic Church had better take its side,” he said, according to The Free Press.
Another Pentagon official alluded to the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy ordered an attack on Pope Boniface VIII and forced seven successive popes to relocate from Rome to Avignon in France.
According to Christopher Hale of the Substack blog Letters From Leo, who independently confirmed the meeting had taken place, Vatican officials took the remarks about the Avignon papacy as “a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”
“Bringing up the Avignon papacy as a threat is truly insane,” said progressive organizer Jonathan Cohn.
The pope is unlikely to visit the US during Trump’s presidency as a result of the meeting, Hale reported. Pope Leo rejected an invitation to the White House for the United States’ 250th anniversary celebration on July 4, and is reportedly planning to visit the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean that day, where thousands of North African immigrants have arrived as they attempt to reach Europe.
The pope, reported Hale, “is too deliberate a man to have chosen that date by accident.”
The Pentagon meeting took place days after Pope Leo angered the Trump administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, by lamenting the fact that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies.”
In the speech that enraged Pete Hegseth and top Pentagon officials, Pope Leo XIV said: “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”
“War is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.
He made the comments days after the US invaded Venezuela, killing dozens of people and abducting President Nicolás Maduro, and as the US continued its boat bombing campaign that began last year in Latin America.
Since then, the pope has made numerous statements in recent weeks as the US joined Israel in bombing Iran and Trump issued increasingly bellicose threats to attack the country’s population of 93 million people.
He said on Tuesday, hours before a two-week ceasefire was reached between the US, Iran, and Israel, that Trump’s threat to wipe out the “whole civilization” of Iran was “truly unacceptable.”
“There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety,” said Pope Leo. “Let’s look for solutions in a peaceful way.”
He also appeared to reject a call from Hegseth last month when the defense secretary asked Americans to pray for US troops in Iran “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
“Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” said the Pope in his homily on Palm Sunday days later. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”
The New Republic reported that prior to the January meeting Pierre was called to, there were no public records of meetings between the Vatican and Pentagon officials, “let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the Bishop of Rome into captivity.”
When asked about the meeting on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance—a Catholic convert—at first claimed not to know who the Vatican’s US representative was, before saying the reported was “uncorroborated.”
BREAKING: JD Vance initially says he doesn't know who Cardinal Christophe Pierre is — until recently Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador to the United States — then, once reminded, declines to comment on the Pentagon's January meeting with the cardinal or on the ”bitter lecture” Under… pic.twitter.com/Qknnuh0wxv
The Defense Department also denied The Free Press’ account of the meeting, saying the characterization was “highly exaggerated and distorted.”
Writer Pedro Gonzalez noted that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon discussed strategies to “take down” the late Pope Frances with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to files on Epstein that were released by the Department of Justice.
“It is for this and other reasons that people take seriously the report about the Trump-Vance administration threatening Pope Leo to bend the knee or else,” said Gonzalez. “These people are insane. Their hunger for power is bottomless. Moral resistance will be met with intimidation and threats, whether it’s in America or in Rome.”
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A vendor displays morning newspapers at his roadside stall in Islamabad on April 8, 2026. (Photo by Aamir Qureshi/AFP via Getty Images)
A foreign policy expert told Common Dreams that Israel’s unprecedented attack on Lebanon, backed by the US, “appeared to be a direct attempt to blow up the ceasefire, and it worked.”
A Pakistani official said Wednesday that despite Israel’s unprecedented attack on Lebanon, it is still part of the ceasefire agreement that Pakistan’s prime minister helped to mediate the previous day, even as Israel and the US insist otherwise.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who played a key role in brokering the deal announced on Tuesday, said that “Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.”
But within hours of the agreement, Israel launched what it said was its largest military operation against Lebanon yet, which killed at least 254 people and wounded 1,165 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged that the assault included attacks on many civilian areas.
Contrary to the mediators, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahudeclared that the ceasefire “does not include Lebanon.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt followed suit, confirming that the US’s position was also that “Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire,” adding that “that has been relayed to all parties involved.”
But Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, said on Wednesday afternoon that this was not the agreement the parties reached on Tuesday.
He told CNN anchor Becky Anderson that the deal announced by his prime minister, which included Lebanon, “could not have been more authentic” to what the two parties agreed to, and that it was still the prime minister’s understanding that Lebanon was included.
He added that this was another instance in which a ceasefire “could be disrupted” by Israel’s actions. He also noted that “there have been instances in the past where ceasefires have been disrupted,” a possible reference to Israel’s routine violations of its previous ceasefire with Lebanon and the current one with Gaza, and its repeated assassinations of Iranian negotiators as they’ve sat down for talks with the US.
The US-Iran ceasefire is less than 24 hours old, but Israel’s attack on Wednesday has already thrown it into peril. Iran responded to the attacks on Wednesday by once again closing the Strait of Hormuz after briefly reopening the critical waterway in accordance with the deal. Iran is also reportedly considering withdrawing from the ceasefire altogether and resuming strikes against Israel.
President Donald Trump has appeared eager to declare victory and move on from the war, which has further tanked his already plummeting support at home and sparked a global economic crisis.
NBC: Iranian state media says Iran has now closed the Strait of Hormuz today. What's the White House response?
LEAVITT: The president was made aware of those reports before I came to the podium. That is completely unacceptable pic.twitter.com/u3ScjzR42K
But Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher with the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams that Israel’s goals are very different.
She explained that Israel was largely sidelined from the talks that culminated in Tuesday’s ceasefire and that within Israel’s internal politics, the agreement is being portrayed as “catastrophic.”
She noted that Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition to Netanyahu’s government, has portrayed it as “the worst political failure in our history,” and accused the prime minister of failing to achieve his goals.
“What we’ve seen since looks like Israel acting to undermine a diplomatic process over which it had lost influence,” Abou-Elias said.
She said that Israel’s attack on Lebanon on Wednesday, which it has referred to as Operation Eternal Darkness, “appeared to be a direct attempt to blow up the ceasefire, and it worked.”
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, at least 1,701 civilians have been killed in US-Israeli attacks against Iran since the war was launched on February 28.
After Wednesday’s bombardment, Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported that the death toll in the country was now up to at least 1,739 since the war began on March 2.
“At this point, any durable end to this conflict, even a temporary one, requires Washington to rein in Israel,” Abou-Elias said. “Trump has the leverage to do it. What’s unclear is whether he has the political will to use it.”
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Bombed-out apartment towers and vehicles are seen in Beirut on April 8, 2026 amid escalating Israeli bombing. (Photo by Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images)
One senior Iranian official said his country is considering resuming strikes to put Israel’s “aggressor regime in its place,” while others warned Iran might quit the shaky ceasefire altogether.
Iran said Wednesday that it is blocking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz over Israel’s escalating bombardment of Lebanon, actions that are threatening to unravel the tenuous ceasefire agreed to less than a day ago.
Fars, an Iranian state media outlet, reported that “simultaneous with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz has been stopped,” while Reuters said that “more than 180 tankers believed to be inside [the] strait, with hundreds more waiting” for access.
The developments came after two tankers were reportedly allowed to pass through the vital waterway—through which around 20% of the world’s oil is shipped—in the wake of Tuesday’s ceasefire agreement between the United States, Israel, and Iran.
While Israel accepted the two-week truce, it insists that the agreement does not apply to its ongoing war on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran counters that halting attacks on Lebanon is one of the 10 points in the Pakistan-brokered deal, which Israel is violating.
Over the past 24 hours, Israeli forces have ramped up their already intense bombing of Lebanon to levels described as “apocalyptic.” Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least 254 people have been killed and 1,165 others wounded by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombing throughout the country, with some official sources telling media outlets that as many as 300 people have been killed.
More than 100 sites across Lebanon were reportedly bombed within a period of just minutes, including densely populated urban areas. In southern Lebanon, the dead include 12 medics, according to officials cited by Reuters.
Horrific footage coming out of Lebanon.
Massive Israeli strikes on 100 different locations across Lebanon in the span of 10 minutes.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Wednesday implored sympathetic nations to put pressure on Israel to stop the bombing.
“All of Lebanon’s friends are called upon to help us stop these attacks by all available means,” he said.
Iran’s Press TV reported Wednesday that Iranian leaders are considering resuming full-scale counterattacks in response to Israel’s escalation. According to the outlet, a senior Iranian official said that the time has come to “put this aggressor regime in its place.”
Iranian and international media outlets also reported Wednesday that Iran might withdraw from the ceasefire altogether if Israel keeps bombing Lebanon.
“The conditions for a ceasefire between Iran and the United States are clear and explicit: America must choose either a ceasefire or the continuation of war through Israel; both cannot coexist,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on Telegram. “The world is witnessing the killings in Lebanon. Now the ball is in America’s court, and global public opinion is watching to see whether this country will fulfill its commitments or not.”
In a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera, Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg described Israel’s intensified attacks on Lebanon as “a pyrotechnics show meant to demonstrate Israel’s effectiveness while ultimately demonstrating its despair.”
“The only entity that can stop it is the international community that will defend Lebanon’s sovereign rights, which have been violated for decades but are now almost nonexistent,” he said.
Some Israeli leaders, especially on the far-right, are reportedly furious over their exclusion from Trump’s decision to suspend attacks on Iran.
“He thought he could keep Trump on a short leash,” Goldberg said of Netanyahu. “He messed that up. So now what he has is Lebanon, which has been Israel’s favorite stomping ground in terms of sovereignty violation and aggression generally.”
Since the 1980s, Israeli forces have killed more than 20,000 people, many of them civilians, in Lebanon. Israeli forces have occupied parts of Lebanon several times, including for the last 18 years of the 20th century. Some right-wing Israelis want their country to conquer some or even all of Lebanon, which they consider part of a “Greater Israel” promised to them by their deity figure.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz—who, like Netanyahu, stands accused in an International Court of Justice case of inciting genocide in Gaza—said Wednesday that “the IDF carried out a surprise strike on hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists at command centers across Lebanon” in what he called “the largest concentrated blow Hezbollah has suffered since Operation Beepers,” when dozens of people including children were killed by booby-trapped exploding communication devices.
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Katz’s predecessor, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, where 29 months of Israeli war and siege have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and the Gaza Strip in ruins. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect there six months ago.
Regional and international observers condemned Israel’s escalation in Lebanon, which Iraqi government spokesperson Bassem al-Awadi called “evidence of its hostile plan to sabotage the truce” and “perpetuate conflict.”
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the international community “to fulfill its responsibilities by compelling the Israeli occupation authorities to halt their barbaric massacres and repeated attacks on Lebanon, and to hold them accountable for respecting international covenants and laws.”
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A man takes pictures of Shahid Beheshti University following a US-Israeli strike in Tehran on April 4, 2026. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
“This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide,” said a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
Iranian officials on Monday warned US President Donald Trump that his name will be “etched in history as a supreme war criminal” if he follows through with his threat to wage total war on Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, wrote on social media following Trump’s Easter-morning outburst that “threats to attack power plants and bridges (civilian infrastructure) constitute war crimes under Article 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 (Article 52).”
“The president of the United States, in his capacity as the highest-ranking official of his country, has openly threatened to commit war crimes—an act that entails his individual criminal responsibility before the International Criminal Court and any competent national court,” Gharibabadi added, vowing that Iran “will deliver a decisive, immediate, and regret-inducing response” to any attack.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said Trump’s threats are “an indication of a criminal mindset.”
“This is an express public incitement for war crimes and crimes against humanity—and, I would say, for genocide,” Baghaei said in an interview on Sunday. “Threatening to attack a country’s critical infrastructure, energy sector, it would mean that you want to put at risk the whole population.”
Absolute bombshell. Iran's Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei accuses the Trump administration of a criminal mindset and public incitement for genocide. Threatening a nation's critical infrastructure puts the entire population at risk. The White House has completely abandoned morality. pic.twitter.com/HcBZGZho5p
The US and Israel have already done significant damage to Iran’s civilian infrastructure. The country’s deputy health minister said Monday that more than 360 healthcare, education, and research centers have been hit by US-Israeli strikes, and dozens of medics have been killed since the bombing began on February 28.
But Trump on Sunday threatened an indiscriminate assault, telling Fox News that if the Iranians “don’t make a deal and fast,” he is “considering blowing everything up and taking the oil.”
“You’re going to see bridges and power plants dropping all over their country,” the president said, setting a new deadline of 8 pm ET for the complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump’s remarks came after he published a deranged post on his Truth Social platform demanding that Iran “open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
Analysts and lawmakers in the US echoed Iranian officials’ warnings that Trump’s threatened attacks would constitute war crimes.
“Trump’s advisers are telling him to hit civilian sites because it will cause unrest and potentially topple the regime. But just think about the insanity of this plan: kill tens of thousands of civilians in order to cause a national panic,” US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote. “Bombing to induce political panic IS A WAR CRIME.”
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said that “any lawmaker who votes for supplemental funding for the war on Iran or against war powers resolutions to end it will be fully complicit in the war crimes threatened here, as well as those already committed by this unhinged and unfit Commander in Chief.”
The US president’s renewed threats came amid reports of a diplomatic effort, mediated in part by Pakistan, to enact a 45-day ceasefire to provide space for a lasting resolution to the war.
Axios reported that the talks are seen as “the only chance to prevent a dramatic escalation in the war that will include massive strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure and a retaliation against energy and water facilities in the Gulf states.”
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dizzy: There are more signs, appearance and demeanour even. There is no shame to it, often just comes with advanced age. The issue is about competency to perform a certain role (and having the codes).
Other parties e.g. the UK Labour government under Keir Starmer and – separately – the UK military should decide whether they are going to be further supportive and complicit in war crimes i.e. faced with this current situation of Trump threatening and it being explicitly recognised and recorded.
