Reuters reports that Pentagon officials told congressional staff in a closed-door briefing on March 1 that there was no intelligence indicating Iran had planned to strike U.S. forces first. The admission, made in more than 90 minutes of classified discussion with staff from House and Senate security committees, appears to undercut a central justification offered by senior U.S. officials for the recent strikes: that action was needed to pre-empt imminent Iranian attacks.
Officials who spoke at the briefing nonetheless stressed that Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and its network of regional proxies pose an immediate threat to U.S. interests across the Middle East. But the key distinction made by the Pentagon — that there was no clear intelligence pointing to an intended first strike by Tehran — narrows the legal and political space for arguing the operation was a necessary act of self-defence.
The Chinese source article also recounts recent battlefield developments: it says U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran on February 28 and reports the extraordinary claim that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed. That assertion has not been corroborated by major independent international outlets and, if accurate, would represent a seismic escalation; the credibility and verification of such a claim therefore remain central to assessing the broader picture.
Domestically in Washington, doubts about the strikes’ justification are mounting. Democratic lawmakers have called the operation a selectively chosen war and questioned why diplomatic avenues — including mediation efforts reportedly led by Oman — were not pursued more vigorously. Public polling cited in the article (an Ipsos survey) found 43% of Americans opposed the strikes, 29% undecided, and only 27% in favour, while the Pentagon has disclosed initial U.S. casualties from the clashes.
Regionally the confrontation shows no sign of abating. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said it launched multiple counterattacks against U.S. and Israeli targets, striking some 27 bases across the Middle East and firing missiles at the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. Tehran’s foreign minister framed Iran’s posture as defensive and denied any intent to attack neighbouring states, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of further escalation and President Trump said the U.S. operations were progressing "ahead of schedule."