On Saturday Feb. 28, Americans woke up to the news of the U.S. and Israel’s attack on Iran. The move comes by way of Trump, as he said it is a massive operation to dismantle the country’s military while also destroying any possible threats of Iran creating a nuclear weapon.
Ultimately his goal is to completely eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, as he suggests that it poses a threat to the U.S. He also instructed the Iranian people to “take your government,” according to a statement from an 8-minute video on his Truth Social platform.
The airstrikes against Iran have resulted in the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei which also comes after weeks of multiple negotiations falling through over Iran’s nuclear program plans. Retailiatory strikes from Iran on U.S.-Israeli milirary bases and interests have occured. The 86-year-old Khamenei was in leadership since 1989, as the announcement of his death is actually being celebrated by some Iranians.
Trump released a full address on the evening of Feb. 28 explaining the reasoning behind his decision.
“A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.”
He continued—
“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries. Among the regime’s very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days. In 1983, Iran’s proxies carried out the marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel.”
He further explained that other attacks have occurred throughout the years from 2000 to Oct. 7, 2023, also stating that hundreds of American service members were killed in Iraq in the year of 2000. He further stated, “Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested.”
The full address can be found on PBS.org.
According to a statement from the local governor who spoke to Iranian state TV. The initial bombing killed 100 victims of Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Elementary School in Minab, Hormozgan province, consisting of young girls, teachers, and other staff members. Initial reports stated that 40 to 60+ girls were killed.
Iran responded back to the initial attacks from Feb. 28 that same day, releasing drones and missiles aimed at Israel and U.S. military bases in Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
As of March 4 at 1:40 PM PST, at least 1,097 people have been killed so far by way of the U.S.-Israel conflict in Iran, according to the U.S. -based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), in addition to more than 130 cities currently under attack. Also, at least 11 people have been killed in Israel and 31 people in Lebanon.
18 Americans have been injured, according to Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, who shared in a statement to PBS on Feb. 2.
Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Reza Najafi, spoke to reporters in an Al Jazeera interview and said that air strikes put forth by U.S.-Israeli forces targeted Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site on March 1.
“Their justification that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons is simply a big lie,” said an anonymous commenter to Al Jazeera News.
Other international news agencies have reported that the Tehran Emergency Services building and other prominent buildings such as hotels have suffered greatly under missile attacks on March 2. A spokesperson from the emergency services building spoke to the Tasmin news agency and shared the following: “Several emergency workers were injured in this incident, but most of them are in good condition.”
A week prior, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address that was televised nationally that Khamenei had died despite multiple reports, even in the U.S., offering conflicting news about if Ayatollah Khamenei had truly died. Iranian state media reports officially confirmed the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on March 1.
Trump has said that the war, which he initially said would last for a few days, will now last for up to 8 weeks.
Iranian state-run media and officials have provided varying, high death tolls for this specific event, and at the time of this report, the death toll will possibly change.
How History plays a part in Trump’s War: Historical Context
If you ask the average Baby Boomer about the relationship between the United States and Iran, they will likely point to 1979, the year blindfolded Americans were paraded before cameras in Tehran.
If you ask an Iranian, many will say the story begins in 1953, the year their democracy was quietly dismantled.
If you ask an African American from the nation about the 1979 hostage crisis, he might tell you:
“They did take hostages; however, they freed the Blacks, and they refused to leave and remained captive with the other hostages for 444 days. They knew the Blacks did not steal their oil; they were also oppressed by the oppressor.”
— Brother Eugene Shabazz
Three communities. Three memories. One conflict. To understand it fully, you must travel back, not just decades, but millions of years.
The Oil Beneath the Sand
Fifty to 250 million years ago, much of today’s Middle East lay beneath the ancient Tethys Ocean. It was a warm, shallow sea dense with microscopic life, the most important, algae and plankton. Over time, tectonic shifts buried these organisms beneath sediment. Pressure and heat transformed them into hydrocarbons, the stuff that runs combustible engines.
What nature compressed over geological time would later ignite global competition.
In 1908, British prospectors struck oil in Persia. The discovery led to the formation of British Petroleum, and petroleum quickly became the lifeblood of the British Navy. Oil was no longer just a resource; it was power in liquid form. The stuff that built the British Empire OPEC founder Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo would later call it “the devil’s excrement.” It fueled modern civilization, yet it also financed coups, invasions, and revolutions.
During World War II, Allied forces, excluding the Soviets, occupied Iran to secure supply lines and protect oil fields from Nazi Germany. Iran’s geography made it a corridor of empire. Its oil made it indispensable.
1953 The Wound
After World War II, the globe hardened into Cold War lines. The United States and the Soviet Union competed for influence across the developing world.
Iran was a constitutional monarchy, ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi but governed in part by an elected parliament and a prime minister. In 1951, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry. For decades, foreign corporations had reaped enormous profits while ordinary Iranians remained poor. Mossadegh sought sovereignty and economic wealth with political control that would improve the life of his countrymen.
Britain saw nationalization as theft. Washington saw instability — and the potential shadow of Soviet influence.
Together, the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI6 orchestrated Operation Ajax in
1953, removing Mossadegh and restoring the Shah’s authority.
To Americans at the time, it was a typical Cold War strategy.
To many Iranians, it was a stolen democracy.
The Shah ruled for the next quarter-century with increasing repression, backed by U.S. military and intelligence support. Modernization enriched elites but widened inequality. Political dissent was crushed.
The memory of 1953 never faded.
1979 The Explosion
By the late 1970s, mass protests engulfed Iran. Clerics, students, workers, and merchants united against corruption, Western influence, and the Shah’s brutality. The revolution forced him into exile and brought Ruhollah Khomeini to power.
Then came the spark. When the ailing Shah was admitted into the United States for medical treatment, many Iranians saw confirmation that Washington still shielded the man they blamed for decades of repression. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. What they expected to be a brief protest became a 444-day crisis. Fifty-two American hostages were held captive. The ordeal dominated the presidency of Jimmy Carter and ended only on January 20, 1981. A secret agreement planned by Republicans and Iranians released the hostages the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.
Iran agreed to this due to hyped up fear of Regan being a “Bad-ass war monger.”
For Americans, 1979 was humiliation. For many Iranians, it was reckoning.
A Black American Perspective
Within African American political thought, especially among Black nationalist circles, the narrative carried yet another layer. Some saw parallels between Iranian resistance to Western oil dominance and Black resistance to racial and economic oppression in the United States.
Brother Eugene Shabazz’s statement reflects that lens. In his view, oil theft and racial exploitation were part of the same global hierarchy, a system where powerful nations extracted wealth abroad while maintaining inequality at home.
This perspective does not erase the trauma of the hostages. But it reframes the conflict in terms of power, sovereignty, and historical grievance.
Memory as Foreign Policy
Oil synthesized by nature in the ancient Tethys Ocean became more than fuel. It became a strategy. It became leverage. It became a justification to replace a foreign leader.
In American memory, the crisis began in 1979 with blindfolds and burning flags. In Iranian memory, it began in 1953 with a toppled prime minister.
In parts of Black America, it is interpreted through the long history of colonialism and racial subjugation.
In parts of Southern Iran that are currently being bombed by Israel and the United States, there are scared Afro-Iranians; they live near military bases and are considered poverty-stricken neighborhoods. They also work in those areas as military base domestics, cargo ship sailors, boat builders, pearl divers, date plantation field hands, and dockworkers.
The same events but different starting points. And as long as nations begin the story at different chapters, reconciliation remains difficult, and the poor continue to suffer.
Editor’s note: News sources for this report include PBS.org, Al Jazeera News, Associated Press and BBC. Please be aware that multiple news outlets, both mainstream U.S. Domestic and international media have had conflicting information in their reporting. Multiple updates have occured and Our Weekly has attempted to properly attribute all sources for integrity and transparency to our readers. If any of the information is factually incorrect please contact kstarks@ourweekly.com.