By Matt Taibbi
Racket News
March 4, 2026
President Donald Trump and top surrogates of his 2024 campaign - people like JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard - said "America First" means sidestepping the quicksand of foreign intervention and stanching the flow of Americans' blood and money to faraway conflicts in which they have no obvious stake. Or did it actually signify a Great Power willing to exert influence for itself and its ally Israel by dispensing with all-but-imaginary international law and the pearl clutching of academics and middle powers about a rules-based international order?
Prescribing what to think about the U.S.-Israel mission would violate our own. But you should have all the facts.
Some may dispute the choice to begin this timeline in February 2025, rather than in 2024 when the Department of Justice revealed a plot by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to assassinate Trump; or in 2018, when the first Trump administration ripped up the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA); or in 490 BC, when the Persians battled the Athenians. But every timeline must have some discrete start date, and ours was chosen for simple practicality. Trump's announcement of the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei provides the other bookend. - Emily Kopp, Editor-In-Chief
MAXIMUM PRESSURE: February 5, 2025 - June 12, 2025
February 5, 2025
President Donald Trump signs a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) to put "maximum pressure on Iran" by imposing sanctions without exception and aiming to choke off its oil exports to zero. Iran's oil exports had reached $53 billion in 2023.
The U.S. articulated its terms, which reached beyond nuclear ambitions: "Iran should be denied a nuclear weapon and intercontinental ballistic missiles; Iran's terrorist network should be neutralized; and Iran's aggressive development of missiles, as well as other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities, should be countered."
March 2025
Israeli intelligence teams begin working to create an Iranian target bank based on "centers of gravity," including Iranian firepower, air superiority, nuclear developments, personnel buildup, economy, governance, and the military industry. The preparations were compartmentalized, and some top generals reportedly were unaware of it. IDF officials had previously accelerated plans for a campaign against the Islamic Republic in Oct. 2024.
March 26, 2025
Gabbard, newly confirmed as director of the U.S. intelligence community, briefs Congress on an annual threat assessment mostly informed by intelligence products authored by the Biden administration.
"The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003," she said, while adding that, "in the past year, we've seen an erosion of a decades long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran's decision-making apparatus."
"Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons," she said.
April 12, 2025 - May 11, 2025
Weakened by "maximum pressure" sanctions, Iran meets with the U.S. five times throughout the spring of 2025 for indirect negotiations led by U.S. Mideast Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and conducted through an Omani mediator. Iran, seeking relief from sanctions and to avoid attacks on its nuclear bases, broke with the country's usual policy of avoiding both direct conflict and diplomatic engagement.
June 12, 2025
A United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution put forward by the U.S. and European nations - passed with a vote of 19 for, three against and 11 abstentions - declares Iran non-compliant with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the first time in twenty years.
According to IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, Tehran had a stockpile of 400 kg of highly enriched uranium.
"Given the potential proliferation implications, the agency cannot ignore [this]," he said.
Iran reacts by announcing a new enrichment site.
It also accuses the IAEA of an "entirely political and biased" report in light of Israel's nuclear program.
Israel maintains strategic ambiguity about nuclear weapons but is widely assessed to possess them. It has never joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and thus has never been subject to IAEA rules.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to respond to this politically motivated resolution," the statement read. "Accordingly, the President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has issued necessary directives for launching a new enrichment facility in a secure location, and replacing first-generation centrifuges at the Martyr Ali Mohammadi (Fordo) enrichment center with advanced sixth-generation machines."
"The same countries remain silent on the Zionist regime's exclusion from the NPT and its development of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons," the statement continues. "Moreover, they have taken no action against the regime's threats to attack the peaceful nuclear facilities of NPT member states."
THE TWELVE DAY WAR: June 13, 2025 - June 24, 2025
June 13, 2025
Israel launches attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and other military sites, targeting military leaders and nuclear scientists. Tehran counter-attacks, striking Israeli targets with ballistic missiles. Strikes continue for the duration of the war.
"We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear-enrichment program," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "We struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear weaponization program. We targeted Iran's main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran's leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran's ballistic-missile program."
The IAEA was due to inspect a new enrichment facility at Isfahan on this date.
June 15, 2025
A sixth round of planned negotiations between Iran and the U.S. originally scheduled for this day are scuttled by the Israeli strikes. Energy targets, military infrastructure, and residential areas in Tehran are hit.
June 16, 2025
Trump writes on Truth Social: "Iran should have signed the 'deal' I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again ! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!"
The prospect of war in Iran rattles some in the MAGA base. Influential Republicans, including commentator Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, object to intervention in Iran.
June 17, 2025
Several new areas are added to the list of strike zones; 21 provinces have been affected thus far.
June 21, 2025
America strikes Iranian nuclear sites at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfaham. The strikes are dubbed "Operation Midnight Hammer," and combine airstrikes and submarine-launched missiles.
"Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated," Trump said following the strikes.
The administration doubles down on that assessment - pushing back on stories about a Defense Intelligence Agency after-action report that concluded the sites had not been destroyed - with several statements on the White House website under the headline: Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated - And Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.
Iran responded to the strikes by firing missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar, which were successfully intercepted after Iran gave the U.S. advanced notice of the attacks.
Notably, the U.S. deployed 100 to 250 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors during the conflict, representing some 20-50 percent of the Pentagon's total inventory and raising concerns about munitions inventory for future conflict.
June 22, 2025
"It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change?? ? MIGA!!!" Trump posts on Truth Social.
June 24, 2025
A ceasefire between Iran and Israel goes into effect, ending the Twelve-Day War, but not before President Trump accuses both countries of violating it in the early hours of the deal, with particular ire toward Israel.
"I'm not happy with Israel. You know, when when I say, 'Okay, now you have 12 hours,' you don't go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing," he said.