The morning’s top story on the New York Times’ web page reported, “Iran Escalates Retaliatory Strikes Around the Region.” Iran’s military strategy appears to be modeled after a cranky toddler who, after being told he can’t have a cookie, proceeds to throw the cookie jar at every single person in or near the house, including the dog, the cable guy, and his Omani neighbor who was just trying to return a tahini dish.

Iran’s largely unsupervised missile crews continued launching strikes at uninvolved neighboring countries yesterday, trying to crush American civilian targets like Amazon’s data centers and official ones like US embassies. It’s not so much a retaliatory campaign as a temper tantrum with ballistic missiles. Even the Little Rocket Man, Kim Jong Un, might call it excessive.

Yesterday, Business Insider reported, “How the US and Israel weakened and blinded Iran to take control of its skies in the opening hours.” Yesterday’s most militarily significant quote arrived courtesy of Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan “Raisin’” Caine, who said simply, “Local air superiority has been established over Iran.”

That’s a big development.

For comparison, four years into the Proxy War, Russia has yet to achieve air superiority over Ukraine. For example, Moscow’s non-stealth jets cannot safely fly over Kyiv. Air superiority means that the country enjoying it can strike targets anywhere it wants, whenever it wants, without significant fear of loss. So Iranian troops, missile crews, and military leaders are now all toads ‘neath the harrow.

On Day One, the U.S. sent B-2 stealth bombers— our $2 billion invisible ones. By Day Two, they’d switched to B-1 Lancers, which are older, non-stealth bombers that carry much more ordnance but need safe skies to operate. By yesterday afternoon, Israeli media reported its jets were flying directly over Tehran and dropping bombs on target.

They don’t send non-stealth bombers into contested airspace. They only send them when it’s safe.

Iran has plenty of ballistic missiles— they’ve been firing waves of them at Israel, U.S. bases across the Middle East, and its neighbors’ hotels. But every launch is a death sentence for the launcher. U.S. and Israeli surveillance assets —satellites, drones, AWACS— are watching every square mile of Iranian territory in real time. If a missile goes up, its origin coordinates go straight to the nearest fighter or bomber, and that launcher ceases to exist before the crew can reload.

It’s a losing trade every time. Iran fires a missile that may or may not get intercepted by Iron Dome or a U.S. destroyer’s Aegis system. In exchange, it permanently loses the launcher, the crew, and whatever else was parked nearby. The Iranians are spending down an inventory they can’t replace while the U.S. rotates fresh aircraft off carrier decks.

Satellite imagery already shows damage to a major missile base near Najafabad in Esfahan Province. (I did not make those names up.) Underground ballistic missile facilities have been hit by B-2 bombers carrying 2,000-pound bunker busters. The IDF says it’s specifically targeting Iranian leadership and ballistic missile launchers — a combination that means every launch order might be the last one the guy giving it ever issues.

Iran’s military is caught in a doom loop: hide and survive, or shoot and be destroyed.

? The anti-war narrative is back on the front burner! And it is reaching full, shrill steam. Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans —who for the last four years traded their US flags for Ukrainian ones and clapped like mental patients at snack time over funding Kiev’s conman with hundreds of billions— have suddenly turned on a dime and become studious anti-war philosophers.

Congressman Adam Schiff, who never met a weapons package for Ukraine he didn’t love, gravely warned about “the dangers of unilateral executive military action.” The New York Times editorial board —which ran “The Case for Arming Ukraine” at least four hundred times— published “The Risks of Escalation in Iran” before the first B-2 had even returned to base.

Suddenly, everyone on cable news can pronounce “Strait of Hormuz” and has strong opinions about the War Powers Act. These are the same people who couldn’t find Iran on a map last Tuesday but are now deeply concerned about “regional destabilization.” Please. The New York Times, this morning:

Afghanistan? Iraq? HOW ABOUT UKRAINE?? It’s funny, I don’t remember the Times describing Biden’s $175+ billion Ukraine adventure as “embracing military power.” That was called “defending democracy.” When Biden armed an endless, four-year proxy war against a nuclear superpower —a conflict that involved zero U.S. or NATO interests— they swooned over his cabbage-like statesmanship.

But when Trump uses the U.S. military directly —with air superiority established in 48 hours— suddenly, it’s reckless warmongering.

They spent four years cheering a proxy war against a nuclear superpower and snored louder than a bulldog after a big meal. Now they’ve suddenly discovered the horrors of military conflict and the “risks of escalation”— just in time for a Republican president to be the one in command.

In March, 2024, Democrats vowed, “We must stand firm against authoritarian regimes who threaten global security.” But in March, 2026, they now say, “This reckless military adventurism puts American lives at risk.” There are more quotes like this than I can count. I could do this all day.

And finally: welcome back the body count graphic, which suddenly reappeared on CNN’s chyron after a four-year hiatus. The network that never once ran a casualty ticker for Ukraine —where conservative estimates range past half a million dead— has re-discovered an urgent new interest in counting in single digits.

Spoiler alert: The body count isn’t about the bodies.

JEFF CHILDERS