The Four Horsemen and the G6+1: Trump’s Strike on Iran Unleashes Global Fallout

As Trump launches unauthorized war, MAGA fractures, global alliances shift, and the planet records every step of our descent.

Good morning! Last night, the United States crossed yet another line. Acting unilaterally, with no congressional authorization, no formal declaration of war, and no meaningful consultation with allies, Donald Trump ordered B-2 bombers and submarine-launched cruise missiles to strike Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Twelve 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs rained down on the mountain facilities; Tomahawks followed. The strikes were announced by Trump himself on Truth Social only after American planes safely cleared Iranian airspace.

Then, in a moment staged for maximum authoritarian theater, Trump delivered a formal address from the White House, flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a tableau that might as well have been titled “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” He thanked Netanyahu before his own generals, declared the Iranian facilities “obliterated,” and warned Tehran that if they fail to make peace, future strikes will be “far greater and a lot easier.” At no point did he offer evidence of an imminent threat to the United States. The War Powers threshold remains unmet.

The immediate response was predictable, yet no less dangerous. Iran’s foreign minister declared the strikes a grave violation of the UN Charter, international law, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Tehran now claims full legal justification for retaliatory action “at a time and place of its choosing.” State television is already threatening American civilians and military assets worldwide. U.S. military briefings acknowledge that Iranian proxies and foreign terrorist cells may target American facilities and civilians abroad and at home. Oil tankers are scrambling to exit the Strait of Hormuz amid fears of closure.

Iran, however, had seen this coming. In the days leading up to the attack, it quietly moved sensitive nuclear material out of harm’s way, minimizing the immediate radiological risk. Early assessments from Tehran suggest that the bombings may have inflicted surface damage but failed to significantly degrade deeply fortified enrichment capabilities, especially at Fordow, buried nearly 80 meters underground. What Trump is now selling as a decisive victory may prove to be largely cosmetic.

Then came the development Trump and his dwindling cadre of serious national security advisors feared: Russia signaled that it may move to support Iran directly. If Putin operationalizes this, even modestly, Trump will have transformed what he framed as a limited symbolic strike into a dangerous multi-front confrontation with both Moscow and Tehran aligned against Washington.

Inside the United States, political fallout is immediate. Senator Chris Murphy called the strikes unconstitutional, reckless, and a gift to the permanent war industry. Senator Bernie Sanders called it a gross violation of the Constitution. Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Tim Kaine renewed demands for an immediate War Powers vote. AOC went further, calling for impeachment. Even libertarian Republican Thomas Massie declared flatly: “This is not constitutional.”

What little unity Trump enjoyed inside MAGA is fracturing again. JD Vance reportedly opposed the strike in pre-bombing White House deliberations, yet stood behind Trump during the speech, now fully tethered to this decision. Steve Bannon’s nationalist faction is openly furious. Right-wing influencers who once worshipped Trump are now declaring they will vote Democrat in the midterms to signal disgust at his betrayal of his non-interventionist promises. On the live streams of Trump’s base, comments flooded in: “Why are we fighting for Israel?” and “Trump should have listened to Bannon.” The isolationist right and antiwar left are beginning to overlap in their fury.

Meanwhile, Fox News, fully embracing its role as state propaganda organ, declared that Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for launching the strikes. Sigh…

Internationally, the G7 summit, already tense after Trump’s disruptive antics, is now in open diplomatic crisis. European leaders are livid. They were neither informed nor consulted. Macron, Scholz, Carney, and Kishida are coordinating responses behind the scenes. For years, diplomats have quietly feared this moment: the day America’s internal authoritarian crisis would break containment and explode onto the global stage. Trump just handed Russia and China a perfect wedge.

And so, as war clouds gather, an unspoken shift has begun: the G7 is now, in reality, a G6+1. The six democratic nations, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan, and Italy, are struggling to hold together a framework of international law, climate cooperation, and economic stability, while the United States, under Trump 2.0, lurches into rogue-state behavior. Formal expulsion won’t come. Irrelevance will accumulate. The G6 will move forward; Washington will find itself more isolated, more unstable, more dangerous.

And while bombs fall and alliances fray, the planet itself records our accelerating collapse. Scientists from Oregon State University published their 50,000-year Antarctic ice core study. Tiny bubbles trapped in ancient ice reveal that while natural CO2 levels have risen periodically throughout prehistory, today’s human-driven emissions are surging at ten times the fastest rate previously recorded. The very oceanic systems that once absorbed our excess carbon are beginning to fail under shifting winds and rising temperatures.

Strongmen come and go, authoritarian regimes eventually fall, but the atmosphere remembers.

History will record many things about this weekend. One of them may be that this was the day the G7 quietly became G6+1.