Sen. Tom Cotton says U.S., allies looking at "weeks, not days, of joint efforts" in Iran

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CBS News

February 28, 2026 / 4:03 PM EST


Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Saturday that he believes that there could be "weeks, not days, of joint efforts" by the U.S. and its allies in Iran after the massive military mission launched overnight.

"We're probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning," Cotton told CBS News' Major Garrett. "But the upshot of it will be, after 47 years of waging war against the United States and the civilized world, the ayatollahs are finally going to face justice."

The U.S. and Israel announced a major military attack called "Operation Epic Fury" against Iran early Saturday. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is presumed dead after the mission, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

Saturday's strikes came after President Trump threatened the Iranian regime for weeks to make a new deal to rein in its nuclear program, and before that, threatened it over its violent crackdown on protesters in January.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-us-israel-attack-tom-cotton-senate/

[generalbetrayus]

1. Someone earlier today called it Operation Epstein Fury".

We should all call it that.

[Whip-poor-will]

2. Same shit

Same shit different war during VIETNAM the military madmen ,still spoiling our country, said the same shit..
We've done allot of killing in my lifetime like WE have the answer to anything and everything..

[pat_k]

3. Correction: "by the U.S. and its ally in Iran"

There is no "coalition of the willing" on this one.

This is the trump-netanyahu show,

So. it should be:

Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Saturday that he believes that there could be "weeks, not days, of joint efforts" by the U.S. and its allies ally in Iran after the massive military mission launched overnight.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. They might be "willing" if 45 removes ALL tariffs off their products!

[OGBuzz]

13. Two unpopular leaders in dire need of war in order to...

stay in power and out of prison. I'm having serious doubts about the midterms.

[pat_k]

36. It's up to us to defend against the onslaught.

The Felon's "whatever it takes" path forward. We MUST defend against this!!
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221057403

[hamsterjill]

24. Your post is exactly what I was thinking when I read the OP

The only "ally" we have right now is Israel, and the reality is that WE are THEIR ally. Benny is calling the shots because Trump is to damn stupid and disengaged to be doing it.

[pat_k]

35. Saudi may not be participating as an ally, but this is their wet dream too. Showered trumps with billions to get it.

[AloeVera]

47. MBS was pressuring Trump for weeks.

Oddly enough. I mean it's not like he owns a piece of Trump or something - like Netanyahu and Israel.

[pat_k]

48. The magnitude of the corruption, which goes back decades, has grown to epic proportions.

It's beyond mind-boggling.

I wish our electeds would bang the drum on the ACTUAL corruption with the relentless vigor the right-wing nuts muster for utterly bullshit "scandals." Yes, they bring it up. But somehow our side has not learned the lesson of repetition. A few statements doesn't cut it. They need to learn to say the same set of things over, and over, and over, and over again until they are sick of hearing themselves say them. And then they need keep saying them. Only then does the "message" have a shot at penetrating.

As they make their statements denouncing the strikes, it is not enough to condemn the violation of the constitution and international law, they need to connect the act to the magnitude of Trump's corrupt bargains with the Saudi crown. They need to bring up the magnitude of the corrupt bargains Trump has entered under the "board of peace" umbrella.

Even before Dar Global, with its deep links to MBS and the Saudi state, started funneling tens of millions in licensing fees to Trump in 2021, even before they partnered with trump org on multiple projects worth billions, even before the Saudi/MBS-led Public Investment Fund shoveled 2 billion into Kushner's Affinity Partners, MBS owned Trump.

As William Rivers Pitt (may he rest in peace) reported in 2019

In 2001, he sold the entire 45th floor of Trump Tower to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $4.5 million. The fact that Trump is the 45th president serves as further proof that the universe has a gruesome sense of humor.
...

“They buy apartments from me,” Trump said at a rally in Alabama in 2015. “They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” Trump has ample reason to “like them very much”:
...

Now, after the recent attack against a significant portion of Saudi Arabia’s petroleum infrastructure, the commander in chief of the United States armed forces appears to have verbally ceded decision-making power over to the 45th floor tenants of Trump Tower.

“There is reason to believe that we know the culprit,” Trump tweeted on Saturday, “are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!”

“Waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!” Every member of the vast, wildly expensive U.S. intelligence-gathering apparatus can take an early lunch, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff can stay in bed, because the president says Saudi Arabia will tell him who launched the attack, and when it will be time to go to war (against Iran).
...

[AloeVera]

49. Great post.

Some of this I didn't know.

Sadly our great truth-tellers like Pitt are dying off and our journalists these days are not worthy of the name. Or they'd be out of a job.

Dems would do well to take your advice. They need to be ruthless but righteous. Why are they NOT filled wirh righteous anger and outrage as WE are?? That kind of fire in the belly is hard to fake, voters can tell. FFS the world is burning, we are trapped in a corrupt dystopia and innocent people are dying - have they not figured it out? It's out-in-the-open corruption now, not like they have to hire investigators and do oppo to find it.

When they finally do - I don't want to say IF - keep hammering away at the corruption as you say. I'm afraid many voters don't care about international law and such "abstractions" but most will viscerally loathe corruption. Not MAGA, they don't care - but sane people.

[pat_k]

51. I re-worked a bit and put up as an OP.

Here's that version.

I think that a hell of a lot of our electeds are as filled with outrage as we are. And many of them are doing a good job of speaking out.

The problem as I see it is that too few are skilled at formulating a set of simple, powerful messages, and then hammering those messages relentlessly. It is as if they believe a few speeches or or statements condemning the corruption and lawlessness is sufficient. It seems to me some are worried about being repetitious, so they try to change things to "keep it interesting." To often, they have their talking points on topic and fail to connect EVERYTHING back to scandalous acts of lawlessness and corruption.

And then there are the parts of the Democratic "family" that are stuck in Politics as Usual mode, and somehow still believe that keeping the focus narrow, on "kitchen table" issues like "affordability" or "healthcare" is the path to winning elections. It is a belief that is insane when we are faced with the unprecedented and the systematic destruction of executive agencies. rendering them incapable of carrying out our will as codified in our body of law, and the systematic attempts to corrupt our elections, and thereby render them incapable of measuring our will in the first place.

I was encouraged with Abagail Spanberger's response to the SOTU. While she started with a focus on affordability and healthcare, she also addressed the horrors of the ICE reign of terror and the scale of corruption. It was a short speech, but she wove in inspiring messages of faith in people-power to fight back. She took ownership patriotism on behalf of those who are standing against the immoral actions. She invoked Geo Washington's warning in his farewell speech about "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" rising to power, as well as his call to "unite in a common cause" to move this nation forward. I think it was a decent blueprint for how to take on the corruption and lawlessness in simple terms.

https://www.youtube.com/live/kpflgbk_Y_U

[LiberalArkie]

5. Allies? Israel and and Trump..Not a very big coalition force.

[johnnyfins]

6. Was Tom Cottonhead

Smiling and salivating when he said it?

[Wiz Imp]

7. What allies?

Semes to me there is one and only one ally in Israel.

[Gore1FL]

26. I came to make this same observation. you beat me to it. nt

[Historic NY]

8. Hey Cotton which Allies?

Trump went in with Israel....ALONE. Now Iran is popping missiles out all over the place. Just MSB said Saudi would defend itself doesn't mean its so. Operation Epic fury is going to end up as Operation Epic Fuckup.

[JustAnotherGen]

9. What allies?

Also - we'll be there a decade

[tanyev]

10. Like Russia thought its seizure of Ukraine would only take a few days?

😒

[debsy]

11. Decades, not weeks, you ignorant fool!

We’ve been here before, at great expense to common citizens - from those in the foreign countries being attacked by our government who pay with their physical lives to our own citizens who fund these excursions and who provide the cannon fodder to “fight for liberty”. In fact, the only people who benefit from war are the wealthy majority stock holders in the military industrial complex, a real thing that we have been warned about repeatedly.

[Scalded Nun]

12. Another treasonous piece of shit heard from

[Zorro]

15. Here's a Tom Cotton refresher

In a new low for bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy, 47 Republican senators have issued an “open letter” addressed to the Iranian leadership that is intended to sabotage prospects for a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran by cultivating doubt about the credibility and reliability of the American president. Although the letter has drawn wide reproach as a partisan tactic and a dangerous precedent, it might just accomplish what it was intended to do — reinforce the paranoia of the Iranian regime and scuttle long-awaited progress toward a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear impasse.

The letter asserts the primacy of Congress — and, by extension, the Republicans — in determining the longevity of any nuclear agreement between Iran, the United States, and the five other world powers involved in the negotiations. “Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the letter stresses, adding that “(t)he next president could invoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of an agreement at any time.” Just in case the message wasn’t clear, the letter emphasized that Obama would be out of office in a matter of months while “many of us [the 47 signatories] will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades.”

The letter was organized by freshman senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), a rising GOP star who only weeks ago sneered that Obama’s own letters to Iranian leaders reminded him of “a lovestruck teenager.”

The release of the letter provoked sharp criticism from the administration and well beyond. Obama accused the Republicans of aligning themselves with Iranian hard-liners against diplomacy and in favor of war; Vice President Joe Biden described the letter as “beneath the dignity of an institution I revere” and “highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments-a message that is as false as it is dangerous.”

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/letters-to-the-ayatollah-the-sequel-the-republican-letter-to-irans-leaders-reflects-strategy-as-well-as-spite/

[PatSeg]

14. "Operation Epic Fury"???

Seriously? Who comes up with these names?

[paleotn]

19. Children and grandchildren of the guys who came up with Operation ORTSAC

The 1962 option to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crises. Yes, ORTSAC is Castro spelled backwards. The Kennedy administration doubted the Pentagon's sanity then too.

[PatSeg]

30. Seriously? I didn't know that

"Operation Epic Fury" sounds like something out of a comic book. Probably indicates the intelligence of the people behind this insanity.

Maybe they should have called it "Operation Epic Insanity".

[republianmushroom]

34. Whiskey Pete probably came up with this one, late at night.

[PatSeg]

38. Ha, ha, sounds about right

[pat_k]

37. SNL cold open nailed it: Great for Hegseth knuckle tats

[PatSeg]

39. Ah, that would explain it!

[Baitball Blogger]

16. Allies?

Aside from Russia and Israel, does Trump have any?

And Russia is questionable since Trump is attacking Iran.

[paleotn]

18. Iran is Russia's drone factory. The Kremlin isn't happy about this.

[PatSeg]

31. Oops, sounds like Trump pissed off

his surrogate daddy.

[paleotn]

17. Define "massive"

You cannot topple the Iranian regime externally simply with air strikes. You can't. The country is too big, too spread out, and they've been planning for this since Jimmy Carter. You're simply going to rally the masses in SUPPORT of the regime, not against it. Bombing by a foreign power who's not particularly liked tends to do that. While some of the Iranian masses aren't happy with the regime, it's not like they view us, or freaking Israel!, as saviors. That's naive in the extreme.

You can only do external regime change with boots on the ground. Massive numbers of US troops invading a country the size of freaking Alaska. Period. EOM. Invading Iran will make the 2003 Gulf War look like a weekend exercise in scale AND cost (read treasure and blood). Without that "no go" option, this will end in failure. And Iran will keep on keeping on.

Bad as it is, there are millions of Iranians who tied economically and philosophically to the regime. It's Iraq on steroids in that respect. Will internal decent be enough to topple the regime? Maybe. But so far, that same internal decent hasn't toppled Vladimir Putin's Russia. And Iran has been under strict sanctions since Carter and Reagan, not since the early twenty teens like Russia.

This is a fools errand. At best it will not accomplish anything but creating rubble. Worse case is something I'd rather not think about.

[Zorro]

50. Coming soon

The Battle of Bandar Abbas.

[Grins]

20. "...after 47 years of waging war against the United States..."

Did I miss something? Where, when, and how?

[republianmushroom]

33. I have the same question.

[ChazInAz]

21. Weeks?

Years.

[DFW]

22. "Maybe six days, maybe six weeks, certainly not six months." Does that sound familiar?

It was said by Donald Rumsfeld right after the start of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He was slightly off in his prediction. Anyone want to bet that Cotton is more than slightly off now?

Iran has 90 million people and is almost as big as Alaska. Trump had better follow the advice of Richard Crenna's character in the first Rambo movie:

Iran DOES have one thing that would have been a huge advantage for us: a huge, massive dissident movement that hates the Ayatollahs. In fact, just about the only thing that would make them go back to supporting them would be if there were to be a massive attack on Iran from the outside.

Oops.

[Martin68]

23. The name given to the operation perfectly reveals the mindset of those who launched this was. Just a big video game.

[hibbing]

25. Is that in Friedman units? n/t

[greatauntoftriplets]

27. Baby Bush said that about Iraq and Afghanistan.

I didn't believe it then either.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

28. Tom Cotton is a lying bullshit artist.

eom

[appleannie1]

29. If Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, Korea, etc. are anything to go by, make that years.

And thousands killed, even more disfigured from severe injuries, all so Grump can play soldiers. These are human live he is playing with, not plastic toys.

[colorado_ufo]

40. If they say weeks, they mean months.

If they say months, they mean years.

If they say years, they mean canceled elections and a third Trump term. Or fourth - wasn't his father 92 when he died of Alzheimers?

[Pas-de-Calais]

41. Allies?

Besides Israel
Please tell me who

[modrepub]

42. I Guess The Term "Allies"

Include folks who just shut up and let the US do whatever the hell we want.

Guess we need another term for countries who are actively participating and risking hardware and personnel in our military operations.

[mdbl]

43. I was wondering who these so-called "allies" are.

The Dump Administration has denounced most of what we had. Anyway, if Tom Cotton said it, it's probably BS.

[Figarosmom]

44. Allies?

You mean Israel and trumps business partners?

[Evolve Dammit]

45. Cotten head is a supreme ahole. Chairman ...

[usaf-vet]

46. When does Barron Trump head to a US military boot camp? Bone spurs are not hereditary