“We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East. And we’re not fixing our roads in this country. How stupid is it? We’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.”

— President Trump, speaking in 2020.

Only one in four Americans approves of the U.S. strikes that killed Iran’s leader on Saturday, while about half — including one in four Republicans — believe President Trump is too willing to use military force, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Some 27% of respondents said they approved of the strikes, while 43% disapproved and 29% were not sure. 

G. Elliott Morris notes Trump has nowhere near the overwhelming support that former President George W. Bush enjoyed when he launched military action against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Playbook: “Both campaigns eventually became deeply toxic for Bush’s legacy.”

“For months, Israeli and American intelligence agencies — including the CIA — had been secretly watching Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for just the right moment,” CNN reports.

“They were monitoring for his daily patterns — where he lived, who he met with, how he communicated and where he might retreat under threat of attack… They were keeping tabs, too, on Iran’s senior political and military leaders, who rarely gathered in the same place with the ayatollah, the country’s supreme leader for nearly four decades.”

“Over the last several days, they found their opportunity. Top Iranian officials, including Khamenei, planned to meet Saturday morning at separate sites on a Tehran compound that is home to the offices of the ayatollah, the Iranian presidency and the national security apparatus.”

“The overly cautious supreme leader felt less vulnerable during daylight hours, an Israeli source said, and let down his guard.”

One day after launching strikes on Iran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and embroiled the region in war, President Trump told Michael Scherer this morning that the country’s new leadership wants to talk with him and that he plans to do so.

Said Trump: “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”

“One month before President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are set to convene at a much-touted summit in China, the U.S. leader’s toppling of another friend of China risks stoking tensions between the world’s biggest economies,” Bloomberg reports.

“After US and Israeli military strikes on Iran wiped out the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday called it ‘unacceptable to openly kill the leader of a sovereign country and institute regime change.’ Speaking by phone with his Russian counterpart, Wang warned that the US president risked driving the Middle East into the ‘abyss.'”

“Condemnation of Washington from China’s top diplomat stands out during a delicate period when officials on both sides are trying to steady relations before Trump arrives in Beijing on March 31. Complicating that task, the Republican has ousted two leaders with ties to Beijing in quick succession this year, after the US in January snatched Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro from his Caracas home.”

“When the U.S. military’s top general laid out the risks to President Trump of launching a major and extended attack on Iran, one of the issues he flagged was America’s stockpile of munitions,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Now that is being put to the test, as the U.S. races to destroy Iran’s missile and drone force before it runs out of interceptors to fend off Tehran’s retaliation.”

“The precise size of the U.S. stock of air-defense interceptors—what the Pentagon calls magazine depth—is classified. But repeated conflicts with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East have been eating into the supply of air defenses in the region.”

The Atlantic: “Killing the supreme leader was one thing. Ousting the regime will be another.”

“China criticized the US and Israeli military action against Iran, warning that it risks plunging the Middle East into deeper instability and undermining international law,” Bloomberg reports.

“Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on social media that Iran would hit the U.S. and Israel on Sunday with unprecedented force,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Said Larijani: “Yesterday, Iran fired missiles at the United States and Israel and they did hurt. Today, we will hit them with a force that they have never experienced before.”

President Trump responded: “They better not do that, however, because if they do, we will hit them with a force that has never been seen before.”