Tehran is burning - by day, by night, in the rain - Political earthquake in Washington: resignation of the highest-ranking counterterrorism official in protest

Vincent Cassard, head of the Red Cross delegation in Iran, said it without hesitation: the loss of human life is alarming. Daily life in Tehran is deeply disrupted. Schools damaged. Hospitals hit. Facilities of the Iranian Red Crescent destroyed. This is the reality of a city that has been under fire for weeks. The Red Cross speaks of a heavy price being paid by the civilian population.

At the same time, Israel is systematically dismantling the leadership level of the Iranian state. During the night into Tuesday, Ali Larijani was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Tehran - head of the Supreme National Security Council and, after the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, widely regarded as the de facto head of the country. He was the man who was still holding the state together. Now he is gone as well. Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the killing and stated that Larijani had joined Khamenei "in the depths of hell." Iranian state media remained silent at first - then announced a statement from Larijani’s office. That same night, Israel also killed General Gholam Reza Soleimani, commander of the Basij militias, the paramilitary volunteer force of the Revolutionary Guards that functions as a control power within the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left no doubt about what lies behind this strategy. With the words that the goal was to weaken the regime in order to give the Iranian people the chance to overthrow it themselves, he described it openly: "We are undermining this regime to give the Iranian people the opportunity to remove it. It will not be quick or easy, but if we persist, they will have the chance to take their fate into their own hands." A war presented as an offer of liberation - while the bombs fall.

Whether the Iranian people understand this offer that way is another question. As early as this evening, Iran is expected to celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri, the ancient fire festival on the night before the last Wednesday before Nowruz - the Persian New Year. The authorities know what gatherings of people can mean. Around the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, heavily armed security forces have already been positioned, including truck-mounted machine guns. Hardliners organized counter-demonstrations in squares across the country - officially directed against Israel and its allies, but in reality also intended to drown out possible protests against their own regime tonight. The Iranian state is sending an unmistakable message to its own population today: "Anyone who goes out into the streets tonight during the fire festival and shouts the wrong thing should know what level of brutality awaits them."

A particularly high presence of regime forces is expected this evening, a large part of them in civilian clothing.

Iran, meanwhile, continues to strike back. At midday on Tuesday, rocket alarms sounded in Dubai and Jerusalem. The Israeli military reported an Iranian missile launch toward its territory, sirens wailed in Jerusalem. The war is expanding - hour by hour.

The resignation of Joe Kent

In Washington, the first personnel consequences are now emerging. Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned on Tuesday. He left his reasoning on social media, brief and without hesitation: Iran had not posed an immediate threat to the United States. It was clear that this war had been initiated under pressure from Israel and its influential American lobby. He could not support it in good conscience.

The director of the National Counterterrorism Center announces his immediate resignation and justifies it by stating that he cannot reconcile the war against Iran with his conscience. He makes it clear that Iran did not pose an immediate threat to the United States and claims that the war was triggered by political pressure from Israel and its network of influence in the United States.

Particularly explosive is his statement that within the U.S. government and media, a disinformation campaign was deliberately built to create the impression of an acute threat from Iran and to prepare the population for war. He speaks of a deception of the president and warns that this is the same mechanism that has led into previous costly wars.

As a veteran with multiple deployments, he explicitly rejects sending more soldiers into a war that offers no benefit to the American population but costs human lives. He indirectly calls on the president to change course and describes the current situation as a decisive turning point for the country.

Key points:

• Resignation for reasons of conscience
• Iran did not pose an acute threat
• War was politically influenced and deliberately brought about
• Accusation of targeted disinformation
• Warning of repeating past misjudgments
• Clear rejection of further military escalation

Kent is not an outsider. He was confirmed in July of last year by a vote of 52 to 44 - a man from Trump’s own camp, with eleven overseas deployments as a Green Beret and subsequent work for the CIA. Someone Republicans publicly trusted. Senator Tom Cotton had described him as someone who had devoted his life to the fight against terrorism. And now this very man resigns and says the war is not justified.

That hits. Because this is not the first crack in the official justification for the war - it is the loudest so far. Trump has changed the reasons for the attacks multiple times since February 28. At times it was the nuclear threat, at times support for terrorism, at times destabilization of the region. There was never a clear, consistent line. And the longer the war continues, the more reporting suggests that the actual driving force was not in Washington, but in Tel Aviv. House Speaker Mike Johnson indirectly acknowledged earlier this month that the White House assumed Israel would act regardless - which put Trump in a position he could hardly escape without following along. In other words: the United States followed Israel into a war it had not initiated itself, and then presented it as its own strategic decision.

Kent’s past is not without contradictions - connections to far-right groups, doubts about Biden’s election victory, silence regarding the events of January 6. Democrats had presented all of this during his confirmation hearing. But that does not change what his resignation means. If someone with this profile, from this political environment, with this level of access to intelligence information publicly states that the reasons for the war are not true - then that is not a political attack from the outside. It is an admission from within. And it raises a question that grows louder the longer this war continues: who led whom into this war - and on what basis?

The rockets keep flying

And while rockets are flying and governments are breaking apart, women and men in a kitchen in the Beirut suburb of Bsalim are preparing 25,000 meals a day. World Central Kitchen, the aid organization of celebrity chef José Andrés, operates ten kitchens in different parts of Lebanon. Since March 2, when the new Israel-Hezbollah war began, more than one million people have been displaced - around 20 percent of Lebanon’s population. It is Ramadan. The organization delivers Iftar meals, the breaking of the fast after sunset, to people in schools and emergency shelters. Aline Kamakian, a member of World Central Kitchen, said: "We are not only giving food. We are giving people hope and a smile."

This war has long opened a second front - a silent one that causes no impacts but affects just as many people. The United Nations World Food Programme warned in Geneva that 45 million additional people could fall into acute hunger if the conflict continues until June. Today, 319 million people are already acutely hungry. Carl Skau, deputy director of the WFP, spoke of a possible catastrophe: this would push global hunger levels to an all-time high. The WFP’s supply chains are under as much pressure as they have been since the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine war in 2022. Rising food and fuel prices are hitting families in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia particularly hard, where there is hardly any room to absorb the impact.

And at midday on Tuesday, it continued: the Israeli military declared that it was attacking Tehran again. Day and night, without pause. Tehran no longer sleeps through the night. During the night, while a thunderstorm passed over Tehran and rain fell on the city, the impacts could also be heard. The leadership of the country is being dismantled layer by layer. In Washington, someone resigns because he believes the war is wrong. In Beirut, someone breaks their fast with a meal from strangers. Everything is connected - even if it does not feel that way.