When Donald Trump posted a brief video early on Saturday about the war he had just started with Iran, he neglected to mention the predictable consequences.

Like a plunging stock market. Or spiking oil prices worldwide and gasoline prices at home. Or tens of thousands of American citizens stranded in the Middle East. Or Iran striking out at its neighbours and whipping up a metastasising regional war.

Not four days later, all of these have come to pass, which is likely to make Trump’s massive attack on Iran at the behest of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu even less popular among Americans than it already is.

“It’s not clear to me what Trump’s main objective is, or how long it will last before something else takes its place,” said John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first term and a decades-long proponent of taking a hard line against Iran.

“There’s a compelling case for regime change in Iran, but he hasn’t made it yet.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Tuesday closed 1,000 points lower than it was on Friday afternoon, hours before Trump’s attack began. Oil prices are up 13% since Friday, and gasoline prices jumped 11 cents overnight and now average $3.11 nationally.

In his first question-and-answer session with the press since starting the war — apart from brief phone interviews with selected reporters — Trump defended his decision to attack Iran and minimised the chaos it has already generated.

He even contradicted the explanation by his own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, that the US had to act because Israel was about to attack Iran on its own, which would have dragged the United States into the conflict regardless.

Trump said he decided that Iran, not Israel, was about to strike first — an assertion contradicted by his own intelligence community.

“It was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that,” Trump said in an Oval Office photo opportunity with visiting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Trump, who had been planning the attack on Iran for months and had deployed two entire carrier strike groups to the area, claimed that his decision had come too rapidly to permit the timely evacuation of American citizens from the region.

“Because it happened all very quickly. We thought, and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco ― but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel, they were getting ready to attack others, you’re seeing that right now,” he said, before going off on a rambling, 800-word tangent about high-end ammunition and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how it would never have happened if he been president and some insults of his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Asked about the petroleum price increases, Trump said those would go away when the war was over. “So, if we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe, lower than even before,” he said.

Trump’s claim of it all happening so quickly will likely provide little comfort to Americans, both expats and visitors, stuck in the region.

While the State Department urged US citizens in a list of 14 countries and the Palestinian territories to leave at once, the US embassy in Israel told Americans hoping to do precisely that that because the main airport was closed, they should take a bus to Egypt, and try to find a flight from there.

“If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the US government cannot guarantee your safety,” the advisory stated.

Trump later in the afternoon announced in a social media post that the US government would assume the financial liability risk of all shipping, regardless of nationality, in the Persian Gulf, including the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point at the southeastern end that Iran is trying to close off.

“Effective IMMEDIATELY, I have ordered the United States Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide, at a very reasonable price, political risk insurance and guarantees for the Financial Security of ALL Maritime Trade, especially Energy, traveling through the Gulf. This will be available to all Shipping Lines. If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible,” Trump wrote. “No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD. The United States’ ECONOMIC and MILITARY MIGHT is the GREATEST ON EARTH — More actions to come. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

In his meeting with Merz, Trump also acknowledged the lack of a plan for after Iran’s Islamic regime loses control of the country.

He told reporters in previous days that his “template” had been his assault on Venezuela early in January, when US special forces troops were able to find and abduct that country’s dictator, with his second-in-command taking over after agreeing to Trump’s demands for a cut of Venezuela’s oil revenue.

That model, Trump agreed, seemed implausible in Iran, where the bombing campaign has killed lower-echelon leaders whom Trump had hoped to install to run the country.

“Most of the people we had in mind are dead. So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is dead, and now we have another group. They may be dead also based on reports. So, I guess you have a third wave coming and pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody,” he said.

While Trump told the New York Post on Monday that he was not ruling out deploying American troops in Iran, he was also trying to persuade armed Kurdish groups in Iraq to seize control of Iran, effectively serving as his proxy army, according to another report.

When asked about that possibility, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “President Trump has been in contact with many allies and partners in the region throughout the past several days.”

In American diplomatic parlance, however, “allies” and “partners” have specific definitions, neither of which appears to apply to the Kurdish groups in either Iraq or Iran, so it is unclear what Leavitt meant.

For some US military commanders, the emerging war in Iran is part of a biblical plan to bring about the end of the world as we know it, according to complaints filed by over 100 service members.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received a litany of complaints about religious ideology seeping into military orders since the US and Israel began bombing Iran, independent journalist Jon Larsen first reported.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of MRFF, a nonprofit group established 21 years ago that focuses on ensuring constitutional protections for service members, spoke with HuffPost by phone and illuminated some details of the complaints, which have come from more than three dozen military units situated in at least 30 different military installations.

“We started getting calls in the wee hours of Saturday morning from people saying their commanders were just jubilant about this and trying to tell people, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all part of God’s plan,’” Weinstein said.

Weinstein said the “metric promised” in the Bible’s Book of Revelation is horrifying and should worry everyone.

“They are promised a 200-mile-long river that is four-and-a-half feet deep filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponised version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon,” Weinstein said. “That’s a lot of blood.”

Part of what makes the accounts so disturbing, Weinstein said, is that service members aren’t able to push back when they’re given orders that blur the line regarding the separation of church and state.

“This is all about time, place and manner,” he said. “If you’re being proselytised to by your superior, you can’t say, ‘Get out of my face.’ Under the military’s criminal code of justice, insubordination is considered a felony.”

One of the complaints MRFF received over the weekend came from a non-commissioned officer currently stationed outside of Iran but awaiting deployment at a moment’s notice. That officer filed the complaint on behalf of himself and 15 other troops, all of whom are of different religious backgrounds. (For their protection, MRFF is keeping the identity of these service members anonymous.)

The non-commissioned officer, who is Christian, reported to MRFF that a commander told them to tell fellow troops that the war in Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan.” The commander allegedly cited the Book of Revelation and the section specifically referring to Armageddon and the “imminent” return of Jesus Christ.

The non-commissioned officer said the messaging from higher-ups is not only “destroy[ing] morale and unit cohesion” among troops, but they also believe the commanders are flagrantly violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of religion.

According to the complaint first reported by Larsen, the commander said President Donald Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

The commander “had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy,” the complaint said.

“I and my fellow troops know that it is completely wrong to have to suffer through what our commander said today. It’s not just the separation of church and state … It’s the fact that our commander feels as though he is fully supported and justified by the entire (combat unit’s name withheld) chain of command to inflict his Armageddon views of our attack on Iran on those of us beneath him in the chain of command,” the officer wrote in his complaint to MRFF.

Weinstein said some service members called him on Sunday to report that they were being invited to Bible studies at their commanders’ personal homes to “discuss how this was all part of the plan and it’s all being lived out in the Book of Revelation and Christian eschatology.”

Commanders were “in a hurry” to get subordinates on board, according to the complaints received by MRFF.

Once a service member makes a complaint to MRFF, finding a solution can be difficult. Service members have a few different options, Weinstein said: If troops are told they lack courage, intelligence or bravery because of their religious tradition or lack thereof, they can file an inspector general complaint or an ethics complaint within the military.

“But then you completely out yourself,” Weinstein said. “And when you do that in the military, you become what we call a ‘tarantula on a wedding cake.’ How long do you think that cake lasts at that wedding?”

Troops can complain to military judge advocates, lawyers or chaplains, but the latter can be especially tricky. The majority of the US military’s chaplains are Christian and many are evangelical.

“By itself, that’s fine,” Weinstein said. “But if you are a Christian Nationalist, you don’t pay any attention to the time, place or manner … with any sort of religious extremism, we end up not with little streams, or creeks or brooks, but with oceans and oceans of blood.”

Weinstein said none of this should necessarily be shocking. The evangelical leanings of the Trump administration — and in particular the Department of Defense — have not been a secret. At a prayer breakfast last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the US was a “Christian nation,” and there are prayer meetings at the Pentagon each month.

But putting religion into politics is inflicting “generational damage” onto the US and its military, Weinstein said.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

Harrison Mann, a 13-year veteran of the US Army who served under President Barack Obama, during Trump’s first term and under President Joe Biden, told HuffPost that for soldiers, there “isn’t much of a difference” inside the military — at least “culturally speaking” — even when presidents are “doing some really crazy stuff” publicly, he said.

Because of that, he argues it may be too soon to say whether Hegseth can actually inflict permanent damage to the military. Mann is, however, deeply worried about what happens to the public perception of the troops in the meantime.

“There’s danger in commanders telling soldiers they only vouch for Christians, whites or MAGA supporters. When the public starts to view the military that way too, then you get to a much more dangerous place where they no longer have trust in them,” he said.

Today, Mann is the associate director of campaigns for Win Without War, a grassroots progressive foreign policy advocacy organization based in Washington, DC that formed in 2003 in response to the US invasion of Iraq. Mann left his role as assistant to the head of the Middle East Centre at the Defence Intelligence Agency, or DIA, in 2024, for moral reasons.

After the attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, Mann said his mission as a soldier primarily became about supporting Israel and sharing intel with Israeli military officials. But once he saw what the war in Gaza was becoming — “a genocide,” he said — he resigned.

Mann knows from personal experience how frightening it can be for a soldier to speak out. The Trump administration’s politicisation of the military, as the MRFF complaints clearly show, makes it harder. Mann worries it is fast creating a situation where subordinate leaders may believe the messaging from on high grants them “tacit approval to start imposing their own religious beliefs on others.”

“I can tell you I’m very worried,” he said. “I think most people who join the military, they want to do something they feel is noble and they want to do the right thing. But the potential consequences for refusing an unlawful order or standing up for what you think is right is very high … So it goes back to the question: What can everyone else do to help them?”

To start, Mann said the public can broadcast support for service members who speak up or disobey unlawful orders or unconstitutional directives. That validation is in short supply inside the military, so it must come from the outside, he said.

“It’s very frightening to imagine that you would be on your own if you tried to defy an unlawful order,” Mann said. “We need to see increasing efforts by members of Congress to impeach Secretary Hegseth and everyone can put pressure on their lawmakers to support that effort.

“You can support a lot of the organizations like About Face and Win Without War that are trying to create a welcoming, safe space for service members who are experiencing this kind of unfair treatment,” he said.

Mann said he isn’t hopeless about the future even though there is much to despair over right now.

“It’s way too soon to give up. There’s just so much that we have not tried… there are so many pressure tactics that haven’t culminated yet. There’s so much people power that has not yet been mobilized. As terrifying as what is happening is, there’s a critical opportunity for growth and pushback against Trump’s agenda,” he said.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated with Harrison Mann’s correct title.

Medical advice provided by Dr Asiya Maula, private GP at The Health Suite, and Dr Donald Grant, GP and Senior Clinical Advisor at The Independent Pharmacy.

New research has found that almost half of bowel cancer cases (sometimes called colorectal cancer) occur in under-65s.

It was not always this way. The paper, published in the American Cancer Society, said that bowel cancer rates have been declining among over-65s since the ’80s, but rising among those under 50.

Here, we asked GPs Dr Asiya Maula and Dr Donald Grant why this could be happening and what we can do to lower our risk.

Both doctors said there likely isn’t a single cause.

It “likely reflects cumulative lifestyle and environmental changes,” Dr Maula said.

“We are seeing higher levels of chronic inflammation in younger populations, often linked to ultra-processed diets, sedentary behaviour, stress, and disrupted sleep.”

She also thinks exposure to microplastics, a less diverse gut biome, and air pollution may play a role.

“No single exposure directly causes bowel cancer, but cumulative toxic load over time may influence gut health and inflammatory pathways.”

For his part, Dr Grant said, “While [bowel cancer] remains common in older age groups, factors such as rising obesity levels, diets low in fibre and high in processed foods and an increase in sedentary lifestyles and alcohol intake are all thought to be contributing to this shift.”

Not every case of bowel cancer is preventable. But, Dr Grant said, “There are also plenty of ways people can minimise their risk of bowel cancer.”

Dr Maula added, “Small, consistent changes over time can make a meaningful difference.”

Their prevention tips are:

1. Maintaining a well-balanced diet,
2. staying physically active,
3. keeping to a healthy weight,
4. limiting alcohol intake,
5. avoiding smoking,
6. attending screening when invited,
7. supporting gut health by “prioritising fibre-rich whole foods” (we’re meant to eat 30g of fibre a day, but 90% of us don’t),
8. reducing the consumption of ultra-processed products,
9. supporting regular bowel movements,
10. trying to reduce stress,
11. getting enough sleep,
12. adequate hydration, and
13. reducing environmental toxic exposures wherever possible.

Speak to your GP if you notice possible signs of bowel cancer, like rectal bleeding, blood in your stool, changes in your bowel habits (like going more often, unusual constipation, or diarrhoea), feeling you still need to “go” after pooping, losing weight without meaning to, fatigue, and/or abdominal or rectal pain.

Prominent conservatives and MAGA influencers normally allied with President Donald Trump are publicly questioning his war on Iran, prompting aggressive pushback from the president and his administration.

Right-wing luminaries including Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Megyn Kelly and former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have criticised the war or noted the president’s shifting justifications. Elected Republicans have taken notice.

“The president did a masterful job of creating an eclectic coalition, but I can see where this is a wedge for some of them,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis told HuffPost.

The Iran war is an obvious betrayal of Trump’s campaign pledge for “no new wars.”

Carlson called the war “absolutely disgusting and evil” and said Trump could lose support from his most loyal voters.

Sean Davis, CEO of the Trump-friendly news website The Federalist, said it wasn’t clear if the goal was to “free the Iranian people or degrade their nuclear capability or degrade the conventional weapons capability or eliminate their regional hegemony or to cut off their oil supply to China or to help Israel.”

“The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective,” Davis said on X.

Podcaster Matt Walsh also noted some contradictions in the administration’s messaging.

“So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear programme, we had to do this because of their nuclear program,” Walsh wrote. “And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask.”

Some Republican lawmakers acknowledged these criticisms are reasonable, even if they ultimately disagree.

“They don’t want another Iraq. Nor do I. I don’t think that’s where we’re headed,” Republican Senator John Kennedy told HuffPost.

“But I see their point of view, and it’s a valid point of view. But I just don’t believe this is a repeat of the mistakes, if any, that we made in Iraq.”

Asked by HuffPost if Trump had adequately explained the reasons for the war, Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, went silent.

Most Republicans, however, didn’t hesitate to recite some of the justifications the White House has offered for the new war in the Middle East.

“It’s been explained for 47 years, hasn’t it? No regime has killed more Americans than the regime that we’ve now wiped out,” Senator Bernie Moreno told HuffPost.

“The predicate for action has been pretty clear: They can’t have a nuclear weapon.”

Even before the war, the MAGA coalition had splintered somewhat, most notably with Greene’s resignation from Congress after Trump turned against her for supporting the release of the Epstein files. The early reviews of the Iran war suggest an even more dramatic break is possible.

The White House has responded somewhat aggressively to its MAGA war sceptics.

Asked about Clarkson and Kelly in particular, Trump said the pair don’t define the Make America Great Again movement. “I think that MAGA is Trump,” the president told independent journalist Rachel Bade.

In response to Walsh’s criticisms on X, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded that the goal was to end the nuclear programme and generally destroy the Iranian regime’s military capabilities.

“Their brutal attacks and threats will finally end under President Trump,” Leavitt said in her own post. “America will win – the terrorists will be defeated.”

Walsh was not swayed, calling it “gaslighting” to argue, as Leavitt and other pro-war conservatives have done, that Iran has been “waging war” on the US for 47 years.

“You and I both know that almost every conservative influencer in the business was opposed to war with Iran until just now,” Walsh said.

A handful of Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, are also sceptical of the war.

Senator Rand Paul labelled it “yet another preemptive war” in the Middle East, and Representative Thomas Massie indicated he’d vote for a War Powers resolution to stop the conflict.

More surprisingly, Representative Warren Davidson, who is less prone to bucking the party than Massie or Paul, suggested President Trump had wrongly dragged the US into war without congressional authorisation.

“Congress declares war. America is at war. Congress did not declare war,” Davidson wrote. He did not signal that he would vote for a resolution ending the war.