Against the Bombing of Iran: Money, Munitions, and Poetry by Nick Romeo

On June 22, 2025 (GMT+3:30) the Trump Administration utilized the United States Air Force and Navy to attack three Iranian nuclear facilities in an operation called "Midnight Hammer". Trump gave a short address after this strike at 10 pm EST (2:00 am GMT). Immediately after the televised statement, Trump posted on Truth Social in all caps saying that "Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight."

In response to this operation, The Catalyst launched a flash submission campaign against the bombing of Iran and destruction of the SWANA region at large by the United States to be published on July 4th. This publication day deliberately coincides with the day the United States celebrates Independence Day—a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The included work in this campaign questions and disrupts the ideology of American Exceptionalism at the expense of Black and Brown lives globally. 

No one is free until all of us are free.

Crimea River

Behold the neo confectioner sugar daddies,

making it rain money and munitions, 

on our freshly baked enemies. 

Watch these sugar poppies make some hot steamy war,

in the jungle / in the desert / on the TV screen

and maybe one day soon, in outer space.

These neo-daddy sugar-cons utilize the same age-old slogans: 

We must fight them over there, so they don’t visit us,

They must never have a nuclear weapon, 

or my favorite catch phrase, “They chant Death to America!”

By that rubric, we should bomb all poets and musicians,

but I’ve been called a masochist before.

“I am against all bombings (of ALL people) regardless of whomever is in the white house.”

Editor’s note: The use of lowercase in “white house” is intentional.