Really American | Friday Evening, March 6, 2026
Seven days in. Oil at $90 a barrel. Russia feeding Iran the locations of U.S. warships so they can be targeted. Three former presidents standing together at a Chicago funeral to say plainly what most of official Washington won’t. And the Justice Department quietly releasing Epstein files they tried to hide, on the same day the bombs got bigger and Trump demanded unconditional surrender from a country that still has no leader.
This is Friday. This is day seven.
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Russia Is Helping Iran Find Our Ships
This is the story of the day, and it deserves to be on every front page in America.
The Washington Post and CNN both confirmed Friday, citing multiple U.S. officials, that Russia has been passing Iran the precise locations of American warships and aircraft since the war began last Saturday. Not vague diplomatic sympathy. Not military equipment. Targeting data. Satellite imagery. The exact positions of U.S. forces, shared in what one official described as a “pretty comprehensive effort.”
The intelligence Russia has provided includes imagery from Moscow’s sophisticated constellation of overhead satellites. Iran, for its part, has only a handful of military-grade satellites and no satellite constellation of its own, which makes what Russia is supplying enormously valuable. Security analysts noted that Iranian strikes have shown a striking level of precision, hitting early warning radars, command and control facilities, and CIA assets in the region. Iran is “making very precise hits on early warning radars or over-the-horizon radars,” said Dara Massicot of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’re going after command and control.”
The CIA station at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh was among the recent targets. Parts of the embassy building have been left “unrecoverable” and must be sealed off, according to an internal State Department assessment, with other sections not expected to be habitable for at least another month.
Here is what Pete Hegseth said when asked about Russia and China earlier this week: that he had no message for them and that “they’re not really a factor here.” That was the Secretary of Defense, at a Pentagon press conference, four days into a war where Russia was, apparently, helping Iran locate U.S. targets.
The U.S. also has intelligence suggesting that China may be preparing to provide Iran with financial assistance, spare parts and missile components, though Beijing has not yet acted on it. China relies heavily on Iranian oil and has been quietly pressuring Tehran to allow safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Their interest is ending the war quickly. Russia’s interest, as multiple analysts noted, appears to be exactly the opposite.
Trump Posts “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN.” Bombs Keep Falling.
On Friday morning, as Israeli airstrikes continued pounding Tehran and the death toll inside Iran crossed 1,332, Trump posted on Truth Social: “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” He added that after Iran surrenders and gets new leadership, the U.S. would help rebuild the country and “make it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.” He closed with: “IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!)”
This came hours after Iran’s president announced that unnamed countries had begun mediation efforts to end the war. Trump’s response was to post all-caps surrender demands while oil markets went into immediate shock.
Brent crude topped $90 a barrel on Friday for the first time in more than two years. The average price of unleaded gasoline in the United States reached $3.32 per gallon, up 11 percent since the war began. Qatar’s energy minister warned Friday that rising oil prices from this war “could bring down the economies of the world.” The Trump administration says it has no plans to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
When pressed by Axios on what “unconditional surrender” actually means, Trump said it could mean Iran formally surrendering — or it could mean the country simply running out of things to fight with. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said the president’s demand reflects his view that Iran must be rendered incapable of threatening the United States or its allies before any end to the war can be recognized. There is still no defined exit strategy. There is still no congressional authorization. Rubio told Arab foreign ministers this week the war is expected to last several more weeks.
Israel is now moving to what its military chief called “the next phase,” after carrying out 2,500 strikes with more than 6,000 weapons. Evacuation orders covering entire neighborhoods home to more than half a million people in Beirut caused mass panic as people rushed to leave. The death toll in Lebanon has exceeded 200 people. In Iran, two more schools were struck southwest of Tehran on Friday, according to state media.
Three Former Presidents, One Message. Trump Wasn’t There.
While the war raged, three former presidents stood together Friday in Chicago for the memorial service of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died last month at 84 after a battle with a rare neurological disorder. Obama, Biden, and Clinton all attended the celebration of life at the House of Hope on Chicago’s South Side, where thousands gathered. Trump posted his own tribute to social media when Jackson died. He was not at the service.
Obama gave the most pointed eulogy. He did not say Trump’s name. He didn’t need to.
“Every day you wake up to things you just didn’t think were possible,” Obama said. “Each day we’re told to fear each other, to turn on each other and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all. Everywhere we see greed and bigotry being celebrated and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength. We see science and expertise denigrated while ignorance and dishonesty and cruelty and corruption are reaping untold rewards every day.”
Obama also said Jackson’s presidential runs in the 1980s set the stage for other Black leaders, including his own successful presidency. “The message he sent to a 22-year-old child of a single mother with a funny name, an outsider, was that maybe there wasn’t any place or any room where we didn’t belong,” Obama said.
Clinton said Jackson “made me a better president.” Kamala Harris was also in attendance and spoke. Jennifer Hudson performed “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Jackson’s son Yusef said his father “lived a revolutionary Christian faith rooted in justice, nonviolence and the moral righteousness.”
It is worth noting: Speaker Mike Johnson denied a request for Jackson to lie in honor in the Capitol rotunda, saying the space is reserved for former presidents and select officials. Three of those former presidents showed up anyway. In Chicago. Together.
The Epstein Files They Tried to Hide
On the same day the bombs got louder and the oil markets cratered, the Justice Department quietly released Epstein files it had been withholding — files that contain detailed, uncorroborated allegations against the sitting president of the United States.
The documents include FBI interview summaries with a woman who alleged she was assaulted by Trump in the 1980s when she was between 13 and 15 years old, after being introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein. The woman gave four separate interviews to the FBI in 2019. Only one had been included in earlier public releases. The DOJ said the other three were “incorrectly coded as duplicative” — which is the department’s way of saying they were missing and someone had to be pressured to release them.
Oversight Democrats had voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi before the release came. The White House called the allegations “completely baseless.” The FBI interviewed the woman four times and its records don’t indicate whether agents considered the claims credible. The woman ultimately broke off contact with investigators, telling agents — during Trump’s first presidency — that she was asking herself what the point was of coming forward given where things stood.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee said millions of pages still remain concealed from the public. Bondi will appear before the committee under oath. That’s the next step. Watch it.
The Bottom Line Tonight
Russia is helping Iran find and target American troops. The man running the Defense Department said they weren’t a factor. Oil is at $90 a barrel. Trump is posting “MIGA” while demanding surrender from a country that is still burying its dead and hasn’t named a new leader. Three former presidents stood together in Chicago and said what the current one will not. And the Epstein files that were supposed to be public months ago got quietly dropped on a Friday afternoon during wartime, when everyone was looking somewhere else.
Day seven. The hardest hits, Rubio told us, are yet to come.
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— The Really American Team
