Was the US attack on Iran predicted just days before? Ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou’s shocking warning | World News

As Washington and Tehran trade strikes in the aftermath of Operation Epic Fury, attention has turned to comments made just days before the offensive by former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who publicly suggested that a US attack on Iran was imminent. On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched what President Donald Trump described as “major combat operations” targeting Iran’s missile and nuclear infrastructure. Posting on Truth Social, Trump declared: “we are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” adding that the objective was to “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.”The strikes come amid longstanding tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program. Western governments accuse the Islamic Republic of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, a charge Iranian officials have repeatedly denied. Tehran maintains that its nuclear activities are intended solely for civilian purposes and insists on its right to enrich uranium under international agreements.

The joint assault resulted in widespread damage and significant civilian casualties, including at least 153 people and children reportedly killed after a strike hit a school in Minab. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, was confirmed dead following missile strikes around Tehran.In response, Iran launched retaliatory attacks across Israel and Gulf states including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait, while military and civilian targets, including an American naval base in Bahrain and Dubai International Airport, were struck. Airport closures in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha left thousands stranded. Six days before those strikes began, Kiriakou said on a podcast that a decision had already been made in Washington to attack.

The 22 February warning

Kiriakou appeared on the Julian Dorey Podcast, recorded on Friday and released on Sunday, 22 February 2026. The programme, also known as Trendifier, is hosted by American YouTuber and podcaster Julian Dorey and features long-form interviews with guests from security, intelligence and political backgrounds. During the episode, Kiriakou said he had received information from a former colleague who had visited the White House that morning. “I have a friend, former CIA officer, who was at the White House this morning talking to his friends, and he says that a decision has been made to attack Iran on Monday or Tuesday,” he said. He was referring to 23–24 February, four to five days before Operation Epic Fury was ultimately launched on 28 February. Kiriakou also urged viewers not to take President Trump’s public deadlines at face value. At the time, Trump had given Iran a 10-day window to comply with US demands, including ending its ballistic missile programme, halting uranium enrichment and ceasing support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

“The president yesterday gave the Iranians 10 days to accept our proposals for an end to their ballistic missile programme, an end to their uranium enrichment programme, an end to supporting groups in the Middle East like Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis. But he’s done this before,” Kiriakou said. He continued: “Well, he’ll give you 10 days, he’ll give you two weeks, and then he’ll just attack two days into it. He thinks that that keeps people off balance.” Kiriakou also suggested that other high-profile announcements could serve as distractions from impending military decisions. Referring to the administration’s announcement that it would release UFO-related files, he said: “Probably in part, yeah. About them saying they’re going to release the UFO files last night, which I’ve wanted released forever, but the timing.”

Divisions inside Washington

In the same interview, Kiriakou described what he said were internal divisions within the administration. “He said that there are battle lines, that the anti-war forces are JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard,” Kiriakou said, adding that the pro-intervention side was “led by Marco Rubio and includes Pete Hegseth and now the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” Expressing surprise at the reported position of the Joint Chiefs, he linked it to personnel changes over the past year. “Trump has replaced all of the Joint Chiefs this year, this past, in the past 12 months, which I had forgotten,” he said. “He promoted people that he knew would be politically loyal.”

Separately, the Jerusalem Post, citing a disclosure from The New York Times, reported that hundreds of US personnel had been moved from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, alongside repositioning at American facilities in Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, a build-up that preceded the strikes.

A prior warning on TikTok

Kiriakou had also spoken publicly about the risks of escalation weeks earlier. In a TikTok clip recorded approximately a month before the strikes, he discussed regional concerns about President Trump’s unpredictability. While the beginning of the video was cropped, Kiriakou described a conversation with someone from an Emirati government who was, in his words, “genuinely worried” because they “just can’t read Donald Trump.” He recalled a reporter asking the president who his advisers were, to which Trump reportedly replied: “I don’t have any advisors, I just do whatever my gut tells me to do.” Kiriakou said that this unpredictability was contributing to regional instability, adding that “the Iranians are scrambling, because they don’t know what to expect either.”

He also recounted a conversation with retired colonel Douglas Macgregor about Iran’s military capabilities, particularly hypersonic missiles. “The Iranians have hypersonics, the Chinese and the Russians gave them the technology and they developed it internally, domestically. An aircraft carrier is the size of a city, it has 25,000 sailors on it, can you imagine if they sank one of those things? Or even just damaged it to the point it would need to be towed into the port for two years’ worth of repairs, I just see nothing good coming from an armed conflict with Iran.”

Who is John Kiriakou?

Kiriakou served in the CIA from 1990 to 2004 and visited 72 countries during his tenure. He became Chief of Counterterrorist Operations in Pakistan and was involved in efforts to capture al-Qaeda members. He later became a whistleblower, publicly revealing the CIA’s use of waterboarding. In 2012, he was convicted of passing classified information to the media and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Since his release, he has been a vocal critic of what he describes as Washington’s interventionist foreign policy. His comments on 22 February did not specify the precise timing or scope of any operation, but his assertion that a decision had been made to attack Iran within days preceded the 28 February launch of Operation Epic Fury by less than a week.