Trump's weak justifications for attacking Iran

If you are going to start a war, it helps to have a good reason

Why is American attacking Iran? It helps to have a coherent reason, to justify to the American public the costs in money and blood, to allies about the potential long-term risks, and to Iranians about the future of their country.

After 9/11 there was broad support for invading Afghanistan because the country hosted the attack’s mastermind. In 2003 there was less support for what turned out to be the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They didn’t, but Saddam stuck a belligerent tone and kicked weapons inspectors out. In 2026…Iran was at the negotiating table and we invaded…for reasons.

A couple of days before the attack Daniel C. Kurtzer, a Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton summed up the lack of clarity:

The bottom line is we don’t really know why the U.S. appears to be preparing for war with Iran. Trump has not yet briefed Congress or spoken to the American people about a possible military action that could inflame regional tensions and spark a bloody conflict.

Clarity has not emerged since the bombs started dropping. Democratic Senator Mark Warner was briefed by the White House House as senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said: “What was the imminent threat to America? I don’t know the answer.”

So lets review the various reasons the Trump administration and its supporters have articulated for a likely illegal war they are pursuing without Congressional permission.

1. Iran was working on nuclear weapons

Trump discussed the potential for Iran acquiring nuclear weapons in his state of the union address. How close was Iran? We don’t know. Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff said Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb making material.” Trump himself claimed Iran was just “a few weeks away” from having a nuclear weapons, before deciding that “two weeks” was the right number.

But last June the Trump administration said it had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities, and cited Israeli officials who said the nuclear program was set back by “years.” How do you go from years to weeks in months?

There is also the point that Trump inherited a credible and carefully developed agreement to prevent Iran from acquiring weapons that was working, but tore up that agreement because it was negotiated by Obama. Recreating that agreement might have been on the table, but we will never know.

At the State of the Union, Trump also said that Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.” But this was exaggerated and not an imminent threat. According to the New York Times:

Three American officials with access to current intelligence about Iran’s missile programs said that Mr. Trump exaggerated the immediacy of the threat posed to the United States. One official said some intelligence analysts were concerned that top aides have inflated the threats or that intelligence was being selectively presented or distorted as it was sent upward.

White House aides exaggerating threats to spur a war they already wanted has a very 2003 feel to it. Say what you will about the Bush administration, but when they sold a Middle-Eastern war, they took some pride in selling the lie.

Happier times

2. Iran interfered in US elections!

Trump has complained that Iran interfered in US elections. Well, yes they did, but to no effect. And so did China and Russia, and we are not attacking them. Indeed, we are attacking anyone who implies that Russia tried to influence US elections.

A bit more backstory. Stanford academic researchers and government investigators who identified the role of Iran’s election interference in 2020, which included social media manipulation, were pilloried by the Twitter Files brigade as censors, hauled before Congress, and sued by Stephen Miller’s American First Legal. CISA, the part of the federal government that monitored election interference, was gutted by the Trump administration and the Stanford Internet Observatory was shut down.

I’m inclined to believe if election interference was enough of a reason to attack a foreign country, the administration and its allies would not be punishing people who identified election interference as a problem.

Kate Starbird, who was one of the researchers targeted, summed it up this way:

The real story is that foreign governments try to interfere with elections in the U.S. all the time. In 2020 and 2024, the U.S. had private and public infrastructure in place to catch them, call them out, and mitigate the damage. Now, those mechanisms are gone, intentionally undermined and dismantled by the Trump administration.

3. Iran actually started the war 47 years ago

Ok, I don’t really understand this either. The US clearly started the conflict, along with Israel, start the conflict by sending warships to the region and then bombing the shit out of Iran.

But what if, and bear with me here, the words “war” or “conflict” could mean whatever you wanted? With this linguistic freedom, we can say that Iran started the war by being an antagonist of the US, and having some low-level conflict with it. Here is what Hegseth said:

The United States did not start this conflict, but we will finish it. If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere in the world—as Iran has—then we will hunt you down, and we will kill you.

At a press event, Hegseth quipped:

It turns out the regime who chanted 'death to America' and 'death to Israel' was gifted death from American and death from Israel. This is not a so-called 'regime change war,' but the regime sure did change.

Another version, articulated by Republican House Committee is that Iran started a “forever war” with the 1979 revolution (don’t ask about US engagement in Iran before 1979!)

It this sounds sort of nuts, be assured that for some Americans, the Iranian revolution, including its kidnapping of American hostages, felt like a declaration of war. It is the justification being fed to the troops, in fact the only justification that the Commander of CENTCOM invoked in a message to the troops: “Since 1979, the Iranian Regime has killed and wounded thousands of Americans, and the continue to threten Americans and our friends.”

This messaging is also very visible in the media. “Trump is ending a 50 year war” is a recurring talking point among Fox hosts and guests. The Free Press, is broadly supportive of the attack, presenting the it as “the end” of “our 50-year war with Iran.”

Bari Weiss, who has editorial control of both The Free Press and CBS News is also pushing the 50 year war at CBS.

If you did not know the US was in a 50 year war with Iran, no-one is judging you. You had a lot of other wars to keep track of. And don’t ask about anything that happened before 1979, like the American-supported coup of a democratically elected leader in 1953, and the subsequent installation of a military official as Shah that fueled the anti-American theocratic regime that took control in 1979.

4. Iran about to attack the US

According to Trump-mouthpiece and CNN commentator Scott Jennings, Iran was actually just about to attack the US. While the US had warships at its door, Iran had planned a preemptive strike. We stopped them in the nick of time!

Senior officials gave other reporters the same message. I wonder if these officials were the same administration officials that were claimed there was credible intelligence that Iran would have nuclear weapons next week, or that it would be soon firing missiles at the United States. But here is the thing: intelligence officials who briefed members of Congress said there was no imminent threat. So you can believe the anonymous political appointees making the case for war to their preferred media outlets, or the actual intelligence officials talking to Congress.

By Monday, the White House was undercutting this justification, saying that if Israel attacked, Iran would then attack American targets, and that was the imminent threat. In other words, we were getting our retaliation in first. When pressed by reporters, both Mike Johnson and Marco Rubio presented this explanation, coining what might become one of the defining quotes of this war. Rubio said:

There absolutely was an imminent threat and the imminent threat was that we knew if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked [by Israel], that they would immediately come after us…We went proactively in a defensive way.

This is, by any measure, a very different argument than the claim that Iran was about to attack US targets, since it is contingent on the previously unspecified assumptions that Israel was going to attack which would trigger an Iranian retaliation. It also takes for granted that Israel’s decision to take action was not something that the US could have blocked, but instead obliged the US to join the attack. Other reporting from the New York Times portrays Netanyahu as pushing Trump’s decision:

During a meeting at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in December, Mr. Netanyahu had asked for the president’s approval for Israel to hit Iran’s missile sites in the coming months. Two months later, he got something even better: a full partner in a war to topple the Iranian leadership.

5. Regime change

In announcing his attack, Trump said: “To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” This would be good news for the people of Iran, who have been plainly unhappy with their brutal rulers. But they also have reason for caution.

Trump also offered immunity for members of the regime who lay down their arms, but its not really his immunity to offer if the people of Iran are to determine their future. In a social media post, Trump said that he hoped that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other security forces would just merge with the people they have been killing, which seems a tad unrealistic:

Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves,” the president added. “That process should soon be starting in that, not only the death of Khamenei but the Country has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated.

After Trump previously encouraged protestors to rise up, tens of thousands were murdered by the regime. And if they look at Venezuela, or even in America, Iranians might see a Trump administration that does not see its mission as encouraging democracy.

In Venezuela, a corrupt but pliable regime is preferred to the opposition who won the last election. Trump has described Venezuela as a template for Iran. Apart from the fact these are two very different countries and forms of government, the Israeli bombing of political leaders seems to have taken out likely successor candidates, including targeting members of the opposition. Trump said:

We don't know who the leadership is. We don't know who they'll pick. Maybe they'll get lucky and get someone who knows what they're doing ... We don't know who is leading the country now. They don't know who's leading. It's a little like the unemployment line.

Does this sound like a plan?

The Iranian hardliners likely assume that Trump will not put boots on the ground, and they can hold onto power by offering concessions about external military and terrorism threats. Once the crisis has passed, they can reassert their brutal control over the Iranian people. Trump has already agreed to talk to the new leadership.

Beyond the Iranian people, advocates of regime change also see it as generating a new age of peace in the Middle East. See, for example, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham:

I fervently pray that the long-suffering people of Iran will have their oppression ended soon. I also fervently pray that we’re on the verge of a new dawn in the Middle East, with historic opportunity for lasting peace and prosperity. As to our allies in Israel, President Trump and all under his command, your bravery has set in motion the end of evil and darkness, and the beginning of the light. Well done.

This is, to put it kindly, wishcasting that sounds very much like the neo-conservative rationales for war in Iraq. Once Iraq is toppled, democracy would blossom and the region would stabilize. It seems like we are always just one expensive and bloody war away from stabilizing the Middle East! No downsides to the US!

In 2003, the wishcasting was accompanied with some efforts of nation building, poorly planned. But it appears that no such effort exists now. When Graham was challenged on Meet the Press Trump plan for Iranians, he snapped:

No, its not his job or my job to do this. How many times do I have to tell you? Our job is to make sure Iran is no longer the largest state sponsor of terrorism, to help the people to reconstruct a new government. No boots on the ground. You know the sign [that says] “you break it, you own it”? I don’t buy that one bit.

Here, Graham appears to be referring to Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn Rule that he articulated to Bush: “If you break it, you’ve bought it.” The Trump rule, it would appear is, “you break it, they own it.”

6. Protecting Americans

Speaker Johnson articulated some of the above reasons but also said that he was briefed that “that military action may become necessary to protect American troops and American citizens in Iran.” What? America is bombing Iran to protect American citizens in Iran? There is no public data on the number of US citizens living in Iran, but they are presumably less safe because their government is bombing them. There are hundreds of thousands of American citizens living in the Middle East, especially in some of the cities that Iran is bombing right now. Are they safer? Will they be safer in the years to come in a region where many are outraged about the US-led attacks?

7. Its not actually a war, you dummy,

A couple of administration advocates such as Senator Markwayne Mullin and Representative Paulina Luna and even Speaker Mike Johnson have gone to the airwaves to insist its not a war. After all, wars have to be approved by Congress! And there are no troops on the ground! Its just a military action!

The White House actually sent out talking points to advocates emphasizing that “Operation Epic Fury” was merely “a major combat operation.”

But the “not a war” nonsense is undermined by the fact that Trump and Hegseth are calling it a war. And can you imagine what would happen if the US was attacked via an intense bombing campaign that killed dozens of political leaders, and people insisted we were not at war?

What happens when you don’t have a clear rationale

None of these feel like legitimate reasons, and the multiplicity of the reasons makes things worse. To be fair, its not unreasonable to have multiple goals with a military engagement, but Trump’s tendency to exaggerate and undercut his rationales with contradictory statements creates a sense of incoherence. And the fact that Trump did not present his case to Congress further weakens the legitimacy of his efforts.

The reality is that this is a war of choice. Trump wanted to pursue it, and Middle Eastern allies who are sick of Iran’s funding of terrorists encouraged or went along with the attack. According to reports, both Israel and Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional foes, urged Trump to attack. In part, this is because Iran is in a weakened state — already attacked by Israel, losing allies like Syria, and with its terrorist arms decimated — not because it is an imminent risk.

There might be a bunch of other, less articulated reasons, such as oil extraction (like Venezuela) and investment opportunities. Trump has also undersold the risks presented to him by intelligence and military advisors, preferring instead political appointees who are either pro-war or afraid of challenging Trump and the optimistic claims of Netanyahu.

According to the New York Times, Congressional briefs made no mention of regime change the White House discussed, while Trump distorted the military advice he received:

Mr. Trump’s top military adviser, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, told the president that a war could lead to significant American casualties. Days later, Mr. Trump told the public that his military adviser had been far more reassuring. He wrote on Truth Social that General Caine had said that any military action against Iran would be “something easily won.”

“We think Iran is a bad actor without an immediate threat to the US” or “our regional allies really wanted this” are not especially compelling reasons for action. This has a couple of consequences.

First, there is not public buy-in for the war. It is worth remembering that the pattern of Middle Eastern wars is that they start as popular, and then become calamitous as time goes on. This one starts as unpopular because there is no compelling justification to rally around the flag.

Just 1 in 3 of those polled on the say of the strikes support the attack according to G. Elliott Morris. This is actually an improvement from previous polls. For example, 2 weeks ago, when just 1 in 5 supported a US attack. More Republicans backing their President, but most Americans are unconvinced.

For Iranians on the ground, they now have to wonder, if the Trump administration has their best interests at heart. His track record, and mixed messages, make Trump unable to provide a credible commitment.