At 3 a.m. Mar-a-Lago time on Saturday, Donald Trump released an eight-minute video on social media announcing that the United States and Israel had launched air strikes on Iran. His eyes shadowed by an oversized white USA baseball cap, he laid out, in familiar Trumpian language, his rationale for the attack. “The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America.” “Our objective is to protect the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” “We sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it again. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it.” He briefly mentioned the risk to U.S. servicemembers, exhorted the Iranian people to “take over your government,” then presumably retired to the inner sanctum of his private golf resort satisfied he had made his case for war. By dawn, some of the first victims of the attack were known: more than one hundred young girls at a school in Iran’s Hormozgan province.
Within twenty-four hours, airstrikes killed Iran supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many of his senior deputies. In spite of Trump’s repeated pledges not to wage wars of regime change, that’s precisely what he had set out to do. The self-proclaimed “peace president” has now launched seven military attacks on foreign nations since he returned to office. He’s ordered more missile strikes in one year than President Biden did in his entire four-year term. (This is not counting the airstrikes on fishing boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, which as of this writing have claimed nearly 150 lives.)
The operation’s recklessness is captured by its childish name: “Epic Fury.” It has already set off conflict across the region. Iran has retaliated with drone and ballistic-missile strikes in Israel, Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Israel has responded to Hezbollah rocket attacks with strikes in Lebanon. Amid the confusion, jittery Kuwaiti air defenses mistakenly shot down three U.S. fighter jets. Iranian threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and an attack on a Saudi refinery are already having economic effects as oil prices soar and global markets plunge.
Meanwhile, what will happen next inside Iran is anyone’s guess. Trump’s contradictory claims make his plans and even his wishes unclear. Does he want to work with surviving members of the current regime or help ordinary Iranians topple what remains of it? Khamenei loyalists retain significant power, and the notorious Republican Guard remains intact. It’s all too easy to imagine the country spiraling into the kind of chaos that afflicted Iraq and Afghanistan after similar U.S. wars of regime change.
Despite the confusion and uncertainty, a few things are clear. First, the attack on Iran is unconstitutional. Trump didn’t trouble himself to seek the approval of Congress—to which the Constitution assigns the power to declare war. But then, the Republican majority in Congress has long since ceded its authority to the monarchical occupant of the White House. Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Rand Paul, both Republicans from Kentucky, have protested the attack, and several Democrats, led by Virginia senator Tim Kaine, are pushing for bipartisan war-powers resolutions this week. Coming after the fact, it’s not clear what these efforts would accomplish. Even if the resolutions pass, which seems unlikely, they’d be sure to face a veto from Trump. The war—and it is notable that Trump himself has called it a war—also violates international law, which distinguishes between preemptive attacks against an imminent threat (sometimes permissible) and preventive attacks against a hypothetical future threat (never permissible). According to Trump’s own announcement of the war, the operation against Iran falls into the latter category.
Most importantly, the war is unjust by traditional just-war criteria, and not only because it isn’t being conducted under legitimate authority. According to the latest U.S. intelligence assessments, Iran was not an immediate threat to our national security. The aim of destroying its future nuclear capabilities does not provide sufficient justification for war—and at any rate, unlike the targeted strikes last June, the new strikes were aimed at non-nuclear sites. Nor does the aim of rescuing Iranian citizens from a tyrannical government justify war, since without a detailed and realistic plan for replacing that government, there is no way of ensuring that conditions inside the country won’t get worse. Finally, it’s plain that military action was not a last resort: the administration’s efforts at diplomacy were haphazard if not disingenuous (and apparently subject to the dictates of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu). Finally, we already know that noncombatants were among the first victims—and given the indiscriminate nature of air attacks, many more civilians are likely to be killed.
In the absence of any reasonable case for the war, the administration is delivering a mix of jingoist propaganda and muddled explanations about its aims and potential duration. In a media briefing on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth resorted to more lame sloganeering: “No stupid rules of engagement. No nation-building quagmire. No democracy-building exercise. No politically correct wars.” One-time isolationist J. D. Vance did little to clarify things when he told Fox News that Iran was “committed to getting on that brink of a nuclear weapon.” Trump first promised an end to the operation in two to three days, then extended that or four to five weeks. He now says he does not have “the yips” about sending in ground troops if necessary. Of course, he might also simply declare victory at any moment and walk away, no matter the ongoing havoc left behind. As with so many things when it comes to Trump, it will likely be determined according to whim, political exigency, or just which of his manipulative advisors happens to have his ear. This is the way a mad king wages war. If he wants to stop tyranny, he should start at home.
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