Trump Made No Case for War on Iran

https://consortiumnews.com/2026/02/28/trump-made-no-case-for-war-on-iran/

The case for each U.S. war in the Middle East over the past 35 years has had progressively weaker rationale and international support. The aggression against Iran launched Saturday has almost none of either, writes Joe Lauria.

https://politicsthisweek.gn.apc.org/2026/02/the-bristol-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-11/

Donald Trump has launched a major war of aggression in the Middle East against Iran and in the preceding weeks made almost no effort, in contrast to previous U.S. wars in the region, to build a case to unleash what could be a history-altering conflagration.

The size and scope of this U.S. attack is being compared to the First and Second Gulf Wars. A look back at the lead-up to those two U.S. wars shows that the clarity of the rationale for war and its legal arguments weakened for each succeeding conflict. The case for each U.S. war in the Middle East over the past 35 years has has had a progressively weaker rationale and international support. The aggression against Iran launched today has almost none.

Trump’s War on Iran

Trump announcing his aggression against Iran in a video released at 2:30 am EST Saturday morning. (Truth Social)

Twenty-three years after the Bush invasion of Iraq on false intelligence and little international support, Donald Trump has begun a war of aggression against Iran with no intelligence and no international support.

Trump didn’t even bother to go to the U.N. Security Council, where Russia and China would have justly vetoed a resolution as Iran is no threat to the United States. And he didn’t bother going to Congress either, where not only does his party have a majority in both Houses, but almost all Democrats are slavishly devoted to Israel too.

At Trump’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, the only time the Democrats stood up to applause was when Trump said the few words he did against Iran. It remains a mystery why he did not seek authorization from Congress for this war. Perhaps Trump is just an authoritarian who thinks he’s above even pro forma democracy. For him, international law and the U.S. Constitution are just nuisances.

In his pre-recorded, 8-minute video announcing the war, which was released at 2:30 am Washington time Saturday, Trump — dressed as if for a golf outing — dredged up the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis and the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq by Iranian-backed militia as reasons for his unprovoked attack. Had the U.S. (and Britain) not overthrown a democratically-elected Iranian leader in 1953 there may never have been a 1979 Iranian Revolution and if the U.S. had not invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, there would have been no roadside bombs.

Trump falsely said Iran has rejected every opportunity to “renounce their nuclear ambitions,” ignoring that he tore up a 2015 international nuclear deal that was working to monitor Iran’s reduced enrichment.

In a very weak imitation of the George W. Bush’s farce, Trump uttered some words at the joint session on Tuesday about Iran wanting to get a nuclear weapon, a ballistic missile to reach the United States and being the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism.

All three are huge, W. Bush-worthy lies. The Sunni Gulf monarchies are the biggest terrorism backers. U.S. intelligence has clearly stated that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon, nor is there intelligence saying it is actively working on a ballistic missile that can hit the U.S. Benjamin Netanyahu peddled that tale about Iran building an ICBM that can hit New York in “three or four years” at the U.N. General Assembly more than 10 years ago. In October he again floated that lie.

The New York Times played an important role in paving the way for the 2003 invasion. Its reporting was so false that in May 2004 it was forced to publish a front-page apology to its readers. But this time, the Times published an article explicitly reporting that Trump’s arguments for war against Iran were false. The newspaper reported:

    “As they made their public case for another American military campaign against Iran, President Trump and his aides asserted that Iran had restarted its nuclear program, had enough available nuclear material to build a bomb within days and was developing long-range missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States.

    All three of these claims are either false or unproven.

    American and European government officials, international weapons monitoring groups and reports from American intelligence agencies give a far different picture of the urgency of the Iran threat than the one the White House presented in the days leading up to Saturday’s strikes.”

We have come a very long way since the last major U.S. catastrophe in the Middle East.