Last June when the United States targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities in a series of coordinated airstrikes with Israel, President Trump boasted that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” He said that on the day of the operation, which hit the enrichment facility at Fordow, buried under a mountain, as well as sites at Natanz and Isfahan.
In the ensuing days and months, Trump repeated this claim, saying that Iran’s nuclear facilities and capabilities had been “obliterated.” In August he said, “We obliterated … the future nuclear capability of Iran.” In October he said, “Well, they don’t have a nuclear program. It was obliterated.” In December he said, “We obliterated their nuclear capability.” He said the same in January, multiple times, even claiming we had obliterated Iran’s “enrichment capability.” As recently as this month Trump repeated the claim — “totally obliterated” was the phrase he used.
So if that’s true, if we “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities just eight months ago, then why are we about to go to war with Iran? After all, the justification for U.S. strikes on Iran has always been that we cannot allow the regime in Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Most Americans agree with that, and it’s easy to understand why. But we were assured, over and over for months, that Iran’s nuclear program had been totally destroyed.
Now the administration is suddenly saying something different. During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Trump accused Iran of restarting its nuclear program and working to build missiles that would “soon” be able to reach the United States. Really? How is that possible if we utterly destroyed their nuclear program in June of last year?
And if we didn’t actually destroy Iran’s nuclear program, then when is the president going to come out and admit that? The American people aren’t idiots, we can handle the truth. Just tell us that the strikes last June weren’t as effective as we first thought and that’s why we’re now giving the Iranians ultimatums now about how they need to destroy their nuclear facilities and abandon their enrichment programs.
If it was true, if we really did obliterate Iran’s nuclear facilities as thoroughly as Trump says we did, then when is the president or someone from the administration going to come out and explain the justification for going to war with Tehran now, after neutralizing their nuclear threat? Don’t tell us it’s about the nuclear facilities we destroyed. What is the real reason we’re about to go to war?
These questions are important because launching a war of choice against Iran is a big deal that we shouldn’t undertake lightly — and certainly not for murky or shifting reasons. A decent respect for the opinion of the American people should compel any White House to at least give a plausible reason for launching regime change strikes on the other side of the world.
But what we’re getting from Trump is inconsistent. Last month when Iran was killing protesters, Trump threatened military action against Tehran, suggesting that targeting protesters was a red line. But today the issue seems to be Iran’s supposedly obliterated nuclear program, which is inexplicably once again a major threat to American interests. Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked why the U.S. would need to strike Iran if its nuclear program had already been destroyed. She said, “Well, there’s many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran.”
That might be so, but it’s incumbent on the administration to pick a reason and make an argument to the American people. You can’t tell us one week that we have to strike Iran because the regime is killing protesters, and the next week tell us that we have to strike Iran because the regime is enriching uranium at sites that are supposed to be destroyed. At a certain point, it begins to look like the Trump administration is fishing for a reason to strike Iran.
Sorry, but that’s not good enough. It’s also not good enough to take Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s word at face value on the question of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Netanyahu has been warning that Iran is on the brink of a nuclear weapon since 1996. There are videos circulating on social media mashing up 30 years of Netanyahu claiming Iran is about to have a nuclear weapon. Forgive me for being skeptical at this point — especially after Trump made a huge deal of obliterating Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure eight months ago.
Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that some U.S. officials think Israel should attack Iran first and let Iran retaliate against the U.S., saying “the politics are a lot better” that way, and it would “give us more reason to take action,” according to an anonymous administration official.
The whole thing feels like spitballing. And for those of us who are old enough to remember President George W. Bush’s “slam dunk” on WMDs in Iraq, it also feels oddly familiar. Polls might show that Republicans support regime change in Iran (although unwilling to risk any U.S. casualties to achieve it), but what they will not tolerate is being lied to or misled about why we’re going to war.
Given our past experiences being hoodwinked into disastrous Middle East wars, being honest about what’s really behind this push for regime change in Iran is likely the only way for the Trump administration not to turn the American people hard against it.
