Donald Trump spent much of last summer patting himself on the back for destroying Iran’s nuclear program with a preemptive military attack. “We destroyed the nuclear,” the president boasted in remarks delivered in the Netherlands in June. “I said, ‘Iran will not have nuclear.’ Well, we blew it up. It’s blown up to kingdom come.”
It was not an offhand comment. The White House and its allies invested an enormous amount of time and energy telling Americans to believe that the operation had “obliterated” Iranian nuclear capabilities. When intelligence emerged that suggested otherwise, the White House quite literally referred to the evidence as “fake news.”
In early July, the president said Iran’s nuclear program had been “set back permanently.” Days earlier, he said of possible Iranian nuclear sites, “The last thing they’re thinking about right now is nuclear. … No, I’m not worried about it at all.”
Roughly eight months later, it’s fair to say he’s now “worried about it” anew. Indeed, Trump has pushed the U.S. close to a new war in the Middle East, with a military buildup in the region unseen since the invasion of Iraq more than two decades ago.
What the president has not done is explain why exactly we’re on the brink of war in the first place.
Two weeks ago, a reporter asked Trump what the U.S. would even target if Iran’s nuclear program had already been “obliterated,” as the president has claimed. Trump replied, “You could get whatever the dust is down there.” Five days later, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt why a military strike in Iran would be necessary. She replied that there are “many reasons and arguments that one could make,” though she proceeded to offer exactly zero reasons or arguments.
This week, ahead of the State of the Union address, many observers here and abroad wondered if Trump would take the opportunity to discuss his policy and his plans. That didn’t happen. As The New York Times summarized:
It took President Trump about 90 minutes in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to get to Iran, the topic that much of the world was most eager to hear about.
When he did, Mr. Trump only spent three minutes talking about the country, largely repeating his vague talking points from recent days. By the time his most high-profile speech of the year was over, the president had done little to explain why he had amassed the largest amount of U.S. military firepower in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Toward the end of his address, Trump assured his audience, “The United States military obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” He added, “We wiped it out, and they want to start over again, and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions. We are in negotiations with them; they want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”
The first part of the remarks reflected a breakdown in logic: The U.S. is on the brink of war because Iran is “pursuing” a nuclear program that has already been “obliterated” and “wiped out”?
The second part was, by some measures, worse: Trump appeared to defend the confrontation with Iran by saying he wants Iranian officials to say they do not want and will not have a nuclear weapon. Whether the American president understands this or not, Iranian officials have already said this many times, over many years. In fact, Iran’s foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, said it again just hours before the State of the Union address.
So, offered a chance to explain why he’s pushed the nation closer to war, Trump still had nothing new or even coherent to say on the subject.
Nevertheless, the likelihood of violence appears to be increasing, as evidenced by the administration briefing Congress’ “Gang of Eight” on the prospect of potential military action.
Members presumably left the classified, closed-door briefing with a better understanding of the White House’s plan. As for the rest of us, Trump has made effectively no meaningful effort to sell the public on the merits of his confrontational policy. Watch this space.
