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Why Is the U.S. in Iran Again?

You would think that, if you the president, and are going to launch a war, or a police action, or an intervention, or [FILL IN EUPHEMISM HERE], there is one question where you would make sure that you have a very clear answer, and that your underlings know that very clear answer, and that anyone and everyone in that administration repeats that answer ad infinitum to the press and to the American people, so that everything is as clear as a bell.

That is not how this administration operates, however. The Iran War is less than 2 weeks old, and the White House has already earned an "F" in The Politics of Geopolitics 101. And this is not one of those F grades you might improve upon by throwing yourself on the mercy of the professor, and maybe doing some extra work. It's a done deal; the incompetence involved is shocking and the bell cannot be un-rung. Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush, among others, led America into unpopular wars, but even they made a very clear case at the outset for why war was necessary. Their cases were not necessarily honest, nor were they validated by subsequent events, but at least they had a clear answer to the question of "Why?"

The extent to which Trump and his team have flailed around is indicated by this list of ten reasons that the President or a high-ranking member of his administration have given for why Iran was attacked:

Nukes: Trump himself has claimed that the main reason Iran was attacked was to keep them from developing a nuclear weapon. This despite the fact that he also claimed that the Iran nuclear program was "wiped out" the last time he ordered Iran to be bombed.
Conventional Weapons: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, by contrast, told reporters that the goal was to deprive Iran of some conventional weapons, specifically "Iran's short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy."
Blame the Jews: Rubio also said that the whole thing was done at the instigation of Israel, which "forced" the United States' hand. Someone in the administration realized that "Israel is telling Donald Trump what to do" is not a good look for him, and so the next day Trump denied that Israel was the instigator, while Rubio denied he'd ever said any such thing.
Too Much Economic Power: In that same presser, Rubio also said it was necessary to smack Iran down because they control too much of the world's oil supply, and that's bad for the global economy.
Imminent Threat: Rubio, who seems to be doing a lot of freestyling these days, also claimed that the U.S. struck Iran because Iran presented an "imminent threat," and it was just a question of who fired the first shot. Nobody in the administration has been able to provide any evidence whatsoever that an Iranian attack on the U.S. was imminent. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), who has been carrying plenty of water for the administration on this, went so far as to say that Iran has "posed an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." Perhaps he is unclear on the meaning of the word "imminent."
Punishment: In case you're wondering where Cotton got the "47 years" figure from, it was from Trump's very first remarks on the Iran War, in which he decreed that Iran was being punished for 47 years of killing Americans. That works out to "since 1979, when the Shah was deposed."
Regime Change: There's no question that Ayatollah Khamenei was a bad guy—brutally repressive to his own people, and a threat to global stability. So, it's no surprise that one of the (many) arguments Trump has made is that the U.S. needed to instigate regime change. As we pointed out over the weekend, however, a president better make damn sure that the successor regime will be an improvement over the deposed regime. George H.W. Bush knew that, and so left the deeply problematic Saddam Hussein in place after the Persian Gulf War. His son did not know, and so removed Saddam, with disastrous results. And Trump is several standard deviations dumber than Bush the Younger. He clearly has no idea what would be involved in actually changing the Iranian regime, and even less of a clue as to how to put someone or something better in place.
Armageddon: This one's gotta be coming from Hegseth. In any event, over 100 soldiers have filed formal complaints because they have been told by superior officers that the purpose of going to war with Iran is to bring about armageddon, and so to commence the end of days. Needless to say, this is not music to the ears of soldiers who are Muslim, Jewish, Quaker, or otherwise are not apocalyptic Christians.
Stop the Steal: With Trump, it seems that everything eventually comes back around to the 2020 election. So it is with Iran. Hours after the bombing commenced, Trump got on his social-media-platform-for-warmongers to post this: "Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States."
Incompetence and Selfishness: One last explanation we will mention, put forward by Trump himself, is that the U.S. has attacked Iran because the president is an incompetent negotiator, and a phony war is the only option he has for trying to get voters on his side heading into an election. If you think it is odd that Trump would say this about himself, you are right. He actually said it in 2011, as an attack on Barack Obama:

Though Trump did not know he would be referring to himself, 15 years later, the message is nonetheless as clear as a bell: Wars with Iran are for presidents who don't know how to negotiate. If you do watch the footage, which is only about 90 seconds, also note two other things: (1) How lucid Trump was back then, and (2) the small hands.

Please be clear that this is not an exhaustive list, by any means. We find ourselves adapting the old line about football quarterbacks: "If you have 10 (or 11, or 12, or 13) 'good' reasons for why you started a war, you don't have any good reason for why you started a war."

Given all of the flailing around, it's abundantly clear to us that someone in the administration, perhaps many someones, thought they were just going to run the Venezuela playbook again. To wit:

Force a repressive dictator out of power
Lots of cheering, and maybe some momentum toward a Nobel Peace Prize
Plunder the nation's oil
Fin

This hasn't even worked out in Venezuela, as there was only a little cheering (and from only a few corners), no momentum toward a Nobel and, most obviously, no surfeit of oil. It is working out even worse in Iran. In fairness to Trump, we suppose, we will point out that the much smarter and savvier Vladimir Putin made the same basic mistake with Ukraine.

We wrote yesterday about some of the political headaches that Trump has created himself that could soon come home to roost. We'd like to add three more to the list right now:

The Oil: This is complicated, and it has both an economic and a political aspect. Starting with the economics, the Trump administration obviously does not want gas prices to go through the roof (which means their timing is bad here, because gas prices always go up in spring and summer anyhow). To that end, the administration is bandying about various plans for keeping the petroleum flowing. The White House wants to help tankers get past the now-dangerous, and now-mined Strait of Hormuz, in... some way. It is also thinking about tapping into the United States' strategic petroleum reserve (SPR). And it is thinking about taking a bunch of Iran's oil.

None of these schemes is likely to avert an explosion in gas prices if this war drags on. No matter how much protection the U.S. offers, oil producers are going to be very skittish about sending their ships into No Man's Land. Well, No Man's Water. The SPR can fill some gaps in the petroleum economy, for a short period of time, but it's not enough to counterbalance a worldwide slowdown in oil production. And taking oil from Iran will be no small feat, and any attempt to do it is not likely to produce dividends anytime soon.

Not working in Trump's favor is that the oil market is very much shaped by speculation. Various consumers (e.g., airlines) want price certainty, so they can then price their goods and services for consumers without being at risk of taking a bath. Although oil has shot up over $100/barrel a couple of times in the last few days, prices have not been near as high as they were after Russia attacked Ukraine. The general consensus is that the big-time oil purchasers and sellers have been dining on a steady TACO diet—they believe that Trump always chickens out, that he'll end this war very soon, and that the interruptions in the oil supply chain will just be a blip. But if they start to fear otherwise, the oil prices will go up, and then they'll be at least-semi-locked-in for much of the rest of 2026, no matter what Trump does.

Here, by the way, is a graph of oil prices, per barrel, over the last 5 years:

As you can see, even with the markets remaining relatively calm, oil prices have shot up a lot. If the markets get less calm, it could be calamitous.

The political problem, meanwhile, is simple. If an American ship is sunk protecting an oil tanker, if American soldiers are killed trying to seize an Iranian oil field, etc., then people will say (correctly) that American service members were sacrificed on the altar of cheap gas. The voting public DOES. NOT. LIKE. when soldiers die for oil.
The School: This has gotten some attention, but not as much as we might expect. In the first wave of bombing, a missile went off course, and struck a girls' school in Tehran, killing 149 students. Since then, the White House has done everything possible to try to pin the blame on anyone and everyone but the actual culprit, as suggested by the visual evidence, namely the United States. Yesterday, for example, Trump tried to finger Iran, though without being able to explain why Iran would be bombing itself.

The U.S. military is conducting an investigation, and has already said that the preliminary indications are that the U.S. was responsible. Eventually, there will be a final report. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will undoubtedly try to bury that report, but he's not likely to be successful. At that point, you'll have a smoking gun that indicates that the blood of 149 innocent children is on the hands of the Trump administration. We suspect that will not go over well with the American public, especially if the number of American soldiers killed also continues to climb.
The Blame: We are surprised that we really haven't seen people putting things together in this way, even though the chain of events is crystal clear. The attack on Iran has been very clearly tied to the threat that is posed by their becoming a nuclear power. Their progress toward becoming a nuclear power is because of the work they've done since the cancellation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018. The JCPOA was canceled at the instigation of Donald Trump, who boasted that he could easily negotiate a better deal than the one Barack Obama (and a gaggle of international partners) came up with. To nobody's surprise, Trump did not, in fact, come up with a better deal. Or any deal.

In short, is there really any question that this war is 100%, no doubt about it, Trump's fault? He's the one who singlehandedly destabilized the entire situation, by all indications because he hates anything associated with Obama. He's the one who placed all of his faith in his allegedly legendary skills in the art of the deal, despite the fact that those skills have never actually shown themselves in a political or diplomatic context (or even in a business context, really). And he's the one who ordered a bombing campaign against Iran, because he could not think of any other alternative (despite the fact that negotiations were ongoing.

We imagine that, eventually, some people are going to notice all of these things, and are going to start talking a lot about how Trump has full ownership of this whole fiasco.

We would guess that the best outcome available for Trump right now (and probably also the best outcome available for the U.S.), is for him to confidently declare "victory" and to end the assault on Iran immediately. That would, at least, stop the bleeding, both literally and metaphorically.

Because Trump is able to create his own reality, for at least some people, MAGA would undoubtedly be satisfied. Maybe not all of MAGA, but a lot of it. On the other hand, the damage that has been done with independent voters is very possibly irreparable. Similarly, the Iranians have been poked in the eye, hard, and they are not going to forget or forgive. One has to expect more radicalization, and very possibly terrorist attacks, or maybe a U.S. airliner shot down, or something like that. Further, if the Iranians were already motivated to develop nuclear weapons, either as an offensive weapon, or merely as a deterrent, they are going to be doubly motivated now.

So, ending it now would limit the damage, but it would not undo it, not by a long shot. And, in any event, the White House certainly does not appear to be considering that possibility right now. Heck, earlier this week, Karoline Leavitt said that re-instituting the draft is "on the table." It's amazing that the administration is willing to even consider that, and even more amazing that they're willing to say it out loud. If they actually did it, then the "Bush line" might become the ceiling for Trump's approval rating, rather than the floor. We can't imagine they would be that foolish. Trump surely remembers what the Vietnam-era draft (which he avoided because his foot hurt) did to popular opinion. Still, it's an indication that the administration is thinking about, and talking about, long-term plans, which likely means they're NOT thinking about, and talking about, a short-term war.

As we noted on Sunday, we got a lot of letters on several subjects, too many to run in the mailbag. One of those subjects was Iran; we thought we'd share a few of those letters now. A lot of these readers are thinking along the same lines that we are, in one way or another:

J.K. in Portland, OR, writes: This is yet another example of the combination of ignorance, idiocy, and ineptness of the current occupant of the White House and his vassals. Unconditional surrender (US) was first associated in the United States with Ulysses S Grant. He, however, did not apply it to the entire Confederacy but only to individual cities he had besieged. Robert E. Lee surrendered and went home with his horse and sword. US was used as a demand to end the German part of World War II, after the German homeland was occupied by Soviet forces on the east, American and other forces on the west, and Hitler had committed suicide in his bunker. It was not required of the Italians, who sort of gave up piecemeal, or the Japanese, who surrendered after being allowed to keep their emperor on the throne (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified by Truman because an invasion of the Japanese homeland was projected to cost 500,000 further American casualties, not to mention more deaths of military and civilian prisoners of war held by Japan).

Iran is currently a theocracy, and is not about to unconditionally surrender because that means giving up religious beliefs and laws, and the ayatollahs won't do that without a physical presence of American troops on Iranian soil. And if the United States does put troops on the ground in Iran, some, almost surely many, of those troops will become casualties, and that will result in a near-total loss of support for the war at home (see Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan...)

E.W. in Silver Spring, MD, writes: Here are two unrelated thoughts one week into the U.S. bombing campaign. The first is, with Russia now likely helping Iran out, it seems that we may well have our own Ukraine, with U.S. adversaries (Russia, China, etc.) assisting another country to degrade its military capabilities at a very small cost to themselves. Meanwhile the invading country fails to articulate a legitimate casus belli. I'm not saying the two wars are the same, or will have the same results, but the parallels are alarming.

A second thought. The price of oil has skyrocketed, but the U.S. is a net exporter of oil, very little of which comes from the Middle East, and even less from the Persian Gulf. This means the oil supplying the U.S. market has remained virtually unchanged as has demand, but because oil is a global commodity the price of oil—and thus oil products—has increased significantly. Similarly the cost to extract the oil has remained the same. This means those additional dollars being spent in the U.S. are profit. I wonder how much oil companies will pay this time to keep these prices that high, given that their 2024 investment seems to have paid off.

B.C. in Walpole, ME, writes: Many news sites are reporting that the U.S. has a plan to "arm the Kurds" so that they can attack the Iranian government forces.

During World War II, the U.S. pumped an enormous amount of war materiel into China for the Nationalists to use to fight the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek reasoned, correctly, that: (1) the Nationalist army was no match for the Japanese Imperial Army; (2) That the U.S. would defeat the Japanese sooner or later, probably sooner and (3) As Chiang famously stated, "The Japanese are a disease of the skin; the communists are a disease of the heart." He therefore saved the armaments for after the war with the Japanese was over, in order to fight the civil war with the communists.

Arming the Kurds does not mean the Kurds will take up arms against the Iranian government. Why should they? The U.S. will win the war against the Iranian military. It's what happens after the U.S. military victory that will be the Kurds' concern. And where did Trump/Hegseth get the idea that the Kurds are trained, organized, ready to fight, that they only lack weapons do so?

What do non-Kurdish Iranians think about arming the Kurds? What do the Turks think about arming Kurds? What do the Iraqis think about arming Kurds? It sounds to me like a formula for civil war in Iran that could spill over to other countries.

I really don't know about the Kurds, Iran, the Middle East. But I do know that Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party did not use the weapons the U.S. sent to fight the Japanese, that those weapons were used in the (1927-49) civil war during 1945-49, that the communists used the Nationalist army as a supply depot, and that when the CCP entered Beijing at the end of the war, the communists rode in on American tanks and jeeps.

We cannot seriously think that we can supply arms to a group of people and they will do exactly what we want with them, or that they will even be able to hold onto them.

Z.Z. in Coarsegold, CA, writes: You published my letter comparing the current Iran buildup to the second Iraq war and asking the unanswered question: What happens after the air campaign? Since then, we've watched the hammer swing. Missiles have launched. Targets have been struck. The regime in Iran remains in power. The 9-year-old has dropped the hammer, and there is still no nail in sight.

So what should we look for now?

First, if not a nail, then what is the hammer for? The administration has assembled this force. It is expensive. It is visible. It demands use. If not regime change, what is the actual objective? Deterrence? Bargaining chip? Domestic political theater?

Second, what does "victory" look like to this president? Do we assume a traditional definition: military objectives achieved, stability established? Or do we see a president who treats military force as theater, perhaps "victory" is simply the performance itself? The bombing footage. The approval ratings bump. The boast at the next rally. If that's the case, the question "What comes next?" may be literally meaningless—because there is no "next," only the next performance.

Finally, who stops the 9-year-old? My letter noted the absence of "legal review or any adult supervision." But who are the adults in this scenario? The military? Congress? The courts? All have been sidelined or cowed. The question of institutional resistance—or its absence—is worth exploring.

The hammer doesn't stop—it just finds new things to hit.

S.T. in Worcestershire, England, UK, writes: Not for the first time, I am reminded of the doctrine proposed by the late British comedienne and wit Linda Smith circa 2003 that American Presidents should only be allowed to attack those countries whose names they could spell.

G.W. in Oxnard, CA, writes: You wrote that the administration's Iran attack rationale is weak and even self-contradictory. That is because Convicted Felon Trump (CFT) doesn't want to say the quiet part out loud this time. Multiple Persian Gulf states have paid the Trump family hundreds of millions in bribes and this is the payoff. Those are pretty big bribes, but for that price they got the U.S. government to spend billions to attack Iran. If this action solves those states' Iran problem for some long time, it will be an excellent bargain. By contrast, if this leads to a wider war and the Straits of Hormuz is closed for a long time and they lose billions in oil and gas revenues, this will be among the worst business decisions in history.

In short, it's a big mess. We think so, the readers think so. It's hard to find anyone, outside of the administration and its close political allies, who does not think so. We expect to have a few more letters sometime soon. We also had a "We the People" for today, but there just isn't time to finish it properly. Look for it Friday. (Z)

This item appeared on www.electoral-vote.com. Read it Monday through Friday for political and election news, Saturday for answers to reader's questions, and Sunday for letters from readers.

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