In 2015, during the Republican presidential primaries, Donald Trump stood on stage with Jeb Bush and said to his face, “The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake… We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives… We should have never been in Iraq… We have destabilized the Middle East… They lie. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none, and they knew there were none.” 

At the time, the establishment Republican audience booed, but a star was born. Jeb Bush’s political fortunes soon crumbled. A new narrative took hold of the party. Gone would be the neoconservatives and the Bush family, replaced by a more isolationist, nationalist, “America First” movement led by Trump.

Now, with his attacks on Iran just a few months into his second presidential term, Trump is on the verge of making a catastrophic foreign policy move that threatens to dwarf the illegality, murderousness, and destabilization of the Bush Administration’s crime of the century.  

Trump  is, and always has been, a warmonger, despite his occasional pretense of peace. In 2016 he called the Geneva Conventions, the protocols that prohibit certain war crimes, “the problem.” And he has always been hawkish on Iran, appointing fanatics John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to senior positions in his first administration and assassinating a top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani. Among other crimes, Trump also dramatically expanded the use of President Obama’s drone program, including in Yemen, Somalia, and Syria, killing as many as 7,500 civilians.

But before the last couple weeks, Trump was not beyond the norm in Washington in this regard, and in some ways was actually more restrained than previous administrations. That all may be changing, and Trump might yet make his name in foreign policy infamy. 

A brief timeline of Iran nuclear hysteria

While tensions between Iran and Israel/the US have simmered for decades, things escalated on June 13, when Israeli drones bombed multiple nuclear, residential, and military targets throughout Iran. This first attack occurred while Iran was waiting on diplomatic talks with the US. Then, Trump gave Iran two weeks to return to the negotiating table – and attacked them two days later, bombing three nuclear sites. Now, far beyond simply arming and covering for Israel, the US military is directly involved.

The claimed justification for these attacks is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Iran’s alleged nuclear program has been a fixation of Israel and imperial Washington for decades, but the claims are difficult to take seriously. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been fearmongering about Iranian nukes for more than 30 years. As far back as 1992, he has appeared before various legislative and world bodies to proclaim Iran was on the threshold of obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Trump’s own intelligence services undermine this claim. Appearing before Congress in March of 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said, “The [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” In characteristic fashion, Trump simply swatted this aside, saying, “The intelligence community is wrong… she’s wrong.” Trump needs no evidence to support his claims; his word is more than enough.

Iran’s lack of a nuclear weapons program actually shows remarkable restraint on their part. Trump has done everything in his power to drive them to nuclear armament. Between his hostile rhetoric, his shredding of the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018, and now his outright acts of war, he could very well inspire Iran, and other Middle East states, to acquire nuclear weapons as a deterrent against a belligerent United States.

While there’s no evidence for Israel’s claim that Iran would use nukes to murder Israelis, it’s a bit of a rich accusation considering the source. Israel holds an estimated 90 illegal nuclear weapons themselves, in contravenance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is currently carrying out an active genocide of the people of Gaza as well as attacks against multiple neighbors. Their moral authority is less than zero.

Of course Iran shouldn’t have nuclear weapons. Nobody should. But we can’t unilaterally declare war against anyone who might, theoretically, one day possess them. If that was our logic, Trump should just kill everyone on Earth right now to prevent any of us from ever acquiring nuclear weapons.

Now that the war machine is running at full speed, the reasons hardly matter. Just like when Bush invaded Iraq, the goalposts and motivations will shift. They can pull their favorite justification out of a hat: Iran is undemocratic, Iran treats women or gays or Christians or Jews badly, Iran is a state sponsor of terror. The nuance and truth of any given claim, and whether any of them justify all-out war, doesn’t matter once the war drums start beating.

Trump sells his war with the deep state propaganda machine

So the justification is a blatant lie on one hand and a gross hypocrisy on the other. But that hasn’t stopped the pro-war fervor from dominating on cable news and right-wing internet media.

The echoes of the Bush-era propaganda blitz are resounding. Back in 2002, that administration began making the case for an invasion of Iraq using any excuse they could make up, from connecting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to 9/11 to simply saying, “They hate us for our freedom.” Despite the embarrassing failure and criminality of it all, plenty of the same actors are making similar arguments now. Unlike that effort, though, which involved presenting a comprehensive, if fabricated, case to the American people, Congress, and the UN, Trump has taken these actions unilaterally.

Still, he has received reflexive support from the corporate press. One remarkable headline on FOX News read, “Iran attacks Israel despite US strikes on nuclear sites, Trump calls for peace.” A reader would have no way of knowing from that article any of the relevant context, or even that Israel and the US started the war. Networks and news outlets have also taken to featuring Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah of Iran, the brutal, CIA-installed former dictator. FOX News even refers to him as “his royal highness.” 

Even some of the pretend antiwar MAGA talking heads have done about-faces. Days before Trump’s attack, Charlie Kirk posted on Twitter about the foolishness of regime change in Iran and how 60% of Americans opposed the US getting involved. Once the US started dropping bombs, Kirk tweeted, “President Trump acted for the betterment of humanity… trust our Commander in Chief.” Trump has since openly declared his intent to pursue regime change in Iran.

Expect severe anti-Iranian propaganda to escalate going forward. Iranians will be dehumanized and characterized as brutal murderers. The US and Israel will be the good guys, Iran will be the terror-sponsoring villain, no matter who actually does what. We will see images of bombed Israeli and US buildings and assets, but never Iranian ones. We will mourn lives lost on our side and ignore any lost on theirs. That’s how it goes. When the deep state wants war, it rallies the entirety of corporate media behind itself. Truth, as they say, will be the first casualty.

Creating a more dangerous world

There’s no way to tell where things go from here. It could go no further, but with Trump apparently set on regime change and Iran vowing retaliation, it seems to be headed toward a full-scale, boots-on-the-ground war. The world waits with baited breath on the precipice of a possible nuclear World War III. 

Compared to Iraq, Iran is much bigger, more populous, more powerful, and better-connected in the global community. They are allied with America’s rival nuclear superpowers, China and Russia. So the fallout of any major war is likely to be many times greater than the fallout from the Iraq War – which the world is still dealing with and will be for generations. Hundreds of thousands of lost lives, millions of refugees, the growth of more and deadlier militant Islamic groups, and all at a $3 trillion price tag. Multiply it all if full-scale war breaks out with Iran.

We will live with the burden of the sins of our presidents for the rest of our lives, and the world is a more dangerous place because of them. As the children and friends and families of people killed by American bombs, whether in Iraq or Iran or Gaza or anywhere, come of age, they may not be quick to forgive or forget. 

Trump used diplomacy as a ruse, twice, to catch Iran off guard. They have no reason, nor does any other nation, to listen to anything America ever says again. More than that, it could inspire enemy nations to pursue nukes as a deterrent. After seeing Trump’s behavior, they’d almost be foolish not to. North Korea’s nukes are probably the only thing that has kept us from attacking them.

If a war breaks out, we will, by most measures, almost certainly lose it, just as we lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle East boondoggles. The Iranian people do not want their country to be an American client state. They will not, just as the Iraqis did not, welcome us as liberators and thank us for our bombs. If Iran bombed three US nuclear sites, American patriotism would shoot through the roof. The same is, predictably and justifiably, happening in Iran.

With his determination to start an all-out war and pursue regime change in Iran, Trump has transformed into the worst kind of neocon he always pretended to hate. His followers have, sadly yet predictably, hung onto him and will come along for the ride. Without intense activism to turn things around fast, all signs are pointing to much more death and devastation to come, lasting generations, destroying families, destabilizing regions, bankrupting the country, and ruining what’s left of our national soul.