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Trump is marching toward war with Iran. He hasn’t bothered to make clear why | Mohamad Bazzi

In October 2002, George W Bush laid out his case for taking the US to war against Iraq in a half-hour speech televised around the world. Bush warned that Saddam Hussein’s regime could attack the US “on any given day” with chemical or biological weapons, including anthrax, mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin. He argued Iraq was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and could develop a bomb in less than a year. And if those warnings weren’t enough to terrify the US public, Bush invoked the ultimate fear of an unprovoked nuclear attack: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

The world soon learned that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq was based on manipulated intelligence and outright lies; the Iraqi regime no longer had any weapons of mass destruction and was not developing them. But the administration’s relentless campaign to convince Americans that Saddam was a threat had paid off by generating significant support. As the invasion got under way in March 2003, many polls showed public approval of the war at more than 70%. Bush’s own approval rating hovered around a similar high, underscoring that war can boost the popularity of America’s commander-in-chief as few other things can.

Today, Donald Trump is marching the US toward war with Iran, but without making a case for why Washington should attack and whether Iran poses a threat to Americans that would justify the risks of military action. Trump has ordered the largest US military build-up in the Middle East since the Iraq invasion in 2003. To be sure, Trump has broadly described concerns over a supposed nuclear threat. But unlike in the lead-up to that war, when the Bush administration secured approval from Congress for an attack and spent months promoting its false argument that Iraq was developing WMDs, Trump and his top aides aren’t bothering to make clear why they might bomb Iran or what, exactly, the US hopes to achieve.

Unlike two decades ago, when memories of the September 11 terrorist attacks were still fresh and the US was not yet bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans today are opposed to foreign interventions. One poll last month by Quinnipiac University found that 70% of American voters oppose military action in Iran – a complete reversal from US public opinion ahead of the Iraq invasion. Trump also risks alienating segments of his Maga base, since he has portrayed himself for years as a leader who would end the US’s legacy of forever wars.

Over the past month, the Pentagon positioned two aircraft carriers, dozens of fighter jets, bombers and refueling tankers within striking distance of Iran – and it’s now ready to carry out a major military campaign which could extend for weeks. As the Trump administration maneuvered this armada into place, there’s been virtually no public debate in the US about the possibility of an attack on Iran that could unleash a wide, and unpredictable, conflict throughout the Middle East. And while Democrats plan to force a vote on the matter, the Republican-led Congress has so far stayed on the sidelines, without reasserting its authority to wage war or even demanding that the president make a clear case for military intervention.

Trump had a chance to clarify his goals in Iran during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, and much of the world was eager to hear what he wanted to achieve. But Trump spent just three minutes talking about Iran during a speech that lasted an hour and 47 minutes – the longest State of the Union in history. He revealed little about his intentions for Iran and the large military force he has amassed in the region, and mostly repeated the vague talking points he has been making for weeks. The US president did not explain if his ultimate goal was to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear program, protect Iranian protesters demanding economic and social reforms, or to overthrow the theocratic regime that took power after the Islamic revolution in 1979.

“We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal,” Trump said, without explaining what kind of deal he’s seeking with the Iranian regime. He added: “My preference … is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain: I will never allow the world’s No 1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump said the US has not heard Iranian leaders say “those secret words: we will never have a nuclear weapon”. In fact, Tehran has repeatedly made that promise and insists that its vast program to enrich uranium is solely for peaceful uses. In a social media post before Trump’s speech on Tuesday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said his country “will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon”.

On Thursday, Araghchi held indirect talks in Geneva with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The negotiations ended without an agreement, although mediators from Oman said talks would continue next week. Trump has been impatient with prolonged negotiations, and he could order a limited military strike to force Iran into making more concessions.

The current Iran crisis was partly instigated by Trump. In May 2018, during his first term, he unilaterally withdrew Washington from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed US sanctions that eventually crippled the Iranian economy. The 2015 agreement, which Trump called “the worst deal in history”, was negotiated by Barack Obama’s administration and five other world powers – and it provided Tehran with relief from some international sanctions in exchange for limits on its nuclear activity. The deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium at low levels, enough to operate nuclear power plants but not to produce weapons. But after Trump tore up the original agreement, Iran had little incentive to abide by enrichment limits since it was facing new sanctions.

In recent years, Tehran moved closer to developing a nuclear weapon than ever before. As of early 2025, it had enriched enough uranium to produce six nuclear bombs, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But many analysts argued that the Iranian regime had not made a decision to weaponize its program – and it would still need up to a year to develop an actual nuclear warhead and install it on a missile. Last March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that US intelligence agencies continued “to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”, though she later claimed the country could have one within weeks.

When he returned to office last year, Trump seemed eager to reach a new deal with Iran, and he sent US negotiators to meet with top Iranian officials. After five rounds of indirect talks mediated by Oman, negotiations broke down when Israel launched a surprise attack in mid-June, bombing dozens of targets across Iran and killing some of the country’s top military officials and scientists. Washington briefly joined Israel’s war, after Trump ordered the Pentagon to bomb three of Iran’s major nuclear facilities, which Israel could not attack on its own.

Within hours of the airstrikes, Trump declared the operation “a spectacular military success” and said that Iran’s key sites for uranium enrichment “have been completely and totally obliterated”. But weeks later, leaked US intelligence assessments found that two of the nuclear sites were not as badly damaged as the administration first implied.

Trump continues to insist that he “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, and he repeated the claim during his State of the Union address this week. Since late June, the White House website has featured a statement headlined: “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated – and Suggestions Otherwise Are Fake News.”

The president’s claims raise basic questions: why has the US assembled an armada in the Middle East to eliminate a nuclear program that Trump insists he has already destroyed? And why bring the region to the brink of war if Iran no longer poses a threat?

On 18 February, reporters asked the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, similar questions about Trump’s rationale for a potential attack. “Well, there’s many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran,” Leavitt said. But like her boss, she offered no explanation for whether Iran poses a significant threat to the US that would justify going to war. Instead, Leavitt argued that Americans should simply trust their president. “He’s always thinking about what’s in the best interest of the United States of America, of our military, of the American people,” she said.

Of course, the last time the American people trusted a president intent on going to war, it ended in catastrophe. And yet Trump now risks sleepwalking the US into another war without even bothering to build a case based on a lie.