Why Trump's Iran Strike Hype Is Falling Flat
Whatever United States military forces may have achieved in last week's brief attack on Iranian nuclear sites — a question that will not be answered definitively anytime soon — we have learned again the most fundamental fact about the current occupant of the White House.
Under Donald Trump, the principal purpose of our military and diplomatic policies is not to enhance American national security or pursue any strategic objective. The most important goal of every U.S. action is childishly simple: to make Trump look heroic and feel powerful, no matter how pointless or destructive it otherwise proves to be.
And Americans, normally susceptible to spurious presidential appeals to nationalism and fear, seem to have noticed that Trump's little war had no plausible aim — and only put the nation in jeopardy of another ruinous "forever war."
Trump's motives in addressing Iran and its nuclear ambitions -- distorted by his unquenchable envy (and enmity) toward his predecessor Barack Obama -- have been questionable from the very moment he first stepped into the White House. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, delivered by the Obama diplomatic team and our European allies in 2015, severely restricted Iran's nuclear program.
It is now clear that Trump's withdrawal, effectively killing that agreement, led directly to the recent advances in the Iranian nuclear program, which in turn provoked Israel to mount its recent military campaign. Had the JCPOA held, as it would have with American support, there would have been no "emergency" need to blow up the Iranian nuclear sites now.
Trump himself created the crisis that he now seeks credit for ending, with his repeated claims that the munitions fired on Iran by American submarines and stealth bombers had "obliterated" the mullahs' nuclear industrial complex.
But did he end the crisis? Were those nuclear facilities and uranium stockpiles "totally destroyed"? Or did the Iranians somehow preserve their nuclear options in case of a military attack?
It would be surprising if they had failed to do so, since Trump — always childishly demanding global attention — foolishly boasted well in advance of his intentions to hit Iran. Having at first claimed that the U.S. would not get embroiled in Israel's military campaign, and indeed that he had tried to discourage it, the president grew jealous of the Israel Defense Forces' apparent success and determined to glom some glory for himself.
American intelligence agencies later told journalists that the biggest operational security problem in our Iran operations was Trump's egomaniacal posturing. The Iranians assuredly took notice and moved as much of their equipment and enriched uranium stockpiles as possible to secret locations.
Merely asking how it all transpired — and how it might have affected the successful "obliteration" of the Iranian nuclear program — was enough to enrage not only Trump but his national security team. The journalists who reported an initial bomb damage assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which found that the air raids had only set the Iranian drive back by "a few months," provoked a hysterical response from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He accused news outlets that revealed the DIA report of lacking patriotism and respect for the armed services, personally berated journalists, including a former Fox News colleague, and immediately ordered a leak investigation.
What Hegseth didn't do — and what Trump didn't do — was deny that the DIA had issued that damning report. Instead, they instantly and rather suspiciously produced a contradictory CIA estimate that reinforced Trump's original claims. Meanwhile, European intelligence agencies and other sources have indicated that, at the very least, Iran has kept a substantial stockpile of enriched uranium, enough to produce several weapons in the future.
When that will be, we cannot know for certain. What we do know is that the military attack on Iran, occurring even as the U.S. was supposedly negotiating with its leadership, has spurred that country and others to build the world's most dangerous weapons as quickly as possible.
Perhaps that is why nearly every poll now shows that Americans strongly disapprove of Trump's Iran misadventure. Foreign leaders have no reason to believe anything Trump says, and neither do we.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism(St. Martin's Press, 2024).
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
