Trump Administration’s Iran War Justifications Keep Changing

The Trump administration has offered an array of conflicting justifications for the war with Iran since the bombs started falling on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel.

The latest came on Tuesday, when President Donald Trump said that he launched the war because he believed that Iran was about to attack Israel and “others.”

The Trump administration has offered an array of conflicting justifications for the war with Iran since the bombs started falling on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel.

The latest came on Tuesday, when President Donald Trump said that he launched the war because he believed that Iran was about to attack Israel and “others.”

“We were having negotiations with these lunatics,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to nuclear talks with Iran, “and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn’t do it, they ​were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”

(This is despite the fact that Trump administration officials reportedly acknowledged to Congress on Sunday that there was no intelligence to suggest that Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first. Not to mention, and as the Pentagon stated in a briefing on Monday, the United States began building up its military presence in the region for possible action weeks ago. And Trump had been threatening military action against Iran since early January.)

But less than 24 hours before Trump offered this assessment, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States had acted preemptively because it knew that Israel was going to attack Iran, and that Washington expected Iran to retaliate by attacking U.S. forces.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday. However, Rubio declined to say that Israel had forced the United States to act, noting that the U.S. operation “had to happen no matter what.” The impending Israeli action, he said, simply explains why the U.S. acted when it did.

Republicans in Congress later amplified Rubio’s explanation, effectively blaming Israel for the United States getting involved. “Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander ​in chief and the administration … had a very difficult decision to make,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Monday.

Asked about the apparent contradiction between Rubio’s and Trump’s statements, the White House on Tuesday afternoon provided Foreign Policy with this statement from press secretary Karoline Leavitt:

President Trump’s courageous decision to launch Operation Epic Fury is grounded in a truth that presidents for nearly 50 years have been talking about, but no president had the courage to confront: Iran poses a direct and imminent threat to the United States of America and our troops in the Middle East. The rogue Iranian Regime under the evil hand of the Ayatollah has killed and maimed thousands of American citizens and soldiers over the years – and that ends with President Trump.

Rubio on Tuesday sought to play cleanup and pushed back on the notion that the United States launched the war because of Israel. “This had to happen anyway,” Rubio said. “The president made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program.”

This is not the first time that the administration has made statements on the war that didn’t exactly jibe.

In a video announcing the operation on Saturday, Trump offered a long list of historic U.S. grievances with Iran—ranging from the 1979 hostage crisis to Tehran’s support for proxies in the region that have killed U.S. troops—as he explained why he ordered the attack. He also spoke about the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown on anti-government protests in January. But the primary reason Trump offered for the attack was Iran’s nuclear ambitions—though Tehran has denied ever wanting a nuclear weapon.

“They’ve rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” Trump said.

Trump reiterated the claim that the strikes he ordered last June “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program—an assertion that goes against the notion that the country poses an imminent nuclear threat. But Trump said that Iran was attempting to rebuild its nuclear program while continuing to develop “long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”

While there’s evidence that Iran had taken steps to rebuild its nuclear facilities, Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, wrote on X on Tuesday that “there has been no evidence of Iran building a nuclear bomb,” though he acknowledged that “its large stockpile of near-weapons grade enriched uranium and refusal to grant my inspectors full access are cause for serious concern.”

As for Trump’s assertion that Iran was developing missiles that could “soon” reach the U.S homeland, that is not backed up by U.S. intelligence assessments. In a report last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested that “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability,” then Iran could have a militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035—in other words, a little under a decade from now.

Trump has also repeatedly argued that Iran was not negotiating with the United States in good faith on its nuclear program and was merely stalling while building up its missile program. Yet Trump told ABC News on Sunday that Iran had made significant concessions in the most recent round of talks. What’s more, Trump also suggested that the success of both the U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January and the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last June contributed to his decision to abandon diplomacy and greenlight the attack.

“A year ago, it would have been great to accept that deal for me,” Trump told ABC News. “But we have become spoiled.”

In that same interview, Trump also appeared to indicate that Iran’s plot to assassinate him during the 2024 presidential campaign played into his decision to attack Iran. “I got him before he got me,” Trump said, referring to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “They tried twice. Well, I got him first.”

While Republicans in Congress have largely rallied behind Trump over the war, which was launched without congressional approval, Democratic lawmakers are expressing grave concerns—particularly in relation to the shifting justifications and objectives.

“There is no evidence that has been presented to us that the United States was under threat of imminent attack from Iran,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Tuesday. “It’s hard for the American people to understand the rationale.”

Lawmakers are expected to vote on a resolution later this week that would block Trump from continuing to attack Iran without congressional approval, but previous legislation to rein in the president’s war powers have failed.