Latest news with #WMD
The Guardian
8 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
America made a catastrophic mistake with the Iraq war. Is it about to repeat it in Iran?
Two decades ago, as Americans debated whether their country should invade Iraq, one question loomed the largest: did Saddam Hussein possess weapons of mass destruction? If so, the implication was that the United States should disarm and overthrow his regime by military force. If not, Washington could keep that option in reserve and continue to contain Saddam through economic sanctions and routine bombings. In time, the implications of the Iraq war far exceeded the boundaries of the original debate. Saddam, it turned out, had no weapons of mass destruction. But suppose he had possessed the chemical and biological agents that the war's advocates claimed. Invading his country to destroy his regime would have given him the greatest possible incentive to use the worst weapons at his disposal. The war would have been just as mistaken — more so, in fact. For the same reason, the matter of WMD hardly explains the war's genesis or its ultimate consequences. The advocates of invasion, it is true, didn't want Saddam to build his supposed arsenal and potentially go nuclear. More important, however, they saw an opportunity to assert America's dominance on the global stage after the country was struck on 9/11. They wanted to remake the Middle East and demonstrate American power. That they did, just not as they hoped. Today the United States government, under President Donald Trump, is again weighing whether to use military force against a Middle Eastern country that was not preparing to attack the United States. This time the decisive question is supposed to be whether Iran was building a nuclear weapon and reaching some ill-defined point of no return. If you answer yes, you therefore favor US strikes on Iranian enrichment facilities and possibly much else. After all, the United States has long maintained that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon, and if that goal cannot be achieved by diplomacy — even if America's ally Israel may have spoiled that diplomacy — it must be attempted by force. The American public should resist such thinking, which does not make sense. Iran, according to US intelligence, was not on the verge of producing a useable nuclear device. It was giving itself that option, producing highly enriched uranium, but had not yet decided to obtain a weapon, much less undertaken the additional steps needed to construct one. For the past two months, Iran had been in diplomatic negotiations with the Trump administration, and both sides appeared to be getting closer to a deal that would drastically curtail Tehran's enrichment of uranium and prevent any path to the bomb. Then Israel attacked. It acted less to preempt an Iranian bomb than to preempt American diplomacy. A new nuclear deal would have lifted sanctions on Iran's battered economy, helping it to recover and grow. A deal would have stabilized Iran's position in the Middle East and potentially strengthened it over time. Precisely by succeeding in preventing Iran from going nuclear, a deal would have advanced Iran's integration into the region, accelerating the wary rapprochement Tehran had achieved with its historic rival, Saudi Arabia, over the past two years. The specific deal under discussion, which envisaged bringing Iran into a regional consortium to enrich uranium, would have kick-started the process. From there, who knows: perhaps the United States might normalize relations with Iran and, having rid itself of its main regional enemy, finally act on the desire of successive bipartisan presidents, Trump included, to pull back from the Middle East. This was the outcome that would have best served the interests of the United States. This was the outcome Israel acted to prevent. To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a formidable, normalized, and non-nuclear Iran was the threat that mattered most. Attacking Iran, by contrast, presented an opportunity — to cripple and perhaps even overthrow the Islamic Republic, whose best air defenses Israel had disabled the previous year, after Iran's strongest regional allies in Lebanon and Syria crumbled in spectacular fashion. Israel does not know, because no one can, what kind of Iran will emerge from the wreckage: whether it will be more aggrieved or less, nuclear armed or not, a functioning state or a cauldron of chaos. Netanyahu took a gamble nonetheless, figuring the United States would finish his job, clean up his mess, or both. Even if Iran were speeding toward a nuclear weapon, even if diplomacy had been exhausted, the threat of a nuclear Iran should not be inflated. Suppose for a moment that Iran went nuclear, which it may well do now that the absence of such a deterrent left it vulnerable to attack. If Iran got the bomb, the United States, a nuclear-armed country, would remain fundamentally secure. Israel, a nuclear-armed country, would remain fundamentally secure. Iran would go nuclear to ensure the survival of its regime. Firing nuclear weapons at Israel would assure Iran's destruction. Iran is unlikely to do that. Make no mistake: for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons is entirely undesirable. It could trigger the further spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and beyond. Iran could resume its destabilizing and destructive activities, targeting US interests and allies, assured that no one would dare to strike at the regime. The United States has rightly invested considerable effort, over decades, to prevent an Iranian bomb. But is that objective worth war? Our war? This war? If the United States joins Israel's fight to try to finish Israel's job, it will enter into a war of unknowable scope against a country of 90 million people in a region of marginal strategic significance. Iran may well retaliate against Americans, triggering a large-scale, open-ended conflict. In the absolute best-case scenario, the war would quickly end in an Iranian capitulation so complete that Israel would be content to stop shooting. What then? Iranians won't forget being attacked. Israelis won't trust the country they attacked but left intact. And Americans will see that no matter whom they elect — even on the slogan of 'America first' — their leaders refuse to take control of events and act on the national imperative to leave Middle East wars behind and focus instead on the great many unsolved and worsening problems that will actually decide America's fate. If, on the other hand, the United States steps back from the brink, it will open up new possibilities. Of valuing the well-being of Americans over the hatred of distant demons. Of no longer living in permanent, insatiable fear. Of getting out of the position from which a rogue ally can obstruct America's efforts, determine its national agenda, and damage its civic life. Those are the possibilities worth fighting for. Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
India Today
11 hours ago
- Politics
- India Today
Khamenei's fatwa against nukes: Did Iran sell a lie to the world?
"When preserving Muslim blood becomes obligatory for everyone, if preserving the life of one Muslim depends on you, even lying becomes obligatory for you," said the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This willingness to lie in times of threat and danger is seen by many as an intrinsic part of the Islamic Republic's strategy. That same obfuscation has shaped Iran's decades-long nuclear narrative, toggling between a claimed religious restraint and strategic aggression, centred around one claim: a "fatwa" or a religious decree by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banning nuclear the heart of this narrative is a claim by a top Iranian official, who went on to become its president."The idea struck me to introduce the concept of a fatwa during the 2004 nuclear negotiations. There was no prior coordination," recalled Hassan Rouhani, then Iran's then-chief nuclear negotiator, in a 2012 interview with the BBC. He was the cleric who later served two terms as Iran's president from 2013 to 2021. Later, speaking to the Iranian magazine Mehrnameh, Rouhani described how, during talks with the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and the UK, he said, "The Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa declaring the acquisition of a nuclear bomb forbidden. This fatwa is more important to us than the NPT or any additional protocol. It matters more than any law."advertisementThis was 2004, and Iran was under scrutiny over its nuclear programme, which it claims is for peaceful, civilian the US invading Saddam Hussein's Iraq over its alleged stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2003, the heat was on Iran. The Islamic Republic's two undeclared nuclear facilities were also revealed by an Iranian opposition then, the "Khamenei fatwa" has become a central diplomatic tool wielded by Iran at nuclear talks, invoked to signal moral clarity while maintaining strategic yesterday once again -- after over two foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain are likely to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday (June 20) in Geneva, Reuters reported, quoting a German diplomatic meeting will come as the Israel-Iran conflict enters its second June 13, Israel launched "Operation Rising Lion", a coordinated strike targeting Iran's nuclear and military infrastructure across multiple cities, including Tehran, Natanz, Shiraz, Kermanshah, and Esfahan. Iran retaliated with more than 400 missiles. Some evaded Israel's Iron Dome and caused civilian has been secretive about its nuclear facility in Dimona too. Combined with Iran's threats to annihilate Israel, its nuclear programme has been seen suspiciously by the Iran has claimed its right to civilian nuclear energy, and has time and again referred to the fatwa to claim that it would never go for nuclear-grade uranium has been referred to as the fatwa are remarks by Khamenei. It's technically not a fatwa, but Iranians say since the advice was from the Supreme Leader, it should be considered so."Fatwas can change," warned Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran expert and former seminarian. "Khamenei can easily issue another one."So, is the Khamenei fatwa more of a political valve than a theological wall?IRAN'S DIPLOMACY ON N-PROGRAMME AND THE FATWAThe turning point came in 2002, when the exiled opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) publicly revealed that the country had two undeclared nuclear facilities in Natanz and disclosures were confirmed by satellite imagery and later by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, which uncovered advanced uranium enrichment activities and heavy water production, sparking international fears that Iran's nuclear programme was not strictly tensions mounting, the regime moved to craft a moral late 2003, amid the early phase of the nuclear standoff, Khamenei declared that the production and use of nuclear weapons were haram (forbidden).advertisementIn October 2003, under growing global pressure, Khamenei gave a speech declaring weapons of mass destruction forbidden."We don't want a nuclear bomb These things don't agree with our principles."This was a calculated move to present Iran's nuclear posture as rooted in coincided with the US invasion of Iraq, which heightened Iranian fears of becoming Washington's next responded by projecting religious restraint: a deliberate attempt to frame its position not as a result of geopolitical pressure, but of Islamic in 2004, presented those remarks as Khamenei's in August 2005, Iran formally cited the fatwa at an IAEA meeting in Vienna, claiming Islamic teachings prohibited such fatwa was never an irreversible decree. Instead, it was a result of political expediency, most notably a 2010 message where Khamenei called the use of nuclear weapons haram but said nothing about building or storing EXACTLY IS THE KHAMENEI FATWA?What Iranian diplomats later hailed as a "fatwa" began as the final paragraph of a 2010 message Khamenei sent to a Tehran disarmament conference. This was not a formal religious ruling, but a political statement repurposed as theology, according to a report by an American think-tank, the Atlantic portion of that message, promoted by Iranian diplomatic missions as a binding fatwa, reads:"We believe that adding to nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons and biological weapons, are a serious threat to humanity. The Iranian nation, which itself is a victim of the use of chemical weapons, feels more than other nations the danger of the production and accumulation of such weapons and is ready to put all its resources in the way of dealing with it. We consider the use of these weapons to be haram (forbidden), and the effort to protect mankind from this great disaster is everyone's duty."Though framed as a definitive religious decree, this statement was part of a broader diplomatic Iranian embassies abroad repeatedly marketed it as such, turning it into a central piece of Iran's diplomatic arsenal during nuclear to the Foreign Policy magazine, Khamenei actually issued an anti-nuclear fatwa in the mid-1990s upon a request for his religious opinion on nuclear weapons. It says the Khamenei letter was never made public as then Iran President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani argued against nuclear weapons, and the fatwa's publicity was deemed unnecessary FATWA AND RATIONAL FATWA: KHAMENEIThe Supreme Leader's official website has multiple pages dedicated to his views on nuclear weapons, including a list of 85 statements he's made on the of those, the word haram appears only three times, and always in reference to the use of nuclear weapons, never their production or storage. He has, in two cases, also described the use of weapons of mass destruction as a "great sin".The only instance in which Khamenei explicitly used the word "fatwa" appears in a 2015 speech:"We don't want a nuclear weapon. Not because of what they say, but because of ourselves, because of our religion, because of our rational reasons. This is both our religious fatwa and our rational fatwa. Our rational fatwa is that we don't need nuclear weapons today, tomorrow, or ever. Nuclear weapons are a source of trouble for a country like ours."Under Sharia, actions are ranked from obligatory to has never labelled the production of nuclear weapons as haram — only the use, and even that vagueness is strategic, say some experts. It lets Iran look peaceful while keeping the door open. For hardliners, it's enough to justify moving fatwas are flexible by design. In the 1890s, a tobacco-ban fatwa sparked a revolt, then quietly disappeared once it served its observers argue that Khamenei's "fatwa" is the same — a political signal, not a religious block, meant to calm the world, not limit BELIEVED IN IRAN'S NUCLEAR FATWA?For years, Iran's nuclear fatwa drew little between 2013 and 2015, as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) talks intensified, it became central to Tehran's diplomatic messaging. Iranian officials pushed it hard, and soon US diplomats and media echoed the claim that Iran was religiously bound to avoid nuclear was no accident. As revealed in diplomat-academic Javad Zarif's memoir The Undisclosed Secret, the fatwa was a calculated tool, used to boost Iran's credibility and ease Western strategy 2014, US Secretary of State John Kerry said: "I have great respect for a fatwa. A fatwa is a very highly regarded message of religious importance. And when any fatwa is issued, I think people take it seriously, and so do we, even though it's not our practice... President Obama and I both are extremely welcoming and grateful for the fact that the supreme leader has issued a fatwa", according to Iran the next few years, Iran shifted from nuclear restraint under the JCPOA to renewed defiance after the US exited the deal in May 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA, calling it a "disastrous deal." He argued it failed to address Iran's missile programme, had weak enforcement, and gave Tehran sanctions relief without stopping its regional aggression or long-term nuclear on, Iran gradually ramped up its nuclear activity, enriching uranium beyond the deal's limits, installing advanced centrifuges, and restricting access to international economic pressure fuelled domestic unrest, and by 2020, following events like the killing of General Qassem Soleimani and the assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's posture grew more defiant, signalling a shift away from earlier CAPABILITY OF 'CORNERED CAT' IRANIranian officials have hinted for years that the religious prohibition could disappear if the state is 2021, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi warned, "The Supreme Leader has explicitly said [nuclear weapons] are religiously forbidden. But a cornered cat may behave differently." If the West pushed Iran too far, he suggested, Iran might have no choice, according to a New York Times posture hardened further in 2023. Khamenei warned that world powers "cannot stop" Iran if it chooses to build a Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, claimed all technical components were in March 2024, cleric Mohammad Fuker Meibodi argued the Quran "commands Muslims to possess weapons that instil fear in enemies", hinting that nuclear arms now fit that command, according to the report by the Atlantic Reza Aghamiri, a nuclear scientist close to Khamenei's office, declared in 2022 that Iran could enrich to 99% and build a nuclear warhead "like North Korea".Two years later, he said Iran "has the capability" to build the bomb and that "the supreme leader could tomorrow change his stance".The rhetoric intensified even more after April 2024, when Iran conducted missile and drone strikes on Israel. Within days, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) nuclear security chief Ahmad Haghtalab warned of a potential doctrinal shift if Israel targeted Iran's nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) broadcast his remarks in April 20, 2024, the reformist Hammihan daily declared that proxy warfare had run its course, and Iran now needed deterrence, possibly through nuclear ambiguity or even THERE AN ACTUAL NUCLEAR THREAT FROM IRAN?Just days later, IRGC officer and MP Javad Karimi Ghodousi claimed Iran could test a bomb within a week "if [the supreme leader] issues permission".On April 23, he went further, saying a warhead could be assembled in half a day. The Foreign Ministry scrambled to contain the fallout, with spokesperson Naser Kanani insisting nuclear weapons "have no place" in Iran's in May 2024, Kamal Kharrazi, top adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei, reinforced the an interview with Al Jazeera, he said, "We have no decision to build a nuclear bomb but should Iran's existence be threatened, there will have no choice but to change our military doctrine."Throughout late 2024 and early 2025, Iran steadily enriched uranium to 60% at Fordow and Natanz using advanced centrifuges, accumulating a stockpile sufficient for multiple warheads, according to the Arms Control it claimed peaceful intent under the NPT, officials began alluding to "special measures", a veiled reference to weaponisation or relocating May 2025, the IAEA reported Iran had amassed enough 60% enriched uranium for nine bombs and, for the first time in two decades, declared Tehran non-compliant with safeguards, according to a BBC June 12, the IAEA formally cited Iran for the breach. Tehran responded by announcing a new enrichment facility, likely fortified and concealed, though nominally under IAEA oversight.A Khamenei fatwa on nuclear weapons might exist, but what is more pertinent for discussion is the purpose why it was publicised later during negotiations, and what was achieved through the fatwa, it seems, was never a brake on Iran's nuclear ambitions, it was a mere cover. Framed as a moral prohibition, it served as a political tool to ease international pressure while Tehran expanded its nuclear capabilities in the shadows. Now, with officials openly hinting at weaponisation and enrichment levels reaching weapons-grade thresholds, the myth of religious restraint has collapsed. What remains is the reality: the fatwa was not a boundary, but a diplomatic deception. It was a lie used not to prevent a bomb, but to hide InMust Watch
Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Iraq 2003 vs Iran 2025
Compare & Contrast Iraq 2003 vs Iran 2025 We compare and contrast the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq over alleged weapons of mass destruction with Israel's military strikes on Iran over its nuclear programme.
The Independent
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump draws Pentagon into Bush-era Groundhog Day over Iran as he shuns intelligence to justify war
George W. Bush and his administration of neocons spent years building a spurious case for the war in Iraq. They collated sketchy intelligence about supposedly hidden weapons of mass destruction, fed it to a pliant press, went through the motions of seeking United Nations resolutions and formed a ramshackle coalition of the willing before going to war. It took Donald Trump all of five seconds to create his own WMD scandal. That came aboard Air Force One Tuesday morning when he rebuked his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for sharing a U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran was not seeking a nuclear weapon. 'I don't care what she said, I think they were very close to having one,' he told the press corps. It's Groundhog Day in the Pentagon. The U.S. stands on the precipice of joining another war in the Middle East to relieve another dictatorial regime of its non-existent deadly arsenal, but there are at least some procedural differences this time around. In rejecting the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies in favor of his own instincts, Trump appears to want to skip every step in the Manufacturing Consent handbook and declare war based on instinct alone. Rather than send Marco Rubio to the United Nations with satellite photos, audio recordings and vials of undisclosed substances as Bush did with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Trump opted to simply declare that Iran could never have nuclear weapons and begin mobilizing the U.S. military to act in support of Israel's ongoing attack. Whereas Powell had a well of intelligence to draw on, however faulty, to build his argument in front of the world, it seems Trump has barely even glanced at his own agencies' work. Gabbard testified to Congress as recently as 26 March that 18 U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.' Trump's flippant dismissal of that assessment is no small thing. It could be the determining factor in whether the U.S. joins a war against a sovereign nation, potentially putting American lives at risk across the Middle East and beyond. Rather than busy himself with studying the intelligence that should weigh on those decisions, the president spent most of the last few days posting erratically on social media, calling on 10 million people who live in Iran's capital Tehran to evacuate, for Iran's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, ' and even threatening the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. 'We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,' he wrote on Truth Social. Trump's position is all the more surprising given that his political rise was fuelled in part by his positioning as a critic of the so-called 'forever wars' of the Bush era, particularly the Iraq War. He shocked his fellow candidates during the Republican primary debates in 2016 when he accused them all of being complicit in the falsehoods that led to the war. 'I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction,' he said. This time around, Trump appears to be playing the opposing role in building a faulty premise for a destructive war in the Middle East. MAGA billed itself as the destroyer of neoconservatism, but now in the White House and with their hands on the missile launcher and the B-52's they look and sound much the same. This is also the same person who said of Barack Obama in 2011: 'Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.' Trump's role in the build-up to this war didn't begin this week, either. His decision to dismantle a previously successful nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers paved the way for the carnage of today. In 2015, then-President Obama and a coalition of world powers managed to broker an agreement with Iran in which it agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program, place limits on how much uranium it could enrich, and open its facilities to inspections in return for sanctions relief. China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran all signed on to the deal — a remarkable feat of diplomacy. All believed the deal was working. Israel believed the deal was too lenient, and then-presidential candidate Trump campaigned on a promise to completely dismantle it. In 2018, as president, Trump pulled out of the deal and initiated new sanctions against Iran. Tehran started to increase uranium enrichment and build up its stockpile once more, and removed monitoring equipment from nuclear facilities. Over the past few years, Iran increased its enrichment to record levels of purity, close to the level needed to make a bomb. Still, U.S. intelligence agencies did not change their assessment that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon, and the Trump administration was engaged in a new round of talks over the program. At the same time, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was signaling that he was readying an attack on Iran. He has claimed for decades that Iran was on the brink of building a nuclear weapon, a development that he insisted required a military confrontation to avoid. As early as 1992, as a member of the Israeli parliament, he claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from a bomb. Three years later, in a book titled 'Fighting Terrorism,' he again claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. In 2012, he gave a widely mocked speech to the United Nations in which he held up a picture of a cartoon bomb while claiming Iran was roughly one year away from building a bomb. None of those warnings came to pass, but they were treated no less seriously. While Netanyahu believed military action was the only way to remove the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, he had been kept at bay by successive U.S. presidents. Earlier this year, it appeared he was closer than ever to making that move. In April, he asked Trump for the 30,000-pound American GBU-57 bunker buster bomb, which can only be carried by U.S. aircraft, to destroy a nuclear site deep underground at Fordo, according to the New York Times. Trump reportedly refused and asked Israel to allow his negotiations a chance. But as the talks dragged on through the months, Trump lost patience. When Israel decided to launch its attack this month, the U.S. and Iran were days away from meeting again. No new intelligence showing an increased nuclear threat has been presented or claimed by the Trump administration beyond the president's passing comment on Air Force One. And senior administration officials told the New York Times they were unaware of any new intelligence showing a rush to build a bomb. There are obvious differences with Iraq, of course. This war has already begun. Israel has already taken out Iran's air defenses and is bombing military and nuclear infrastructure across the country at will. It was Israel's fait accompli that appears to have brought Trump around. The war has already begun. Trump may be able to join it in a limited capacity and claim victory, but the days of claiming the mantle of an anti-war president are over.
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Is this Trump's WMD moment? President overrules intelligence agencies on Iran to justify war
George W. Bush and his administration of neocons spent years building a spurious case for the war in Iraq. They collated sketchy intelligence about supposedly hidden weapons of mass destruction, fed it to a pliant press, went through the motions of seeking United Nations resolutions and formed a ramshackle coalition of the willing before going to war. It took Donald Trump all of five seconds to create his own WMD scandal when on Air Force One Monday night he scolded his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for sharing a U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran was not seeking a nuclear weapon. 'I don't care what she said, I think they were very close to having one,' he told the press corps. It's Groundhog Day in the Pentagon. The U.S. stands on the precipice of joining another war in the Middle East to relieve another dictatorial regime of its non-existent deadly arsenal, but there are at least some procedural differences this time around. In rejecting the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies in favor of his own instincts, Trump appears to want to skip every step in the Manufacturing Consent handbook and declare war based on instinct alone. Rather than send Marco Rubio to the United Nations with satellite photos, audio recordings and vials of undisclosed substances as Bush did with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Trump opted to simply declare that Iran could never have nuclear weapons and begin mobilizing the U.S. military to act in support of Israel's ongoing attack. Whereas Powell had a well of intelligence to draw on, however faulty, to build his argument in front of the world, it seems Trump has barely even glanced at his own agencies' work. Gabbard testified to Congress as recently as 26 March that 18 U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.' Trump's flippant dismissal of that assessment is no small thing. It could be the determining factor in whether the U.S. joins a war against a sovereign nation, potentially putting American lives at risk across the Middle East and beyond. Rather than busy himself with studying the intelligence that should weigh on those decisions, the president spent most of the last few days posting erratically on social media, calling on 10 million people who live in Iran's capital Tehran to evacuate, for Iran's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, ' and even threatening the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. 'We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,' he wrote on Truth Social. Trump's position is all the more surprising given that his political rise was fuelled in part by his positioning as a critic of the so-called 'forever wars' of the Bush era, particularly the Iraq War. He shocked his fellow candidates during the Republican primary debates in 2016 when he accused them all of being complicit in the falsehoods that led to the war. 'I want to tell you. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction,' he said. This time around, Trump appears to be playing the opposing role in building a faulty premise for a destructive war in the Middle East. MAGA billed itself as the destroyer of neoconservatism, but now in the White House and with their hands on the missile launcher and the B-52's they look and sound much the same. This is also the same person who said of Barack Obama in 2011: 'Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected — and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.' Trump's role in the build-up to this war didn't begin this week, either. His decision to dismantle a previously successful nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers paved the way for the carnage of today. In 2015, then-President Obama and a coalition of world powers managed to broker an agreement with Iran in which it agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program, place limits on how much uranium it could enrich, and open its facilities to inspections in return for sanctions relief. China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran all signed on to the deal — a remarkable feat of diplomacy. All believed the deal was working. Israel believed the deal was too lenient, and then-presidential candidate Trump campaigned on a promise to completely dismantle it. In 2018, as president, Trump pulled out of the deal and initiated new sanctions against Iran. Tehran started to increase uranium enrichment and build up its stockpile once more, and removed monitoring equipment from nuclear facilities. Over the past few years, Iran increased its enrichment to record levels of purity, close to the level needed to make a bomb. Still, U.S. intelligence agencies did not change their assessment that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon, and the Trump administration was engaged in a new round of talks over the program. At the same time, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was signaling that he was readying an attack on Iran. He has claimed for decades that Iran was on the brink of building a nuclear weapon, a development that he insisted required a military confrontation to avoid. As early as 1992, as a member of the Israeli parliament, he claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from a bomb. Three years later, in a book titled 'Fighting Terrorism,' he again claimed Iran was 'three to five years' away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. In 2012, he gave a widely mocked speech to the United Nations in which he held up a picture of a cartoon bomb while claiming Iran was roughly one year away from building a bomb. None of those warnings came to pass, but they were treated no less seriously. While Netanyahu believed military action was the only way to remove the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, he had been kept at bay by successive U.S. presidents. Earlier this year, it appeared he was closer than ever to making that move. In April, he asked Trump for the 30,000-pound American GBU-57 bunker buster bomb, which can only be carried by U.S. aircraft, to destroy a nuclear site deep underground at Fordo, according to the New York Times. Trump reportedly refused and asked Israel to allow his negotiations a chance. But as the talks dragged on through the months, Trump lost patience. When Israel decided to launch its attack this month, the U.S. and Iran were days away from meeting again. No new intelligence showing an increased nuclear threat has been presented or claimed by the Trump administration beyond the president's passing comment on Air Force One. And senior administration officials told the New York Times they were unaware of any new intelligence showing a rush to build a bomb. There are obvious differences with Iraq, of course. This war has already begun. Israel has already taken out Iran's air defenses and is bombing military and nuclear infrastructure across the country at will. It was Israel's fait accompli that appears to have brought Trump around. The war has already begun. Trump may be able to join it in a limited capacity and claim victory, but the days of claiming the mantle of an anti-war president are over.
