How strong is Trump’s case for war with Iran?

The United States is now at war with Iran, but the rationale for that decision is still hard to pin down. President Donald Trump has offered a fluctuating series of explanations, creating confusion for Congress and the public.

The president’s rationale for war “keeps shifting,” said The Washington Post. His proffered reasons for bombing Tehran range from “regime change to preemption to eliminating its nuclear program and ballistic missiles.” If the U.S. had stayed its hand, Iran “would’ve had a nuclear war and they would’ve taken out many countries,” the president said Tuesday. But such assertions are “incomplete, unsubstantiated or flat-out wrong,” said The Wall Street Journal. Critics say Iran was not near building either a nuclear weapon or a missile that could reach the mainland United States. Trump and his administration have been “inconsistent and often inaccurate in explaining why we are at war,” said former National Security Council official Michael Singh to the outlet.

The hard way?

“Why is Trump attacking Iran? He’s still figuring it out,” said S.V. Date at HuffPost. Days after the bombs started dropping, the president has “not given Congress or the American people a detailed explanation.” Trump’s conservative allies disagree. It was Iran that chose war by refusing to compromise on its nuclear program, said the Journal’s editorial board. By failing to deal, Tehran was “testing Trump’s patience.”

Trump’s “pitiful” case for war rests on two pillars, said Daniel DePetris at The Chicago Tribune. The first is that Iran is an “imminent national security threat to U.S. interests,” and the second is that Tehran “never wanted to find a diplomatic route out of the nuclear crisis.” Ultimately, that case is “flat-out wrong.” Before Trump withdrew from the Obama-era nuclear deal, Iran’s nuclear program was “essentially under lock and key.” There is no evidence that Iran is close to a bomb. The president chose to fight “without a rationale that was even semi-convincing.”

Iran “chose the hard way,” said the National Review editorial board. The Islamic regime has been a “destabilizing force in the region and a leading sponsor of terrorism” for nearly half a century, and American presidents operated under an unwritten rule that “Iran could kill and maim Americans, and we could never directly hit back.” The war will degrade Tehran’s ability to “project its malign influence throughout the region.”

Mixed messages

The question is whether Trump can win this war “if he can’t explain why he started it,” Susan B. Glasser said at The New Yorker. The shifting explanations make it easier for him to “claim victory no matter what happens.”

Trump is “sending mixed messages” about the war’s endgame, said Bloomberg. The war could last “four or five weeks,” he said to one interviewer. “I will be talking to” Iran’s remaining leadership, the president said to The Atlantic. The public as yet remains unconvinced. “Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove” of the decision to go to war, said CNN.