Two Weak Reasons a Weak Trump Attacked a Weakened Iran

Trump has constantly revealed his position on Ukraine and Europe: America should be weaker, more deferential to tyrants. Same with China. And he’s watched his signature issues—the two I’s, “immigration” and inflation—slip away from him like a teenage pageant contestant trying to avoid his eye.

So what does a wannabe king do when he’s got nothing left and his weakness is obvious even to himself? He reaches for the one power that’s always unchecked, the one that makes the TV go boom when he doesn’t like what’s on.

Trump just wants to feel strong. I wish it were deeper than that.

This is all personal for Trump, obviously. He has no ideological objection to anything, except feeling weak.

Here’s what happened this morning: the United States and Israel launched an unprompted attack — what Trump called “massive and ongoing,” Operation Epic Fury — targeting Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, and Kermanshah. Trump posted an eight-minute video to Truth Social: “A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.”

The stated goal? Regime change. The unstated goal? Feeling something. Worth noting: the Trump administration has not specifically accused Iran of renewing uranium enrichment work. There is no publicly available evidence that Iran has made major progress in reviving its nuclear program. The excuse is as hollow as the diplomacy. The Iraq War, but as farce.

As Paul Musgrave explained, practically every goal the Trump administration floated for its interactions with Tehran was one Tehran couldn’t accept: protecting protesters (a call for regime change by another name), demanding Iran forswear nuclear proliferation, and regime change itself. Governments cannot agree to terms like these unless they are already defeated. The “negotiations” were never meant to succeed. Oman’s foreign minister — who had been mediating the talks — said the two sides had made “significant progress” during the latest round of negotiations, just hours before the strikes began. The diplomacy was a fig leaf for a war that was already decided.

Lindsay Graham, Bibi Netanyahu, Ted Cruz. People occasionally wonder: what do they get for sucking up to Trump? They get exactly what they want. These are bad people unleashed to do the bad things that smarter people prevented from happening.

Until now.

Days before the 2024 election, Stephen Miller posted this:

Here’s the thing about that tweet: it was never meant to be believed. Trump doesn’t lie to be believed. He lies to be repeated. And Stephen Miller is the devil on both of Trump’s shoulders, even more committed to living the lie than Trump. Every fact-check, every debunking, every outraged response — they’re all just saying the words again, centering his narrative. You can’t fight the lie by correcting it. You only spread it. The Miller tweet was like a spell from a wizard who thinks he’s discovered the miracle of mind mushing. Say peace until people stop noticing the war that would inevitably come.

And now here we are. Explosions over Tehran, missiles hitting Tel Aviv, Iran targeting the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, Iranian missiles hitting US bases in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan. What looked like a war this morning looks like a regional inferno by afternoon.

JD Vance would like a word with JD Vance.

Two days ago, aboard Air Force Two, Vance told the Washington Post: “The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight — there is no chance that will happen.” Thursday. Geneva talks still going. Omani mediators still shuttling. “I think we all prefer the diplomatic option,” he said.

Saturday: bombs over Tehran.

Vance is a Marine veteran who has said he was “lied to” about Iraq. He chuckled, the Post reported, when asked if he could have seen himself as part of an administration pursuing regime change. He is also, not incidentally, the one person in this entire operation who has to run for president in 2028 and own whatever this becomes. Every flag-draped coffin, every $6 gallon of gas, every American sheltering in Bahrain — that’s his platform. He knows it. Which makes his “no chance” not just wrong but a specific kind of cowardice: the man who understood the stakes, said the right thing, and then shilled for whatever horrors come next.

Now we are obligated to understand what we poked. Iran’s regime is a wounded, cornered animal—weakened by the Twelve-Day War last June, its air defenses degraded, its nuclear program repeatedly struck, and its legitimacy hollowed out by years of murdering its own protesters by the thousands. A government that has killed thousands of its own citizens in the streets likely won’t fold gracefully. It’ll lash out instead. With its nuclear trump card gone and facing an existential threat from within, Iranian leaders have every incentive to impose maximum costs on everyone they can reach.

And they can reach quite a bit. Missiles are already hitting. The US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain has been targeted. Explosions have been reported in the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, and Riyadh. Airspace is closing across the Gulf. Americans are sheltering in place from Bahrain to the UAE. Turkish Airlines has cancelled flights to ten countries. The region is a powder keg that someone just lit with an eight-minute video on his own social network.

Picture Nero fiddling with the giant remote he has that changes what’s on TV whenever it gets too Epstein-y.

The timing wasn’t an accident. As Marcy Wheeler noted this morning: one of the reasons they struck today, rather than next week, is because the House is planning a vote early next week to restrict strikes on Iran. Trump had to shift the dynamics of that vote.

This is what I wrote last summer, and it’s even more true now: this war is illegal. Under the War Powers Act, as Justin Amash carefully documented, the president can deploy forces into hostilities only under a declaration of war, specific statutory authorization, or a national emergency created by an attack on the United States. Iran was not attacking us. The Framers gave Congress the power to declare war precisely because they didn’t trust kings with it. Marcy noted then that the attack “is illegal under the UN Charter, under the War Powers Act, and didn’t even comply with the National Security Act.”

Trump didn’t ask. He didn’t wait. He bombed on a Saturday, so the vote couldn’t happen on Tuesday.

Sen. Jack Reed put it plainly: “The president barely mentioned Iran during the longest State of the Union speech in history. He failed to define the objective. Congress has received no real briefings or intelligence.”

And here is where we have to say it plainly: this may be the greatest constitutional crisis in American history. Previous presidents who wanted to bomb without asking Congress at least had the decency to pretend, to call it a “limited operation,” a “targeted strike,” a “defensive action.” They dressed the power grab in the language of restraint. Trump did none of that. He announced major combat operations. He named regime change as the explicit goal. He just said what he wanted it to be—a war, declared by one man, for one man’s reasons, likely out of some personal revenge, on a Saturday morning, while Congress was home for the weekend and a vote to stop him was four days away. No president has ever been so brazen about it. The Constitution doesn’t have a provision for a president who simply announces he’s doing the thing the Constitution forbids and dares anyone to stop him. Except for impeachment and removal.

A man who can never admit error can never correct course. He didn’t come to Congress because he sees Congress as his Duma, and it behaved that way for all of 2025. In the Strict Father worldview that shapes everything Trump does, yielding is the only sin. The Supreme Court struck down his tariffs; he replaced them the same day. In his stilted system, that’s the correct behavior. And now he’s applied that same psychology to a war.

By beginning hostilities in a joint operation with Israel, the United States has guaranteed the war will be almost maximally unpopular. Europe, Australia, Japan, and other Western powers will accelerate their move toward security self-reliance. De-risking America will become a priority. China will look awfully sensible and reliable. Putin squeals with delight as the U.S. reputation as a fair dealer and reliable partner crumbles into shambles that were previously inconceivable to the human mind.

Trump spent Term 1 leading America into the greatest mass death event in a century. He’s spending Term 2 making America a weak, flailing joke—one that happens to possess the most awesome military ever assembled.

Two weak reasons. One weakened Iran. Zero plans for what comes next. Except for a moment, he will feel strong again. And then the weakness will seep back, like the desperate, insatiable slogan on his hats, slobbering over a past that never existed, always demanding more.

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