War in Iran

by Toddy Perryman, Hamilton

Candidate Donald Trump said during the 2024 campaign that he’d “break the cycle of regime change” and avoid “reckless” policies. On election night in November 2024, he declared, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Trump has broken this pledge with astounding speed and determination. He has launched a war in Iran without a plan, without a strategy, and without any clear idea about where it leads or how it ends. This is made abundantly clear in all of the interviews with him or anyone in the administration.

Heather Cox Richardson noted that Trump’s strikes on Iran might have something to do with the increasing heat over the Epstein files or his anger that the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs, which were important to his economic program and also to his pressure on foreign governments and companies to do his bidding. 

As the war spreads, taking the lives of at least six of our military personnel, the administration is now discovering that the American people would like to know why we are engaged in what appears to be a war of choice, and why this approach to the world is better than the one that kept us safe for 80 years.

One of the crowning achievements of the post–World War II international order is the Geneva Conventions, which define the legal treatment of noncombatants in war. In his confirmation hearings, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to tell Senator Angus King (I-ME), who pressed him on the issue, that he would uphold the Geneva Conventions. Now we hear that he doesn’t think that the U.S. should have to be constrained by any “stupid international rules of war.”  These are the rules that define how to maintain some semblance of civility even in wartime.  So this administration is demonstrating its disdain for any civility at all.  

Former paratrooper and Army Ranger Representative Jason Crow (D-CO) had something to say about the reality of war. “I learned, years ago, that when elites like Donald Trump bang the war drums and pound their chests in Washington, D.C., and talk about sending troops into the ground or into combat, he’s not talking about his kids. He’s not talking about all of his minions’ kids. He is talking about kids like me and the people that I grew up [with] in working-class areas, rural places around the country that have to pick up rifles, jump in the tanks or helicopters, and…do the tough work. Well, America is over it. America is over the three trillion dollars we’ve spent. The quagmires of failed nation building. The sending of our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters to enrich oil executives. America is over endless adventurism using our military. Because they want their infrastructure rebuilt. They want quality affordable healthcare. They want to be able to afford groceries. They want to be able to afford a home. They want to be able to send their kids to school.”

Americans may be over it but the Trump administration has once again taken us to war. He has moved on from making America great again to making the world do his bidding. He posted on Truth Social that he wants to “Make Iran Great Again.” After that, Cuba is next on his radar. 

In Need to Know, David Rothkopf recently called out the madness of the fact world trade and global security is being shattered by a single man. “Not since Adolf Hitler blew his brains out in a bunker beneath the garden of the German Reich Chancellery on April 30, 1945, have the lives of so many people around the world been so buffeted by the psychosis of a single man.”