As President Donald Trump tells it, the USA had no different choice than to launch a large-scale bombing operation in opposition to Iran. The menace the Iranians posed to the USA was just too excessive; Iran’s historical past of mayhem contained in the Center East was too lengthy to disregard; and Iranian negotiators weren’t severe about putting a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program. “They’ve rejected each alternative to resign their nuclear ambitions, and we will’t take it anymore,” Trump told the nation an hour after the U.S. army operation started on Saturday.
The Trump administration’s argument for struggle rests on two pillars. First, Iran is an imminent nationwide safety menace to U.S. pursuits within the Center East. And second, Iran by no means needed to discover a diplomatic route out of the nuclear disaster that has bedeviled U.S.-Iran relations for greater than 20 years.
Trump’s case, nevertheless, is flat-out unsuitable. This battle, which has unfold to different nations within the area and is affecting vitality costs, didn’t must occur.
Following the operation, Trump, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers, have pointed to Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles as one motive the USA wanted to take army motion. Some administration officers have claimed that Iran was making ready to strike U.S. bases within the area in a preemptive assault so the U.S. army had no selection however to take motion. However this declare was about as truthful as then-Nationwide Safety Adviser Condoleezza Rice’s assertion that there could possibly be a “mushroom cloud” over an American metropolis if Saddam Hussein wasn’t stopped in Iraq. In different phrases, it wasn’t true at all.
Positive, Iran’s missiles pose a menace. Ask Saudi Arabia, which was on the receiving finish of a volley of Iranian cruise missiles in September 2019, forcing Riyadh to chop about half of its crude oil manufacturing for a number of days. Or ask Israel, which was the goal of Iranian missile assaults in April and October 2024 and final June earlier than the latest hostilities. And sure, Iran’s short-range missiles can attain a great chunk of Washington’s army infrastructure within the area, as we’re at present seeing.
But it surely’s not like it is a new improvement. The Iranians have been investing important funds of their missile program as a result of Tehran’s typical army functionality — its air power, navy and armed forces — is antiquated, unimpressive and inexperienced. Iranian fighter jets may as properly be displayed in a museum someplace; a great portion of them will be traced again to the period of the shah. Iran’s navy, or what’s left of it after the U.S. took out a number of ships over the weekend, depends on small fast-attack boats suited extra for pestering civilian tankers than truly preventing destroyers on the excessive seas.
Iranian floor forces, in the meantime, haven’t fought a struggle for the reason that Nineteen Eighties. So it’s no surprise Tehran is betting its protection technique on missiles — missiles, by the best way, that the USA wouldn’t have to fret about in any respect if U.S presidents from each events didn’t stubbornly cling to the notion that we would have liked tens of 1000’s of troops based mostly within the Center East at any given time.
What about Iran’s nuclear program? Certainly the Iranians are making a splash to the bomb, proper?
Improper. Earlier than the primary Trump administration stupidly withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran’s nuclear equipment was basically underneath lock and key. Iranian enrichment had been curtailed, its stockpile of enriched materiel capped properly under what it wanted for a bomb and worldwide nuclear inspectors analyzing everything of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. After Trump withdrew the U.S. from President Barack Obama’s negotiated nuclear deal, the Iranians elevated the standard of their centrifuges, churned out extra enriched uranium at larger grades and constructed up a large stockpile of enriched materiel. But the U.S. intelligence group nonetheless assessed that Iranian Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not but made the choice to truly purchase nuclear weapons.
Bombing Iran to stave off a hypothetical Iranian nuclear bomb is even much less convincing in the present day than it was again then. Regardless of what U.S. officers are telling the general public, there is no such thing as a proof in anyway that Tehran’s nuclear program was near a bomb. The Iranians have but to get better from the U.S. army operation final June, which severely broken their three main nuclear amenities and sure destroyed a big portion of their centrifuges. The 400 kilograms of extremely enriched uranium Iran possessed on the time is now buried deep underground in a type of broken amenities, and so far as we all know, the Iranians haven’t bothered to dig it out. The one work Iran has finished on its nuclear program since June is to fortify what’s left of it in preparation for added U.S. strikes.
Then there’s the difficulty of the negotiations. Trump has repeatedly said that Tehran wasn’t dedicated to a diplomatic decision. Nonetheless, the issue wasn’t Iran’s willingness to compromise — it was Trump’s willingness to simply accept the truth that any nuclear deal he struck wasn’t going to end in the whole lot he needed. Sadly, that is one thing Trump was unable to return to phrases with. The U.S. place all through the monthlong talks was maximalist to the core: Iran should surrender all of its enriched uranium, cease enriching for eternity and, in spite of everything that’s agreed to, negotiate its ballistic missile arsenal away. In fact, none of this was going to occur, and we should query whether or not the Trump administration truly believed these objectives could possibly be achieved.
When all is alleged and finished, Trump opted to battle a struggle of selection and not using a rationale that was even semi-convincing. And simply as dangerous, he didn’t trouble to clarify all of it to the American individuals beforehand.
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