Name: Questioning the Rationale of Trump's War With Iran
Uploaded: 2026-03-06T00:27:00Z
Duration: 5 min 15 s
Description: Review & Outlook: Despite assertions from the media and political class, Israel didn’t manipulate the U.S. into a war with Iran. And officials including Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth have tried to explain the Trump administration's intent and timing.

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Review & Outlook: Despite assertions from the media and political class, Israel didn’t manipulate the U.S. into a war with Iran. And officials including Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth have tried to explain the Trump administration's intent and timing. Photo: Konstantin Toropin/AP/U.S. Dept. of Defense/Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

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Review & Outlook: Despite assertions from the media and political class, Israel didn’t manipulate the U.S. into a war with Iran. And officials including Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth have tried to explain the Trump administration's intent and timing.

Questioning the Rationale of Trump's War With Iran

Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were gonna attack first, and I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand, but Israel was ready and we were ready.

Mark: President Trump attempting to put to rest assertions from some in the media and Democratic party suggesting that Israel must have dragged him into a war he didn't want.

This is still a war of choice that has been acknowledged by others, was dictated by Israel's goals and timelines.

Republicans have learned nothing from decades of American hubris in the Middle East.

They also cast doubt on the timing of Operation Epic Fury. "Why now?" they ask.

If the case for war were strong, it would be consistent. Instead, the rationales change by the hour. Regime change, nuclear weapons, missiles, defense, preemptive, which is it?

The answer isn't nearly as complicated as the media and sometimes the Trump administration have made it seem. Starting with this comment from the US Secretary of State that's been latched onto by many conspiratorial types,

We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act.

Does this mean that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu manipulated President Trump? Let's not jump the gun.

Iran was building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear black male ambitions.

They are producing, by some estimates, over 100 of these missiles a month. Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built a month. They can build a hundred of these a month, not to mention the thousands of one-way attack drones that they also have. There would come a point where they have so many conventional missiles, so many drones, and it can inflict so much damage that no one can do anything about their nuclear program.

It almost worked under Obama and is terrible deal, but not under this president.

None of this, of course, makes it into the viral clips. Instead, coverage focuses on politicians casting doubt on the threat level, or suggestions that President Trump is Benjamin Netanyahu's puppet.

There needs to be the proof of an imminent threat to American interest. I still don't think that standard has been met.

For 47 long years, the expansionist and Islamist regime in Tehran has waged a savage one-sided war against America. Car bombs in Beirut, rocket attacks on our ships, murders at our embassies, roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The purpose of this is to destroy that missile capability.

Mr. Rubio described the damage such a shield could do to the US as a quote, unacceptable risk.

Especially in the hands of a regime that's run by radical clerics who don't make geopolitical decisions. They make decisions on the basis of theology, their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one, that has to be taken very seriously as well.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister toured the site hit by an Iranian rocket causing multiple civilian deaths.

They chant death to, Israel death to America. That's their ultimate target. But I said that they would also target those in between, that they would target Europe. They did. And if this regime, they get nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, they will threaten all of humanity.

The Trump administration's thinking was that it was better to attack Iran's regime now while it's relatively weak and at war with its own people rather than wait until it's too late. That's the preventive logic and the core shared interest behind the Iran campaign. But prevention can feel too distant to form of self-defense. Politicians prefer to frame their moves as a preemption with an imminent threat that has to be staved off by attacking first. This is how the Trump administration has gotten into rhetorical trouble.

We were having negotiations with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they were gonna attack first. They were going to attack if we didn't do it.

It is to Mr. Trump's credit that he seizes the opportunities an ally creates to defeat shared adversaries. But it's Marco Rubio who best clarified that the Iran incursion is a joint initiative that was all about timing, not intent.

There absolutely was an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us. And we were not gonna sit there and absorb a blow before we responded. Had we not done so, there would've been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was gonna happen and we didn't act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.