Ten million people live in the city of Tehran. Several million more live in the greater metropolitan area. On Monday, President Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to tell all of these people that they have to “immediately” flee their homes. “Simply stated,” he wrote, “IRAN CANNOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again. Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran.”
This may be one of the most belligerent statements ever made by a U.S. president. Even George W. Bush never told the entire city of Baghdad that they had to leave or be destroyed.
Even George W. Bush never told the entire city of Baghdad that they had to leave or be destroyed.
This level of bloodthirstiness is particularly striking in light of the widespread belief that Trump is a “peace president.” During his first campaign in 2016, he repeatedly (though falsely) claimed to have opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And since he left office the first time, a constant talking point of his supporters is that “he didn’t start any wars.” And there’s a fierce split among even some of the president’s most steadfast supporters over whether this “no new wars” streak should continue — or not.
You could, perhaps, argue that Trump didn’t “start” this war either. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started it. But, by Trump’s own account, he had advance knowledge of Netanyahu’s attack on Iran and he approved it, even as he was publicly taking the opposite position.
And as soon as fighting started, the U.S. directly entered the war on Israel’s side. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the “U.S. military is operating in the air, on land and at sea to shoot down Iranian missiles fired at Israel” in retaliation for the Israeli attack on Iran the previous day. The Israeli government has, in turn, repeatedly called for this limited U.S. involvement to be considerably expanded. Trump’s Truth Social post is one of several ominous signs that they might get their wish.
All of this has caused a split within the MAGA camp. Steve Bannon has warned of the dangers of increased U.S. involvement. Tucker Carlson has gone further, condemning Trump for being “complicit” in Israel’s initial attack and warning that a war with Iran could destroy Trump’s presidency. In turn, Trump has publicly referred to Carlson as “kooky Tucker Carlson.” It’s a striking deterioration of what was once a close relationship. By all accounts, for example, Carlson played a key role in lobbying for Trump to pick JD Vance as his running mate.
Last year, Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party’s National Convention in an unsuccessful bid to discourage libertarians from nominating a presidential candidate of their own. The popular libertarian figure who spoke before Trump, encouraging the audience to give the former president a respectful hearing, was podcaster and comedian Dave Smith. Just before the election, Smith personally endorsed Trump. The support of many libertarians who might have otherwise voted for their party’s nominee (Chase Oliver) may have given Trump an important boost in some swing states. Now, Smith has apologized for ever supporting Trump, calling it a “bad calculation,” and even called for Trump to be “impeached and removed for this.” He called the decision to collaborate with Israel in starting a war with Iran “an absolute betrayal of everything [Trump] ran and campaigned on.”
Figures like Smith, Carlson and Bannon certainly aren’t wrong to see a disconnect between the way Trump talks about the war in Iraq, for example, and his current stance on Iran. This war, like the one in Iraq, is premised on a highly dubious claim about the regime being attacked developing WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). And now, like then, we’re seeing a lot of claims that the population of the attacked country will greet their attackers as liberators.
But the idea that Trump’s actions are “an absolute betrayal of everything he ran and campaigned on” is difficult to square with the record. The talking point about Trump not starting any wars was only ever true in the narrowest technical sense. Trump continued and escalated multiple pre-existing wars, and took many new aggressive steps around the world, even if none of his interventions ever quite blossomed into brand new full-fledged wars. In particular, Trump’s first-term hawkishness directly paved the way to the current clash with Iran.
This war, like the one in Iraq, is premised on a highly dubious claim about the regime being attacked developing WMDs (weapons of mass destruction).
Trump tore up President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and imposed crushing new sanctions. And he massively ramped up tensions by assassinating Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Trump’s “anti-interventionist” fans often point to the Abraham Accords — diplomatic normalization agreements between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — as a prime example of his dealmaking genius and commitment to a more peaceful world. But the Abraham Accords helped bring us to the current crisis.
It’s not as if there was some ongoing war between Israel and Bahrain or the UAE that Trump was ending. Rather, the accords served two deeply hawkish goals. First, they forestalled any push toward a Palestinian state by bringing about a version of regional normalization that froze out the Palestinians. Second, they helped promote an alliance between Israel and the Gulf monarchies implicitly directed against Iran.
To be sure, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The Biden administration mostly continued Trump’s policies on both fronts. Biden never made any serious effort to revive Obama’s nuclear deal, and he continued Trump’s regional realignment strategy by promoting a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But it’s just a fact that these policies started with Trump. And during the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly faulted Biden for supposedly “holding Netanyahu back.”
In other words, as much as Trump benefited from (and sometimes went out of his way to nurture) the impression that he was an isolationist, anyone paying attention to either his record or his public pronouncements always knew that Trump was a warmonger. Pundits who didn’t see that might want to reflect a bit on why they were so determined not to see it.
As the last president to tell us that we needed to get involved in a war in the Middle East to stop an anti-American regime from developing WMDs once memorably said, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me twice… you can’t get fooled again.”