On the disconcerting contradictory messages justifying war with Iran, a column by Henrique Silva

It is very rare to see the US enter a prolonged, large-scale armed conflict without first trying to "manufacture consensus" through public justifications, media framing and convenient political narratives, especially since the Second World War. Although Congress has not officially declared war since 1941, the US executive branch relies heavily on gaining public support and political forces to legitimize interventions in foreign countries. According to this post-World War II strategy, since 1945 the United States has justified the legitimacy of its decision to initiate major conflicts (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) without formal declarations, using propaganda, threat narratives and "urgent" justifications to secure public support.

The recent attack on Iran, however, took almost all of us by surprise. President Trump has once again proved his unpredictability and lived up to his reputation as a "wrecking ball" in international relations by starting a major conflict without first obtaining general consensus. No wonder, then, that outrage over the equally unpredictable war has come from a broad spectrum of the US political landscape.

The Trump administration has put forward various justifications for starting a war with Iran, including destroying missile systems, preventing a nuclear program, dismantling paramilitary groups like Hezbollah and encouraging the Iranian people to "take control" of their government. Responding to questions and facing specific audiences and often in attempts to minimize the damage to public opinion, President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have presented disparate and even contradictory reasons for the war.

Initially, it was the question of uranium enrichment and the development of nuclear capacity.

It would be incorrect to suggest that Iran was complying with the "zero enrichment" of uranium demanded by the United States at the Geneva nuclear negotiations, which were interrupted by the US-Israeli attack on Iran. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, aware of the clear parameters set by senior authorities in Washington, negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were obliged to report to their government any Iranian attempt to obstruct efforts to reach an agreement on the destruction of its three main nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz - targets of Trump's bombing campaign last year - as well as on the delivery of its stockpile of enriched uranium to the US. According to this report, the decision to go to war simply depended on the assessment by the two US negotiators of the extent to which Iranian diplomats were obstructing the agreement to meet the above demands. And that is exactly what happened, since the Iranian authorities interpreted compliance with these demands as a capitulation that would ruin their own legitimacy as defenders of national sovereignty. It seems that what was simply a technical requirement for the Americans was a violation of a fundamental ideological principle for the Iranians. Almost immediately after learning of the impasse in the negotiations, President Trump consulted his military commanders on the options for an attack on Iran.

The fact that Iran had stalled negotiations that would lead to zero uranium enrichment did not mean, however, that it was about to acquire a fully operational nuclear weapon in about a month, as some advocates of an attack on Iran claimed. Even if Iran were to exceed such a nuclear threshold, it would only pose a threat to Israel and other US allies in the Middle East and not to US territory, as it would not possess the launch systems necessary to reach US soil. The United States would have reason to respond militarily as a military force guaranteeing the protection of its allies, but in that case Iran's nuclear capabilities could not be seen as an immediate threat to the United States, as has been argued to legitimize a US attack on Iran.

It turns out that the US authorities had no reason to fear an imminent nuclear attack by Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported on March 5 that it has no evidence that Iran currently has a nuclear weapons program. According to CBS News, just a week before the attack on Iran, Marco Rubio himself told the press that Iran was not enriching uranium. After the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities last June by Israel and the United States - after which President Trump triumphantly announced the total destruction of Iran's nuclear infrastructure - the country's stocks of enriched uranium are said to have remained buried under the rubble. Since then, Iran has limited itself to repairing its damaged uranium enrichment facilities, with a view to resuming the process if it deems it necessary. This set of facts is reflected in the 2025 Global Threat Assessment published by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which stated that "Iran is almost certainly not producing nuclear weapons, but has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, should it choose to do so," as CBS News reports. Perhaps these reassuring assessments of Iran's nuclear threat level have led the Trump administration to shift focus to another Iranian threat only recently made public: long-range ballistic missiles.

The new imminent threat: long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching the USA.

With serious doubts hanging over an imminent nuclear attack, a new apocalyptic scenario has been conjured up by the US authorities based on the apparent clear and present danger that intercontinental ballistic missiles that Iran is supposedly about to assemble would have the capacity to cross the Atlantic Ocean and hit the United States. None other than the US Middle East envoy himself, Steve Witkoff, who took part in the recent diplomatic negotiations with Iran, went on Fox News on the eve of the attack on Iran to report, with astonishing accuracy, that the Middle Eastern country only needed a week to have operational missiles ready to hit the US mainland. Mr. Witkoff managed to be even more alarming by adding that after a week Iran would probably have "industrial-grade material for making nuclear bombs."

Few years ago (last year), an assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency indicated that Tehran would not be able to possess intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US by 2035. This conclusion, however, didn't stop senior Trump administration officials from telling journalists, a few hours after the attacks on Iran began, that they "had indications" that Iran could potentially use conventional missiles "pre-emptively, or if not, simultaneously" to any US actions against the regime. The president "wasn't going to sit on his hands and wait to get hit first" and, if he had, "the number of casualties and damage would be substantially higher" than if the US had acted pre-emptively, these officials argued, as CBS News reports. In a strong refutation of the long-range missile theory, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner, told CNN's Dana Bash that he had "not seen any intelligence information that would indicate that Iran was about to launch any kind of pre-emptive strike against the United States of America". After a meeting with Rubio two days after the start of hostilities, Warner said he did not believe that Iranian missiles posed an imminent threat to the US - although they did pose a significant threat to Israel.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth have manipulated the recently introduced argument about long-range missiles from two different perspectives. Hagseth articulated an Iranian conspiracy to develop the missiles as a way to obfuscate its nuclear weapons program: Iran would be using its "growing arsenal of ballistic missiles and killer drones" as a "conventional shield for its nuclear blackmail ambitions". In other words, at the same time as Iran is keeping the Americans and Israelis in its sights with conventional missiles, focusing their attention entirely on it, it would be working in the shadows to secretly develop its nuclear weapons. For his part, Rubio saw the imminent threat of missiles being used to strike the United States as Iran's expected reaction to an apparently inevitable pre-emptive strike by Israel. While Hagseth's argument smacks of unreliable conspiracy theory - the kind that, in itself, constitutes a danger to conventional diplomacy - Rubio, on the other hand, establishes a self-fulfilling prophecy that could easily be defused simply by persuading close ally Israel to exercise a little restraint. Or does the requirement for military restraint in the name of world peace fall exclusively on "pariah states" like Iran?

My personal guess is that if Iran really had missiles capable of hitting the United States, it would have used them immediately after the attack, before the intense and presumably precise aerial bombardment by Israel and the United States degraded the system to the point of making it inoperable or destroyed the missiles altogether.

Are we fighting an Israeli war?

Trump's foreign policy team has become particularly defensive about the perception that it is fighting a war for Israel. This is an obvious anathema to their political calculations. So when Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 2 that the US had attacked "pre-emptively" because it knew that an Israeli action was imminent and would "precipitate an Iranian attack on US forces", it provoked an incendiary reaction, forcing Trump to deny it the next day. Trump claimed that he had ordered the attacks because he had a "clear feeling" that Iran was planning to strike the first blow against the US, regardless of Israel's actions. This was perhaps Rubio's first serious slip in his defense of the US attack on Iran. Normally, it is he who has to put out the incendiary reactions caused by Trump's reckless statements on sensitive subjects. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, however, is direct in his assessment of the Israeli factor, as CBS News reports: "This remains an optional war, recognized by others as dictated by Israel's goals and timetables."

This disagreement between Trump and his Secretary of Defense over the hypothetical eventuality of Israel or Iran positioning themselves to carry out a pre-emptive strike demonstrates the lack of narrative control that characterizes the inner circles of this administration. How can they not agree on who was perceived to be about to launch the pre-emptive strike that would initiate the military confrontation? Either they're not sharing sensitive military and security information - which is hard to believe - or they're not coordinating their public statements - which may be the case - or they're inventing narratives as the war intensifies and the political fallout unfolds, which is not inconceivable given their ever-changing narratives.

According to the English version of the Spanish newspaper El País, it is not only the general public that has received contradictory information about the motives and timing of the attack on Iran. Citing the Associated Press as its primary source, El País reports that "representatives of the Trump administration told congressional staffers in closed-door meetings that US intelligence services did not believe Iran was preparing pre-emptive strikes against the US". If this were confirmed, the US would lose the justification for its pre-emptive strike against Iran. According to El País, in another closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill to inform important congressional entities from both parties about the conflict, Secretary of State Rubio presented a new version of the justification for the pre-emptive strike: the US believed that Israel was preparing to bomb the Islamic Republic and, in that case, Tehran would attack US forces in the Middle East. Rubio's argument was as follows: "We knew there would be Israeli action. We knew that it would precipitate an Iranian attack on US forces and we knew that if we didn't pre-emptively attack them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer greater casualties," Rubio reportedly said at the meeting.

To add to the confusion about the alleged threats that led the United States to war, the aims and objectives of US military intervention have also been changing. Trump has been considering the possibility of regime change in Iran, and has even urged the Iranian people to rise up, depose the current Iranian regime and take control of the country. This approach was evident in his pre-recorded television address announcing the start of operations in Iran. However, a few days later, he made it public that he was considering a deal similar to the one he offered Venezuelan leaders: capitulating to US demands and staying in power. This change in objectives for the war caused his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hagseth, to backtrack, embarrassed, on the argument for regime change just three days after the start of the conflict. In another sharp turn, Trump demanded Iran's unconditional surrender, a radical demand that will surely deeply anger the Iranian leadership and motivate its fanatical soldiers to resist and prolong the war. According to the online newspaper The Hill, these changes in position are the result of the fact that "Trump is not very inclined to plan, at least not in the conventional sense. He's instinctive, improvisational and highly reactive."

With the Trump administration having failed to provide credible, consistent and coherent reasons and objectives for the war against Iran, we are left with the task of finding them. And the most plausible direction for finding them lies in the general character of Trump's leadership. We need to revisit and analyze President Trump's tendencies towards international relations, revealed through the bombing of suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and on the Pacific coast, the operation in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro, his threats of military intervention in Colombia and Mexico to combat drug trafficking, and also his interest in acquiring Greenland, either by negotiation or by force. It is thus clear that we are dealing with a leader who wants to restore three closely related doctrines developed by the United States in the 19th century: the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny and Gunboat Diplomacy. Yes, it's hard to believe, but that's what's happening with US foreign policy under the Trump administration. To consider that such foreign policy strategies are anachronistic is an entirely different matter.

But then, we are also left with an insistent question: why is Donald Trump so committed to restoring, in the 21st century, foreign policy doctrines that were thought to belong to the past? The answer to this question may be embarrassing, but it seems to be intrinsically linked to Trump's personality, because his seemingly anachronistic strategies are not part of any kind of national renaissance or reactionary social movement imaginable. We are dealing with a leader who wants to go down in history by rekindling old American glory and resorting to outdated strategies such as expanding US territory (notably with the acquisition of Greenland) or establishing neo-colonial protectorates like the one currently being established in Venezuela. Warning that Trump may be entering a new phase of his presidency, that of building a legacy, the news website The Hill points out that "historically, presidents who are considered 'great' tend to carry out certain works that praise them: they expand the country, dedicate impressive architectural works in their honor, or lead a war." It's safe to say that Donald Trump has tried all of these approaches. With an insightful analysis of the president's character, The Hill also points out that "he is undeniably prone to symbolism, reputation and historical stature" and may well be involved in "dramatic moves that he hopes will secure his place in the history books". The Hill's online article leaves us with a cautionary lesson: "It's risky to elect a narcissist with limited experience and an insatiable desire for glory."

A column by Henrique Silva