Weekly Report-Will He, or Won’t He

For the past month, Americans have been wondering whether President Trump will attack Iran, or whether the massive military build-up in the Middle East is just another bluff. President Trump claims that the decision is his alone to make.

Thus far, President Trump has made little effort to explain to the American people – or to Congress – why launching a war against Iran is in our national interest. Instead, he wanders from one reason to another, hoping something will stick. First it was a “nuclear threat” even though he swore that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program last summer. Then, after the CIA, Mossad, and UK’s MI6 launched a regime-change operation in the form of violent protests in late December, the excuse for war became the Iranian government’s crackdown on the insurrection. But before that could be used as the excuse, the Iranian government was able to quash the uprising. So President Trump returned to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, while adding in the presence of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Even by the low threshold for recent US military actions overseas, these arguments are unconvincing. That is why Americans are so skeptical. In a major poll last month, seven in ten Americans said they oppose any US military action against Iran.