As President Donald Trump tells it, the United States had no other option than to launch a large-scale bombing operation against Iran. The threat the Iranians posed to the United States was simply too high; Iran’s history of mayhem inside the Middle East was too long to ignore; and Iranian negotiators weren’t serious about striking a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program. “They’ve rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” Trump told the nation an hour after the U.S. military operation began on Saturday.
The Trump administration’s argument for war rests on two pillars. First, Iran is an imminent national security threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East. And second, Iran never wanted to find a diplomatic route out of the nuclear crisis that has bedeviled U.S.-Iran relations for more than two decades.
Trump’s case, however, is flat-out wrong. This conflict, which has spread to other countries in the region and is affecting energy prices, didn’t need to happen.
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