Since President Trump launched airstrikes on Iran, the administration has cycled through a dizzying array of justifications for war, ranging from eliminating a nuclear program he previously said was “obliterated,” to punishing Tehran for supporting terrorism and Iraqi militias, to portraying the campaign as a mission to liberate the Iranian people from long-standing repression.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s speech at the Pentagon on Monday morning offered the newest rationale: the claim that Iran’s formidable missile and drone arsenal constituted “a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions,” and added that Iran “had a conventional gun to our head.”
Yet Hegseth’s assertion that Iran was building a conventional shield for nuclear blackmail dramatically exaggerates the threat that Iran’s capabilities posed. Moreover, it gets the logic of nuclear emboldenment completely backward—providing yet another data point that the Trump administration’s logic for war remains hopelessly muddled.
Author
