“A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran,” President Donald Trump declared in a video released on the morning of February 28, 2026. Without a single vote from Congress, and in clear defiance of the constitutional requirement for a declaration of war, the President announced that the United States and Israel have launched a massive, coordinated assault on Iran. The justification offered was the familiar, haunting refrain of “imminent threats,” a phrase that has served as the preamble to nearly every foreign policy disaster of the last quarter-century.
The strength of a republic is measured by its adherence to law during times of crisis. However, for the past quarter-century, the halls of Congress have grown increasingly silent as the Executive Branch has seized the sole prerogative to initiate global conflict. We are not merely witnessing a lapse in judgment, but a stark reminder that the modern presidency now operates with the unilateral authority of the very monarchy this nation was founded to overrule. By bypassing the constitutional requirement for a declaration of war, the administration risks not only the lives of our service members but the very republican foundation it claims to defend.
Arguing that the path of diplomacy had been exhausted, President Trump defended the escalation by pointing to Israeli intelligence that purportedly showed Tehran poised for an immediate strike against U.S. interests. While the administration frames the operation as a “preemptive strike” to stop an immediate threat, some lawmakers and international organizations such as the European Council on Foreign Relations argue it lacks a strategic endgame and may instead be a “preventive war” or a “war of choice.” Earlier this week Trump claimed that Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,” but US intelligence agencies argue that Iran is years away from such a capability.
Nonetheless, the preemptive strike narrative was immediately amplified by media figures like Scott Jennings on CNN. The spectacle of news anchors echoing unverified government sources explains why the American public remains so dangerously disinformed. History reminds us that “preemptive strikes,” most notably the 2003 invasion of Iraq, are almost always wars of choice built on a foundation of false pretenses.
The Solidarity Paradox
The President’s rhetorical gymnastics reached a fever pitch when he and other Republicans claimed the strikes were an act of solidarity with Iranian protesters, an effort to help them “take their country back” from a “wicked, radical dictatorship.” Such concern for human rights rings hollow from an administration that has presided over the aggressive policing and murder of protesters in American streets and the mass incarceration of undocumented individuals and American citizens. Critics have pointed out the bitter irony of the President decrying Iranian authoritarianism while his own administration constructs a network of massive “holding facilities” across the U.S. heartland, warehouses so grim in their design that some commentators have compared their schematics to the horrific efficiency of slave ships.
Furthermore, the “regime change” fantasy ignores the very history that brought us here. In 1953, the U.S. and U.K. overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, simply because he sought to nationalize Iranian oil for the benefit of his people. By installing the autocratic Shah, the West planted the seeds of the 1979 Revolution. The current theocracy is a direct result of Western meddling, not a justification for more of it. Furthermore, the U.S. has attempted regime change around the world nearly 100 times, and the vast majority of these efforts have resulted in prolonged instability, humanitarian crises, or the rise of even more hostile governments.
The Nuclear Shell Game
The secondary excuse for this war, nuclear proliferation, is riddled with contradictions. For over a decade, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed Iran was “months away” from a bomb. These alarms were sounded in 2012, 2015, and 2018, each time proving to be exaggerated or based on outdated data.
The administration’s own record is a labyrinth of contradictions. In 2011, Donald Trump famously derided then-President Barack Obama for a perceived lack of diplomatic skill, warning, “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.” Yet, when Obama successfully negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, a landmark agreement that saw Iran limit uranium enrichment and submit to rigorous international inspections, it was Trump who ultimately tore it up upon taking office.
The confusion has only deepened in the last year. On June 21, 2025, following the conclusion of Operation Midnight Hammer, President Trump triumphantly declared that U.S. forces had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s enrichment capabilities. This leads to a glaring logical deficit: if those facilities were truly reduced to rubble six months ago, the administration has yet to explain how they could possibly pose an “imminent” nuclear threat today.
If the threat to the U.S. is manufactured, whose interests are being served? Economist Jeffrey Sachs argues that the answer is regional hegemony for Israel, not American security. Sachs notes that toppling the Iranian regime has been an explicit Israeli policy for years. He muses that the U.S. has abandoned its own interests due to evangelical political pressure, or “it may be blackmail, it may be corruption, it may be many other things, but it is not about America’s interests.”
The Neoconservative Restoration
Meanwhile, the media environment remains a “rhetorical unit” for the administration. The day the bombings were announced, Jake Tapper’s CNN guests were seemingly required to perform a ritualistic condemnation of the late Ayatollah Khamenei, who was reportedly killed in today’s strikes, as a prerequisite for appearing. The homogeneity of the media’s “expert” analysis was staggering. CBS’s afternoon panel featured a relentless parade of hawks: Senator Tom Cotton, who has long advocated for military action against Tehran; Representative Josh Gottheimer, a staunch supporter of the escalation; and retired General Frank McKenzie, who previously oversaw strikes against Iranian interests. They were joined by Alireza Akhondi, a dissident with a personal vendetta against the regime, and National Security Council veteran Samantha Vinograd, another vocal proponent of the bombardment. It was less a news panel and more a Council of War, devoid of a single voice questioning the constitutional or strategic sanity of the mission.
One casualty of this morning’s announcement may be the “America First” movement itself. Trump’s original political ascent was fueled by his visceral rejection of the 2003 Iraq War as a bipartisan catastrophe, a stance that defined the MAGA base. Today, that same base finds itself bitterly divided. There is a palpable fear that “regime change” will inevitably necessitate U.S. boots on the ground, mirroring the very quagmire in Iraq that Trump once denounced. For years, influential figures like Charlie Kirk lobbied the President to avoid a full-scale confrontation, particularly following the volatile 12-Day War between Iran and Israel in June 2025. But with Kirk’s death last year, the most prominent anti-war guardrails within the movement have been silenced or dismantled, leaving the “America First” doctrine indistinguishable from the neoconservative interventionism it once sought to replace.
By launching this illegal war, the President has not protected the American people; he has invited a regional conflagration that will drain our treasury and cost the lives of our youth. The “freedom” promised to the people of Iran will likely look much like the “freedom” we brought to Iraq and Libya: a landscape of rubble, resentment, and endless war.
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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nolan Higdon.