How Trump shifted from opposing foreign wars to threatening war in Iran | US foreign policy

As top Democrats held a classified briefing on Iran with Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this week, opposition leaders issued cautious, cryptic warnings about what could be the biggest U.S. military intervention since the Iraq war.

This was not a hard line against a new war in the Middle East. Instead, Democrats took aim at the opaque decision-making around Donald Trump as well as his own unpredictable whims that could guide the heaviest foreign policy decision of his two terms in office.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader and one of the party’s most senior lawmakers, said in a statement after the briefing, “This is a serious situation and the administration needs to explain this to the American people.”

“If they want to do something in Iran – who knows what it is – they should make it public,” he added. Other Democrats and senior lawmakers at the briefing on the “gang of eight” followed suit.

These were not the full-throated accusations of moving toward war that many Americans would have wanted. Latest polls are correct. Donald Trump’s ultimate goals in Iran remain unclear, but his amassing of the largest invasion force since 2003 has created a sense of inevitability that the United States could soon go to war again.

And in the absence of the pro-war sentiment that developed after the 9/11 attacks, a collective consensus — or initial consent — emerged thanks to the enormous traction among Trump’s supporters and fragmented opposition among Democrats.

There may be a reaction. After a tumultuous internal debate, House Democrats announced they will push for a vote next week calling on Trump to explain his plans for Iran.

The statement said that “the Iranian regime is brutal and destabilizing, as seen in the recent killing of thousands of protesters,” and that this would allow Democrats to register their support or opposition to the war without the consent of Congress.

“However, it is reckless to engage in a preferential war in the Middle East without fully understanding all the risks and escalation to our troops. We argue that such action without consultation with and authorization from Congress would be unconstitutional.”

“I think there has been a shift in Democratic leadership and some mainstream Democrats in the last 48 hours,” said Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, a left-leaning think tank. “Once it became clear how important this was to the Democratic voting base, these leaders began to speak more forcefully about the substance of the issue.” Schumer also listed himself as a co-sponsor of a related Senate measure to limit Trump’s use of the military in Iran.

Trump boasted about his early opposition to the Iraq war (although he offered lukewarm support for the invasion until late 2003, when it began to founder). He stated that during his first term in office, his goal of ending US intervention in the Middle East clinched his victory, saying that he was “elected to get out of these ridiculous endless wars”.

But like George W. Bush in the early 2000s, he and his administration offered a range of shifting justifications to justify attacking Iran: First, the regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, which Trump said led to 32,000 deaths (others have given lower estimates), then the regime’s nuclear program, and then its efforts to build ballistic missiles.

Despite assembling a team that includes vocal opponents of further U.S. involvement in the Middle East (particularly J.D. Vance, who helped establish a national security team focused on long-term threats from China), the Trump administration is reportedly moving toward a significant military strike if this week’s talks fail to yield results.

During his State of the Union address, Trump reiterated his statements that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, despite his claims that last summer’s Midnight Hammer operation “destroyed” Iran’s nuclear program.

He then went a step further, describing Iran’s current situation as a clear and present danger to the United States, saying: “They have developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our overseas bases, and they are trying to build missiles that will soon reach the United States.” The administration has not provided any evidence to support this claim or a timeline by which Iran could develop these missiles.

These words echo warnings from the Bush administration, which has steadily built its justification for war in Iraq in 2022 with the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

Trump’s closest advisers (including Vance, Rubio and envoy Steve Witkoff) bristled at such comparisons. After last year’s limited attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, Vance said he empathized with Americans “exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” but said “we had stupid presidents then, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security goals.”

This Thursday, Vance echoed Trump’s words that Iran had crossed the red line, saying: “It’s very simple… I think most Americans understand that you cannot allow the craziest and worst regime in the world to have nuclear weapons.”