There is a somewhat troublesome backstory to President Donald Trump’s glorification of how Saturday’s US forces attack on three Iranian nuclear sites that “completely obliterated” their targets was carried out without any declaration of war against a country that has not attacked and was not in any way threatening the United States. Minus any imminent threat as a justification, it was a direct Executive Branch challenge to the War Powers Act of 1973, which was intended to maintain the US Constitution’s clear intention that only the American “people” acting through their representatives in Congress should have the authority to start a war. That means that the attack on Iran was illegal and those who planned and executed it, presumably including President Trump, should be considered impeachable. Some Democrats in Congress are in fact already calling for impeachment.
Trump celebrated his victory over the Persians with a late night address to the nation while standing in front of his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance. He told the public and the gathered media that “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Trump added that if “peace does not come quickly,” the US would execute more and larger attacks very soon. “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy. Remember, there are many targets left. … [I]f peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill.”
Trump’s first five months in office have demonstrated that he has a deplorable disregard for the Constitution of the United States, preferring to believe that his self-declared executive authority as president overrides the constitutional prerogatives of both the judiciary and the legislature. It has also resulted in the government engaging in abuses that are manifestly illegal, ignoring due process. This has been evident in the handling of both the illegal immigration issue and in the repression of free speech for those who object to US support of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Starting an unnecessary war after getting elected president on a pledge to end Joe Biden’s wars is perhaps a manifestation of the hubris that drives the current thinking in the White House.
Given all of the above, it is perhaps necessary to ask whether the “obliteration” boasted of by Trump actually accomplished anything apart from destruction of structures on the ground. The three sites hit in the attacks – Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan – were certainly vulnerable to submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and also to the heavy 30,000 pound GBU-57 penetrator bombs dropped by the US B-2 stealth bombers but two of the sites, Fordow and Isfahan, are located deep underground shielded by rock mountains from above. Isfahan reportedly has a long tunnel through the rock to reach the facility. Iranian sources are reporting that even if the protected facilities were damaged there was nothing there, that all the enriched uranium and critical equipment like the centrifuges were removed in anticipation of an attack. Their new locations appear to be unknown to US intelligence.
And speaking of US intelligence, there was a clear intelligence failure connected to going to war against Iran, which Trump is now calling on to cease resistance and apply for an unconditional surrender which will involve something like complete disarmament. The president’s posturing over the issue of Iran has been somewhat complicated by his contradictory comments relating to the status of Tehran’s alleged nuclear weaponization program, which most US and western intelligence sources deny exists. After some initial hesitation, Donald Trump now claims that he “knows” that Iran is “very close to having nuclear weapons” possibly in a “couple of weeks” even though American intelligence had in March told him that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003 . But Trump doesn’t care, even rejecting what the US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told him about the assessment of US intelligence saying “I do not care what she said.” Trump yes-man loyalist CIA Director John Ratcliffe helped twist the knife in Gabbard, who will presumably soon be gone, by changing course on what had been a unanimous intel community judgment and telling the White House that Iran was on the “one yard line” from having a nuclear weapon.
So Trump decided to ignore and explicitly denigrate the conclusions reached by his own intelligence staff and came around to the belief that Netanyahu, who has been in regular telephonic communication with the American president in spite of stories last month about how the two men had fallen out, knows better what is happening in Iran. Trump was also the recipient of information originating with Israel’s external spy agency Mossad, which, for anyone less gullible than Trump, should have been a warning sign that he was being fed disinformation. Mossad’s motto is literally, “By way of deception you shall engage in war” and it is reported that it had a direct line to Ratcliffe and CIA for “talking points” providing “guidance” on the Iranian “threat.” And so the US president has committed his administration to support Israeli acts of aggression against Iran and has informed Tehran that if it responds to acts of war the US will help Israel destroy it, a promise that he appears to be right now delivering on.
In fact, Israel was clearly involved in the planning of the mission. Israeli senior officials and journalists have confirmed that Tel Aviv was informed of the strike before the operation actually took place. And Trump also called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the attack, leading to Netanyahu’s posting of a video message on his social media site on Saturday night praising Trump’s decision to bomb the Iranian sites. “Congratulations, President Trump. Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the US will change history. In operation Rising Lion, Israel has done truly amazing things. But in tonight’s action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, America has been truly unsurpassed. It has done what no other country on earth could do.”
Indeed, one might argue that the US attack on Iran was all about Israel and yet one more indication of who actually runs Washington. Trump groveled to thank the Israeli government, which is currently carrying out a genocide in Gaza, for its help and cooperation in the operation. “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu; we worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”
In spite of the claims of a completely successful operation coming out of the White House and Pentagon, as noted above, the level of actual damage to the targeted Iranian sites is still not completely known. But the hosannas have already started to reap the political benefits obtained through what is being described as a “spectacular military success.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth led the pack of yodeling hyenas with a hyperbolic “The operation President Trump planned was bold, and it was brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back. When this president speaks, the world should listen.”
So what comes next? Iran will surely retaliate in some fashion, possibly by hitting US bases in the Persian Gulf region and killing Americans, which will only cause the war to escalate with the US and Israel currently calling for destroying the city of Tehran itself, which can only be accomplished with nuclear weapons. Plus Iran might close the Straits of Hormuz, driving gas prices up to $30 per gallon. And if Iran did indeed salvage its enriched uranium and the equipment needed to enhance it and construct a bomb, the entire exercise could result in a new nuclear proliferator for defensive purposes, completely contrary to the stated intention to deny Tehran its own nukes. Take it all together and, if you want to assign blame, look to the perpetually ignorant Donald Trump plus his neocon and Israeli minders. The fact that Trump and his companions are able to wield such power rather suggests that something is very wrong in our country right now and it is time for the public to rise up and demand an end to what is going on in the Middle East in particular but also in Ukraine. Enough Mr Trump! You have outstayed your welcome!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.