Hey, Donald Trump is a Neocon!
Our war with Iran enters Phase 2.
Hey everyone. Happy Friday. We’re currently at war with Iran, NBD. What a year this week has been.
Why are we at war with Iran?
Before we jump into the details, a quick disclaimer: Much like Bill Murray doesn’t do defense, the Jackal doesn’t do foreign policy. I’ll have my own thoughts but then will give lots of reading materials. I claim no expertise and do not expect you to take anything I say seriously.
I want to go back to the Jackals of yesteryear, a.k.a., when we first bombed Iran under Trump 2.0 in June of 2025. Yeah, remember that? It feels like decades ago, but it wasn’t even eight months ago. Freakish. What’s worse: Christmas was barely more than two months ago. What is time?
Anyway, here is what I said back then:
I mean, that is horrific, even if the mission is deemed successful (we’ll get to that). But make no mistake: We are at war with Iran. You do not get to launch a major offensive on a country and then say it’s not really a war. […] Again, I would simply wait, but the goldilocks scenario here - where Iran drops their nuclear ambitions, comes back to the table, and stops funding terrorism in the Middle East - will probably remain elusive.
Spoiler: The goldilocks scenario was indeed elusive. Back then, Trump said that we had totally “obliterated” Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. But it turns out we didn’t and had to go back in to finish the job.
Or, that was one of the first explanations.
I’m not kidding, this is how the narrative shifted on why we went to war with Iran:
On Saturday, Trump said that we were going after Iran’s missile silos and their navy. He also talked about ending their ability to build a nuke. Cool!
After we got word that the Ayatollah Khamenei was unalived, the Administration shifted the narrative and said there was an imminent threat from Iran.
Then on Sunday Trump said that negotiations with Iran were not progressing, so that’s why we attacked (super normal to go to war over failed negotiations).
Later on Trump pivoted back to ending Iran’s ability to build a nuke, and also called for regime change.
On Monday, Pete Hegseth said this was not a regime-change war.
Then Marco Rubio showed up and said we didn’t really face an imminent threat, but we would have faced one because Israel was going to attack Iran.
Then Trump contradicted Rubio and said he “forced Israel’s hand.”
J.D. Vance also chimed in and said we had to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
It is now seven days into this war and we still don’t know what our objectives are or why we’re even there. Trump has said different things, ranging from “this will be quick and last a few weeks,” to, “we may be there until September.” WTF.
I can’t take Lexapro for another few hours. Just tell me what’s going to happen.
I will reiterate what I said last year: The Iranian regime truly is evil and there is a goldilocks scenario here that is visible. Is it possible that the Iranian people - with the leadership ousted - will rise up, take control of their government and build a Western-style democracy? Sure, that’s possible. But it’s not the most likely outcome.
Likelier outcomes include:
No actual regime change. The Mullahs remain in charge and are even less likely to trust the United States or Israel. They will likely unleash more terror on the region.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) takes control. They arguably have been more powerful than the religious leaders in Iran and are far more extreme. If they end up the sole leaders of Iran, they will race towards a nuclear weapon and will attack other countries in the Middle East indiscriminately.
Columbia University speaker Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes control (if he’s still alive). Ahmadinejad is Iran’s Trump, meaning he is less rational and predictable than the Mullahs.
A power vacuum filled by extremists and militants.
And even if we get the best-case scenario here, it is unlikely to produce a country that is friendly with the West. The United States is extremely unpopular with the Iranian people and Israel even more so; it definitely doesn’t help that we’re working together.
Back during Iran’s Green Revolution, there were calls for then-President Barack Obama to support the Iranian people protesting in the streets. When Obama refused to do so, Republicans pounced and called him cowardly. But Obama’s team was actually very intelligent: American support for an anti-government movement in Iran will kill any such movement. We are truly that unpopular.1 In fact, the Mullahs took video of Obama giving a speech and added captions in Persian that said Obama supported the Greens.
There is no, “We will be greeted as liberators” argument to make with Iran.
Is there any room for hope?
I’ll say this: Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East and their regime causes havoc. They are OG bad guys from jump street, and it is awesome that Khamenei is dead.
They also cannot be allowed to have a nuke, full stop. They will sneak it into the hands of some group, like Hamas or Hezbollah, and then they will take a stroll right into Israel.
If Trump is able to get a full win here, it will be remembered as one of the most brilliant foreign policy moves in American history. A Middle East without the insane Iranian regime and instead run by the (wonderful) Iranian people is a safer Middle East.
But Donald Trump is so dense that light bends around him. He is dumber than a bag of hammers. His brain is smoother than an apple. He is an oxygen thief. And his Cabinet isn’t much better.
Here’s a great example. In order for this war to be “legal,” there has to be an imminent threat from Iran. It allows Trump to use his Article II powers for an allotted time, and then he has to go to Congress for approval. Presidents generally get pretty wide latitude for military action like this.
But his own Administration officials have all conceded that Iran did not pose an imminent threat.2 Then, Rubio tried to clean it up (see above) and Trump undermined him. So, he killed his own argument and it is now entirely possible this war is fully illegal (the repercussions of that are probably worth a separate Jackal).
I have no hope for a good outcome here because this team is incompetent. The President is a reality TV show host whose casinos lost money and the Secretary of Defense is a Fox News host who hasn’t been sober at 10 A.M. in decades.
Even with the world’s most powerful military and the most brilliant military minds in history, they are going to mess it up.
READING LIST.
This is not really a “should-reads” section, since I’ll probably quote from some people and then give thoughts. But think of it as one.
The best piece I’ve read so far is from Bill Kristol (who knows a thing or two about starting a war). He says the Administration has provided no explanation:
Why did we go to war now? The administration hasn’t offered a coherent explanation. Over the weekend, President Trump suggested several purposes and backed away from some, leaving confusion in his wake. His aides tried to clean things up yesterday, having Trump read military “objectives” from a teleprompter at the White House. But none of the objectives—destroying Iran’s missile capabilities and its navy, ensuring Iran can’t obtain a nuclear weapon or support terrorism—explain why we had to go to war now. Nor do they explain why we are engaged in such an open-ended and massive military campaign.
The lack of explanation is going to be pretty key here. Support for this war is really in the dumpster, hovering around 27%.3 For comparison, support for the Iraq War (which the Bush Administration spent a long time selling) was sky-high, with over 70% of Americans in support and just 16% (!) opposed.
I think one of the factors behind the low level of support is that it feels like an obvious betrayal of Trump’s campaign promises. There are already compilations piling up of Trump promising he would never go to war with Iran, and that it was Kamala Harris who would drag us into one.
There is already a divide in MAGA, but Americans as a whole also have bigger concerns, namely the floundering economy. And things are only going to get worse, since wars tend to be inflationary. Here is Catherine Rampell:
Gasoline might be the most noticeable price Trump is turbocharging right now, but it’s far from the only one.
Other energy markets are affected, too. Qatar, which supplies about 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas, halted LNG production after a drone attack. Production there will take weeks to restart.
As a result, downstream firms that require LNG to operate are closing shop, too. For example, the Gulf region is responsible for nearly a tenth of the global aluminum supply. Already this week, multiple major aluminum smelters had to initiate shutdowns; one company says it may take up to a year to restart production.
Yeah dude. Gas is going up, and everything else along with it. It has sort of flown under the radar recently because the economic news in general has been so bad, but inflation has been spiking, largely due to Trump’s tariffs (RIP)4. A war with Iran is going to cause a major disruption to the global oil trade, and it will mean a spike in gas prices at home. We are already creeping toward a recession and this war could give us a nice, big push.
I’ll leave you guys with this piece from Jay Caspian Kang, which reflects on how the Trump Administration didn’t even bother to sell this war and how we’ve forgotten wars like Iraq and Afghanistan:
If we do forget the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, it won’t be on account of a revisionist history about those wars, one that has swayed us with jingoistic propaganda about a caring military or some paean about spreading democracy. Instead, Trump will have won by simply refusing to tell a story at all, outside of Hegseth’s absurd football-coach talk. Hegseth, in a way, is right: nobody believes in those stories anymore, so why would he bother spinning them? Just say, essentially, nothing, and hope that, eventually, we’ll all go back to our phones.
I am not sure I fully agree with Kang. I talked about the different scenarios that could unfold regarding Iran, but there are other scenarios to think about.
Trump built himself a coalition of hardcore Republicans who always vote GOP; conspiracists who generally don’t trust the government and see him as someone who will shake it up; casual voters who don’t pay attention to politics; and belligerent racists.
He has lost a lot of traditional Republican support (raises hand and the hands of many friends and family members), who will likely never return to the GOP, since it has changed so much under Trump.
If he hadn’t lost the conspiracists with his coverup of the Epstein Files, then he is surely losing them now over his war with Iran. And he’s losing the belligerent racists because he’s aligned with Israel in the war against Iran, and they hate the Jews.
What is the GOP left with? A few people who only pay attention to politics in even years, if that?
A real scenario is possible here: Donald Trump’s disaster of a second term sees his coalition crumble and the GOP is unable to rebuild, becoming so weak they experience what the Democrats did in the 1980s.
Because the people are not going to forget Trump 2.0.
I almost hate to tell you guys this, but birthright citizenship is coming up again in April. The Jackal will go into full SCOTUS mode in the coming weeks. Sorry in advance.
Polls in Iran put our unfavorable rating at around 70%, but there is some evidence the youth are warming to us. BUT A WAR TENDS TO TURN PUBLIC OPINION ON YOU OMG.
The Pentagon went to Congress and said this explicitly, likely because they (1) do not want to be associated with starting this war and are leaving that to Trump, and also because (2) they want to remain credible for the next Administration.
And this is before the casualties begin to pile up. I was going to wait until we got official confirmation, but it really looks like the U.S. bombed a school filled with Iranian children. Absolutely heartbreaking.
I know Trump said he was going to do more tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Those are also going to get struck down. I will do a longer explainer when we jump into Court stuff later this month, but these are also going to be struck down and the case likely won’t even make it to SCOTUS.