{"id":201773,"date":"2026-02-27T11:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T11:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/how-trump-shifted-from-opposing-foreign-wars-to-threatening-war-in-iran-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T11:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T11:35:17","slug":"how-trump-shifted-from-opposing-foreign-wars-to-threatening-war-in-iran-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/how-trump-shifted-from-opposing-foreign-wars-to-threatening-war-in-iran-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"How Trump shifted from opposing foreign wars to threatening war in Iran – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rationale to justify the US striking first has shifted from Iran killing protesters to its developing weapons
As senior Democrats emerged from a classified briefing on Iran with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, earlier this week<\/a>, the leaders of the opposition delivered reserved, cryptic warnings of what may become the US\u2019s largest military intervention since the Iraq war.
This was not a line in the sand against a new war in the Middle East. Instead, Democrats targeted the opaque decision-making around Donald Trump<\/a> \u2013 as well as his own unpredictable whims \u2013 that could guide the weightiest foreign-policy decision of his two terms in office.
\u201cThis is serious and the administration has to make its case to the American people,\u201d Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader and one of the party\u2019s most senior lawmakers, said following the briefing.
\u201cIf they want to do something in Iran<\/a> \u2013 and who the hell knows what it is \u2013 they should make it public,\u201d he added. Fellow Democrats in the briefing for the \u201cgang of eight\u201d senior lawmakers followed suit.
These were hardly the kind of full-throated denunciations of the move towards war that many Americans may want if recent polling is correct<\/a>. Donald Trump\u2019s ultimate goals in Iran remain unclear, but his mustering of the largest invasion force since 2003 has brought on a sense of inevitability that the US could soon be at war again.
And absent the pro-war sentiment that flourished after the 9\/11 attacks, a collective consensus \u2013 or initial acquiescence \u2013 has emerged through Trump\u2019s immense gravitational pull among his supporters, and the fractured opposition among Democrats.
A backlash may be in the making. After a tumultuous internal deliberation, House Democrats have announced that next week they will force a vote summoning Trump to Congress to explain his plans for Iran.
\u201cThe Iranian regime is brutal and destabilizing, seen most recently in the killing of thousands of protestors,\u201d read the statement, which it said would allow Democrats to go on record about their support or opposition to a war absent consent of Congress.
\u201cHowever, undertaking a war of choice in the Middle East, without a full understanding of all the attendant risks to our servicemembers and to escalation, is reckless. We maintain that any such action would be unconstitutional without consultation with and authorization from Congress.\u201d
\u201cI think there has been a shift from Democratic leadership and a number of mainstream Democrats in the last 48 hours or so,\u201d said Dylan Williams, the vice-president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, a left-leaning thinktank. \u201cOnce it became clear how much this mattered to the Democratic voting base, those leaders have started to speak out more strongly on the substance of the issue.\u201d Schumer also listed himself as a co-sponsor for a corresponding measure in the Senate to limit Trump\u2019s use of the military in Iran.
Trump has prided himself on his early opposition to the Iraq war (although he gave lukewarm support to the invasion until late 2003, when it began to descend into a quagmire). During his first term in office, he said that his victory had been bolstered by his goal to end US interventions in the Middle East, saying that he had been \u201celected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars\u201d.
But like George W Bush in the early 2000s, he and his administration have presented a shifting series of rationales to justify striking Iran: first, the regime\u2019s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that Trump said left 32,000 dead (others have made lower estimates), then the regime\u2019s nuclear programme, then its efforts to build ballistic missiles.
Despite assembling a team that included vocal opponents of further US interventions in the Middle East \u2013 especially JD Vance, who helped build a national security team focused on the long-term threat from China \u2013 Trump\u2019s administration is reported to be edging toward a significant military strike if this week\u2019s negotiations do not yield results.
During his State of the Union address, Trump reiterated his declarations that Iran could not possess a nuclear weapon \u2013 despite his claims that last summer\u2019s Midnight Hammer operation had \u201cobliterated\u201d the Iranian nuclear programme.
Then, he went a step further in describing Iran\u2019s current state as a clear and present danger to the United States, saying: \u201cThey\u2019ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they\u2019re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.\u201d The administration has not offered evidence to support that claim or lay out a timeline for which Iran could develop those missiles.
The remarks echo the warnings of the Bush administration, which steadily built the case for the war in Iraq in 2002 with the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Trump\u2019s closest advisers \u2013 including Vance, Rubio and envoy Steve Witkoff \u2013 have bristled at such comparisons. After last year\u2019s limited strikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear programme, Vance said that he empathised with Americans who were \u201cexhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East\u201d but that \u201cback then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America\u2019s national security objectives\u201d.
This Thursday, Vance echoed Trump\u2019s remarks that Iran was crossing a red line, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s very simple … I think most Americans understand that you can\u2019t let the craziest and worst regime in the world have nuclear weapons.\u201d
<\/span> This article was amended on 27 February 2026 because an earlier version referred to 2022 as the year the case was being made for the war in Iraq, when 2002 was meant.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rationale to justify the US striking first has shifted from Iran killing protesters to its developing weaponsAs senior Democrats emerged from a classified briefing on Iran with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, earlier this week, the leaders of the opposition delivered reserved, cryptic warnings of what may become the US\u2019s largest military intervention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-201773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}