Briefing reporters on Saturday, a senior administration official attempted to argue that US President Donald Trump had “no choice” but to authorize Operation Epic Fury against Iran.
“Iran’s threat… in the short term is… conventional missile capability,” he said of the decision to launch a military campaign against the Islamic Republic.
“We had indicators that they intended to use it potentially, preventively…if not simultaneously [to] any action against them,” said the senior US official.
Intelligence that Iran was about to attack may well have justified the United States acting first, but the official’s own indecision on the matter was difficult to ignore.
It dates back to Trump’s State of the Union address days earlier, when the president appeared to provide another justification for what was then only a theoretical attack on Iran.
“After [Operation] Midnight Hammer, they were warned against making any future attempts to rebuild their weapons program… Yet they continue to start over. “We took it down and they want to start over,” Trump said.
There’s a difference between Iran rebuilding its nuclear program and simply wanting to do it, but Trump said both.
Then, in his address to the nation moments after authorizing the attack, Trump framed the justification in a third way: “They tried to rebuild their nuclear program”—not necessarily rebuilding the program, but trying to do so.
Those statements were part of prepared remarks by the president in which he could be seen looking at the teleprompter, not spontaneous statements that could have been more easily dismissed.
Toward the end of his speech on Saturday, Trump indicated that there was an additional motivation for attacking Iran that went beyond intelligence about a possible preemptive missile strike or the possible rebuilding of its nuclear program.
Trump, who appeared to push for regime change, called on the Iranians to “take control” of their government.
“Now is the time to take control of your destiny and unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is within your reach,” he said.
It was a recognition that, no matter how hard the United States could try to lay the groundwork for the regime’s fall, it would not be able to finish the job alone.
So Trump is betting on the Iranian people with Operation Epic Fury.
It could well be worth the gamble, given the Islamic Republic’s weak and exposed state after last year’s 12-day war and its latest brutal crackdown on Iranian civilians.
But it’s still a gamble.
He faces a regime that prepared for this very scenario, even putting in place contingency plans for who would make decisions in the event Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was assassinated, a senior Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel on Saturday hours after Khamenei’s death.
The regime knows that Trump wants Operation Epic Fury to conclude quickly after campaigning against the United States entrenching itself in Middle East conflicts.
“We measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we will never enter,” Trump said to applause from his supporters in his inauguration speech just over a year ago.
He is no longer personally campaigning, so that may explain his willingness to seemingly abandon that mantra in favor of addressing what he said in his speech on Saturday was the “imminent” threat posed by Iran.
But his party could pay if new polls, which indicate that only one in four Americans support US strikes on Iran, hold true in November’s midterm elections.
