Can Donald Trump Win a War with Iran If He Can't Explain Why He Started It?

"In the two and a half days since Donald Trump unleashed a new war in the Middle East, the President and his Administration have come up with an astonishing array of different, even contradictory, rationales for the American military attack on Iran. By my count, and I'm sure I've missed a few, these include outright regime change, assistance to the oppressed peoples of the Islamic Republic, stripping Iran of 'the ability to project power outside its borders,' stopping future Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks while exacting revenge for past ones."

"All of which raises perhaps the most urgent question thus far about the most dramatic military action undertaken by the United States since the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Can the U.S. win a war of its choosing when it cannot explain why it chose to fight or what, exactly, victory would mean?"

"Trump himself has been the author of most of the confusion. In an eight-minute video, which was released in the predawn hours of Saturday morning, soon after the strikes began, the President vaguely warned of 'imminent threats,' while offering a litany of decades-old complaints about Iran's long and deadly campaign of terror against the U.S. and its allies."

Following military strikes on Iran, the Trump Administration offered numerous conflicting rationales for the action, including regime change, preventing Iranian power projection, stopping terrorist attacks, preemptive strikes against imminent threats, blocking ballistic missile development, and halting nuclear programs—despite Trump recently claiming the nuclear program was already obliterated. Many explanations rely on false premises and some have been abandoned. This confusion raises fundamental questions about whether the United States can achieve victory in a war when unable to articulate clear reasons for fighting or define what success means, presenting challenges similar to the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Read at The New Yorker