While the long or immediate-term fallout from Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s enriched uranium facilities remains to be seen, legal experts are still debating whether Trump’s conduct was Constitutional.
There are plenty of legal opinions on both sides. Here’s mine: No, it wasn’t, because there was no evidence that either the US or Israel faced an imminent threat; Israel announced that it had set back Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon by several years days beforeTrump jumped into the brawl. Three or four years is not “imminent” under anyone’s definition.
Worse, by unilaterally bombing a sovereign nation that had not attacked the US, despite the laudable goal of disarming a terrorist-supporting state, Trump has accelerated the US’ dangerous slide into authoritarianism.
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So what, then, did Trump care about before taking the extraordinary risk of entering the Middle East’s forever war? The timing suggests it wasn’t strategy. It was ego.
Trump pulled the trigger following two globally embarrassing events. His $45 million strongman military parade was an international joke outside of Fox News stations. Equally awful for a demagogue, Trump was roundly embarrassed at the G7 meeting while Netanyahu was enjoying extraordinary success in Iran.
In a widely under-reported story, Trump said he left the G7 early to “deal with” Israel, which apparently meant posting childish and impulsive warlock braggadocio on truth social. He beat his breast hard enough to signal Iran to move its 900 lb stash of enriched uranium, which put Israel—and us—in further danger, the outcome of which cannot yet be known.
Global press rejected Trump’s explanation for leaving the G7 early, reporting instead that he left early because the adults in the room refused to show him artificial deference. During the G7 opening press conference, Trump went on an inappropriate partisan tirade so bizarre that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney interrupted him and ended the press conference. The Italian Prime Minister was seen rolling eyes, presumably at Trump, and the world laughed at Trump’s petty insults against France’s Prime Minister Macron, of whom Trump appears to be jealous.
After all that, Trump tried to flex mob-boss strength to the press, announcing that the British Prime Minister had earned a trade framework protecting British trade because “I like them, that’s why. That’s their ultimate protection.” Those sound like words from a man who knows he’s just been insulted by people he doesn’t like.
Humiliated on the global stage by both events, unwisely hidden from viewers at home by Fox News, Trump desperately needed to recast himself as a strongman for the rest of the world. Some have speculated with credible evidence that Trump resented watching Netanyahu get all the glory, especially after it became clear that Israel’s aggression against Iran had been spectacularly successful. On June 13, while Israel’s bombs were falling, Trump told New York Times reporter Helene Cooper that he still held his “America First,” ie, isolationist, perspective.
The next day, however, after a full day of watching Fox News lavish Netanyahu with praise, Trump changed his mind. Even though no new intelligence had come in, and Israel was already winning its fight, one official told Cooper that Trump’s shift in attitude started early the next morning when he woke up and watched Fox News. When he saw how Netanyahu was being praised as powerful and strategic, he wanted in on the action. Cooper noted that, “Israel was hitting all of these Iranian sites, it was taking out military commanders, nuclear scientists, and that was being presented on Fox as this huge victory. And (Trump) decided that he wanted a piece of it.”
In further support of this theory, Trump also started taking immediate credit for Israel’s successes. He claimed on June 17 in a truth social post that, “We” have taken control of Iran’s airspace,” and that a meeting with his national security advisers had cemented the decision to enter the war.
