Trump Is Heading to War Based On A Lie. It Happened Before.

The neo-cons are storming back to repeat the same mistakes they made in Iraq. Proponents of regime-change are desperately trying to persuade Trump to invade Iran. It could lead to disaster.

Vehicles jam a highway as a fire blazes nearby in the oil depots of Shahran, northwest of Tehran, on June 15, 2025. Credit: Al Jazeera

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Just like in Iraq two decades ago, the US government appears ready once again to plunge itself into a major war under false pretenses. And again, much of the media is falling for it.

Today, echoes of 2003 are everywhere. Back then, our politicians and their allies in the mainstream media were busy manufacturing consent for a war that will doubtless have global consequences. Then, it was Saddam Hussein and his government in Baghdad that we were told possessed what where called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — despite the fact that independent United Nations weapons inspectors had visited the country multiple times and reported that they had found no such weapons. Today, the same playbook is being applied to Iran.

In 2018, Senator John McCain, a leading advocate of the Iraq war, issued a self-damning verdict: “The principal reason for invading Iraq, that Saddam [Hussein] had WMD, was wrong. The war, with its cost in lives and treasure and security, can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.” The war killed 654,000 people either directly or indirectly, according to the prestigious medical journal The Lancet (see here for the study).

It is clear that our leaders have learned little from this history.

The most critical fact is that Israel’s claim that Iran is on the cusp of having an operational nuclear weapon is a lie, according to US intelligence agencies. Yet this falsehood is presented as the basis for Israel’s attack on the country — and would also be the basis for any military action by Trump, including the increasingly likely use of enormous bunker-busting bombs to try to destroy Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, which is encased in a mountain. (Israel does not have the bombs needed to penetrate the mountain.) The mainstream media in the US ignores or grossly downplays this foundational lie.

The false claim that Iran is inches away from having a nuclear weapon has been a talking point propagated by Netanyahu for years as a way to try to induce the US to join him in the illegal act of attacking Iran. Every year or so since the 1990s, Netanyahu beats his chest and claims Iran is almost there. Yet it’s never happened. We know the Israeli pretext for attacking Iran is false because on March 25 of this year, the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the US government (Tulsi Gabbard) told Congress in a public hearing that evidence showed Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that the country’s Supreme Leader had not authorized one to be built since the program was suspended in 2003. Gabbard’s testimony was based on the consensus opinion of all the US intelligence agencies. Nothing has happened in the months since to change that assessment, even though Trump reportedly has sidelined Gabbard for being “off message” (i.e., he’s punishing her for being truthful).

Reinforcing the validity of Gabbard’s assessment in the last few days is none other than the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the international body that inspects Iran’s nuclear facilities under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This man, Rafael Grossi, said repeatedly this week that Iran is not and was not building a nuclear weapon. The agency found that Iran has enriched uranium to a 60% level, which would leave it months away from being able to create an operational bomb even if it had the intent (uranium must be enriched to 90% to make a bomb).

I find it extraordinarily interesting that Netanyahu just last week bombed the home of Iran’s lead arms negotiator with the United States, killing him. The reality is that Iran for years has been negotiating in good faith with the US and other western countries on the nuclear issue. Netanyahu detested that process because it legitimized the Iranian government and foreclosed the idea the US would ever join Israel in an attack on the Fordow facility. When Trump decided to negotiate with the Iranian government as a way to avert war, Netanyahu was furious. He blew up those negotiations literally and figuratively by launching the bombing campaign.

Smoke rising from explosions in Tehran on Sunday after Israeli strikes. Credit: New York Times..

Consider the hypocrisy. Iran is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which entered into force in 1970. This treaty mandates regular and independent inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities (and those of most other countries with nuclear capabilities) by scientists operating under the auspices of the IAEA. Israel, which according to a recent report maintains an arsenal of 90 nuclear bombs, has not signed the treaty and bars all international inspections of its facilities. Netanyahu also claims his attack on Iran (which thus far has killed an estimated 225 civilians) was a “pre-emptive” strike against an “imminent” threat, which is an effort to provide a legal justification under international law. That’s BS given that there was nothing “imminent” about a nuclear weapon existing in Iran, according to US intelligence.

What’s really happening is Netanyahu has become a “forever war” leader because he knows once the bombs stop falling, be it in Gaza or Iran or Lebanon, his governing coalition will collapse. He then will be out of a job. Once that happens, he will be forced to face a corruption prosecution at home that could lead to prison and a genocide trial in the International Court of Justice. He’s made a deal with the devil and co-opted Israel’s US-backed war machine and turned it into a personal project while sucking the naive Trump into his game. Whether Trump actually pulls the trigger remains to be seen, although I think we are moving in that direction.

Bottom line: Iran has no active nuclear weapons program. Iran was and is open to a peaceful resolution with the United States. The “forever war” leader of Israel is sucking the pliant Trump into a conflict based on false pretenses. The same neo-con warmongers who pushed the invasion of Iraq based on false stories of WMD are now pushing Trump into Iran based on false stories of the imminence of nuclear weapons.

The ghosts left by the main architects of the Iraq war — Cheney, Perle and Wolfowitz — live on in Trump and his team.

—Steven