Trump is mercurial.
Trump lies about everything. He said Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. He said Obama was not born in the United States. He implied people aged 150 and more were getting Social Security payments. And so on. But Trump is often quite truthful and candid about his own motives even if other people might think such disclosures were selfish or embarrassing or simply simple minded. That is the case with his starting the Iran War. He said, when he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, that he was no longer pursuing peace. Perhaps he was aware of the plans against Iran or maybe because he was going to leave a major legacy one way or another. As is said, he follows his own instincts.
As a matter of fact, now has been a good time to attack Iran. Its forces had been considerably weakened by last year’s exchanges between Israel and the United States with Iran and the war aims of the United States and Israel are coherent rather than scattered, which is what Democrats would claim. Trump wants to rid Iran of its nuclear, missile and naval capabilities even if Iran threats would not be imminent, and now was the good time to do it especially when the Israelis had found out just when the Iranian leadership would be just where they would be. And destabilizing the regime was another goal though it is difficult to know in advance how that would play out. Recent developments suggest Kurdish forces will come into play and that might turn the trick
Moreover, the President has authority to wage this war because the overly broad mandate given by Congress after 9/11 has never been repealed and the War Powers Act is now interpreted to mean that the President is allowed to war without going to Congress for a period of time rather than the time for war authorization is simply delayed while a crisis has to be dealt with. Also, Congress always has the right to withhold funds for a war, which it did when the Boland Amendment said no money to the Contras in Nicaragua and the Congress never stopped funding Korea or Vietnam.The American military, very cognizant of constitutionalism, has had no qualms about the legitimacy of this war.
The war so far has been going well, thanks to the US and Israeli military, however much Pete Hegseth does not seem to do much more than bluster. Early used American weapons have done their work and now the U S can use less expensive munitions. The U. S. can withstand a long war because it can manufacture weapons in greater quantities than Iran and because its own population is not at all endangered. Casualties in Israel and the Arab states have been light. Russia and China, erstwhile allies of Iran have been silent. China will think again about attacking Taiwan. NATO has united in defending against Iran incursions. Nobody in the American homeland is threatened so far while the Cold War and many Americans feared for their collective lives and the War on error had 3000 civilian American casualties on 9/11.and so the war on Iran is a cheap war even if gas prices are up.It is no wonder and perfectly reasonable for Trump to have a say in who will be Iran’s leader. That would be both a symbolic and actual victory over Iran, though it is more ambitious, as Trump is now demanding, to get from iran an unconditional surrender, But Trump uses terms loosely and so we don;t know what he means more than that the term to him, as with “tariff”, sounds mellifluous.
Democratic commentators have been looking for reasons to find the war disadvantageous for the United States. The best one was provided by General Barry Mccaffrey, who worked in the Clinton White House. He said Iran might collapse and become a failed state because Iran has so many numerous minorities. But my coach potato analysis is that Iran didn’t collapse when the United States got rid of Mossedegh so we could control Iranian oil. We brought in the shah, who was a modernizer even if he lived extravagantly. The clerical regime has to go. But Trump is an unreliable agent of change. He is likely to overreach because of his grandiosity and thereby bring on disaster.