a war that the US did not want and that benefits Netanyahu’s ‘hawks’

“Our president is going to start a war with Iran because he doesn’t have the slightest ability to negotiate. Is weak and ineffective. And the only thing he can think of to get re-elected is go to war with Iran.” Who expressed himself so angrily era Donald Trump and 2011 about the diplomatic tension that Barack Obama’s administration maintained against Tehran over its nuclear program.

Obama would sign a historic agreement in 2015 without intervening militarily against Iran, which silenced the drums of war in the area for years. Trump repealed it in 2018, but campaigned in 2024 promising that “America would go first” and that he, unlike his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, would not “start new wars.”

Now, his staunch supporters of the MAGA (‘Make America Great Again’) movement listen with astonishment as their president speaks of “a large-scale operation” and “of several days” against the ayatollah regime. Although Trump, in coordination with Israel, had already attacked targets of the Iranian nuclear program in 2025, this time he has warned that American soldiers “can die.”

The crudeness of the announcement of the launch of ‘Operation Epic Fury’ contrasts with the contradictory messages that the Republican has been launching in recent days. If the military movements anticipated a large-scale deployment, Trump took advantage of his State of the Union speech to appear conciliatory about a negotiated solution.

Images of the US and Israel attack on Iran.

The United States and Iran had completed the first round of nuclear negotiations in Geneva this week. The mediator, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad al Busaidi, had spoken of “positive progress“and both parties were scheduled to continue talking next week in Vienna.

But at the same time, Trump had bitterly condemned the repression carried out by the Iranian regime against protesters, even announcing in January that “help was on the way.” In his speech today, the US president urged the Iranian opposition to take advantage of the “historic opportunity” to overthrow the ayatollahs.

“President of peace?”

Donald Trump has come to boast of being the ‘only president’ who has dared to confront the Iranian “regime of terror” militarily on a large scale. In his speech, he went back to the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in October 1979 to justify the belligerence against Tehran, which he also blamed for arming groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis of Yemen.

He also stated that the Iranian nuclear program was close to having missiles capable of reaching “our friends in Europe” or even the United States itself. He acknowledged that, although he declared that he had “obliterated” said program last June, the regime had presumably recovered its capabilities. A United Nations document published on Friday indicated that, indeed, Iran kept its reserves of enriched uranium.

Despite everything, the magnate has wanted from the first moment to characterize himself as “the president of peace“, the nickname with which, as he declared, he wanted to be remembered. On numerous occasions he has spoken of the “eight wars” that he allegedly avoided, and for which he considered he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Curiously, mediation between Iran and Israel was among them.

Trump has even gone so far as to propose his ‘alternative’ to the United Nations as the ‘Peace Board’, which did not prevent him from threatening Iran with military aggression “in ten days” in his presentation, a deadline that he has finally met. But the truth is that no matter how much I want to maintain the narrative, virtually no one in the American political spectrum supports the idea of ​​war.

Analysts use the concept “boots on the ground” to differentiate surgical operations – such as the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela by Special Forces – or strategic bombings from large troop deployments. These, like the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, are costly in funds, time and human lives.

Trump’s warning that American “heroes” can die It may refer to Iranian retaliation against bases and deployments in the area. It is known that bases in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar have been attacked, with no US casualties reported at the moment. The idea of ​​a full-scale invasion, however, is difficult for their bases to accept.

The president has already received the support of his supporters, such as Senator Lindsey Graham or the democrat John Fetterman who has supported Trump on several occasions from the opposite bench, criticism of the attack is already underway, Thomas MassieTrump’s great Republican rival, has announced that he will ask for explanations of why the Houses of Congress and the Senate were not consulted.

The measure may deepen the fracture between Trump and the voters to whom he promised to focus on his domestic policy in the face of legislative elections in November in which his popularity is fading. Old MAGA figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene o Laurent Boebert They have openly clashed with the president on this aspect.

The surveys indicated that only the unconditional of Israel They welcomed a war with Iran. And even they were the block most in favor of Benjamin Netanyahu’s heavy-handed policysince the Israelis themselves accuse exhaustion from the war in Gaza. However, there are signs that they are not seeking a protracted war either.

A spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Defense thus confirmed that its objective was not “regime change” as such but the elimination of “certain individuals” who may pose a direct threat to the country. Attacks aimed at executing specific senior officials to weaken Tehran are the operations they use most frequently.