The mainstream media’s breathless reporting on Trump’s war against Iran recklessly disregards three essential truths that should be central to the coverage:
- Trump took the country to war not for any moral or strategic reasons, but out of personal vanity.
- The war is blatantly illegal under both domestic and international law.
- And yes, it’s war. It’s not just an “attack.”
The Vanity
The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press are among the news organizations that have tried to explain Trump’s decision-making process to their readers.
And while they didn’t say so explicitly, the obvious conclusion – reading between the lines — is that he thought it would be cool and would make him look tough.
Trump appears to have reached his decision the morning of Friday, June 13.
The first strong hint of this came a whopping 74 paragraphs into a New York Times report on June 17 – four days before the bombs started dropping – ostensibly about how Trump’s posture was “gyrating”. The article ended with this blockbuster revelation:
When he woke on Friday morning, his favorite TV channel, Fox News, was broadcasting wall-to-wall imagery of what it was portraying as Israel’s military genius. And Mr. Trump could not resist claiming some credit for himself.
In phone calls with reporters, Mr. Trump began hinting that he had played a bigger behind-the-scenes role in the war than people realized. Privately, he told some confidants that he was now leaning toward a more serious escalation: going along with Israel’s earlier request that the United States deliver powerful bunker-busting bombs to destroy Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordo.
Another New York Times article, this one a day after the bombing, conspicuously left out Fox News’s role, but confirmed the timing:
Mr. Trump had spent the early months of his administration warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel against a strike on Iran. But by the morning of Friday, June 13, hours after the first Israeli attacks, Mr. Trump had changed his tune.
He marveled to advisers about what he said was a brilliant Israeli military operation, which involved a series of precision strikes that killed key figures in Iran’s military leadership and blasted away strategic weapons sites. Mr. Trump took calls on his cellphone from reporters and began hailing the operation as “excellent” and “very successful” and hinting that he had much more to do with it than people realized.
Later that day, Mr. Trump asked an ally how the Israeli strikes were “playing.” He said that “everyone” was telling him he needed to get more involved, including potentially dropping 30,000-pound GBU-57 bombs on Fordo, the Iranian uranium-enrichment facility buried underneath a mountain south of Tehran.
The Associated Press also saw Friday the 13th as a seminal date, reporting that “As Trump started his day in Washington, he seemed impressed by Israeli military prowess and his tone became more aggressive toward Iran.”
The Washington Post, in an article misleadingly headlined “How Trump got to ‘yes’ on bombing Iran,” failed to say what changed Trump’s mind and wasn’t quite as clear on the timing. But it did report that by Monday, June 17, Trump was speaking in much more bellicose terms.
That night, Trump warned Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, that he could easily be killed, and told Tehran, a city of 10 million people, to “immediately evacuate.”
By Tuesday, Trump had warmed to the Israeli action so much that he had begun referring to the U.S. and Israel as a unit, posting online that “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran” and crediting the “American made” equipment being used. He reviewed the attack plans that same day, according to two White House officials.
What is clear is that there was no role played by new intelligence findings or new strategic analyses. It was simply that Trump saw Israel getting a lot of positive attention on Fox News, and he wanted some, too.
As Matt Gertz presciently wrote for Media Matters, before the bombing:
Under typical circumstances, a U.S. president shifting the nation’s military posture based on a few cable news segments would sound fantastical. But under Trump, major aspects of federal policy regularly turn on what he is hearing from his favored TV personalities. Fox hosts understand their influence and regularly seek to influence Trump’s decisions, both through their programs and in private conversations with the president.
Fox’s hosts thus wield incredible power over Trump’s actions. And in recent days, those figures have been using their platforms to tell the president that U.S. strikes on Iran are both important and likely to succeed with little cost. They know which buttons to push and are banging on them as hard as they can.
No major news organization has made clear just how irresponsible, impetuous, and self-serving Trump’s decision was. To the extent they address his motivation, they most often quote White House officials, who are lying.
If one tenth the attention the media is giving to Trump’s “ruse” – announcing that he would make his decision “within the next two weeks” but acting two days later – was given to Trump’s actual decision-making process, I would be a happy person.
At the very least, every article about Trump and Iran should include, as crucial context, something like: “Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities was not based on new intelligence reports or strategic analyses, but appears to have been reached after he watched media reports hailing Israel’s military prowess.”
It’s Illegal
Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran was undoubtedly a violation of both domestic and international law.
Three national security experts writing for the Just Security website did a good job of explaining the obvious, domestically:
From a domestic legal perspective, the U.S. Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress. The June 21 strikes were carried out without congressional authorization, and the Trump administration has not invoked any existing statutory basis—such as the 2001 or 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs)—to justify the operation.
They note, understatedly:
[T]he absence of any legislative authorization in such a consequential use of force raises serious concerns about democratic accountability and the erosion of Congress’ constitutional role.
As for internationally:
From an international legal perspective, the U.N. Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity of another State under Article 2(4), except in narrow cases of self-defense under Article 51 or with U.N. Security Council authorization. The United States has not yet publicly presented evidence of an imminent armed attack that would justify self-defense under Article 51.
Well into a Sunday New York Times article lamely headlined “Is the U.S. at War With Iran?” the Times grudgingly acknowledged an expert consensus on the issue of legality:
Several lawyers and scholars who have studied the international law of armed conflict say the United States is without a doubt at war with Iran for purposes of application of that law, and that Mr. Trump acted in violation of international conventions.
“The short answer is that this is, in my view, illegal under both international law and U.S. domestic law,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School who has worked at the Defense Department.
What is the media’s excuse for not calling Trump’s action out as blatantly illegal and unconstitutional? CNN wittingly or unwittingly answered that question with this headline: “Trump’s bombings present major constitutional and legal questions. But it’s up to Congress to force the issue.”
The sad fact is that when there’s any vaguely controversial issue, no matter how much the facts align with one side over the other, the media leaves it up to the opposition party to make the case — instead of simply stating where the truth lies. And while public sentiment is overwhelmingly against war, Democratic Party leadership has responded feebly.
At the very least, every article about Trump and Iran should include, as crucial context, something like: “Trump’s decision to enter Israel’s war with Iran without congressional authorization appears to violate the Constitution, and the lack of any kind of imminent threat puts it in apparent violation of international law, as well.”
Of Course It’s War
And of course the U.S. is now in a state of war against Iran. Even before Iran struck back today, that was clearly the case.
The New York Times acknowledged that in its banner website headline on Saturday night: “U.S. Enters War Against Iran.” But since then, it appears to have backtracked. (See its Sunday article: “Is the U.S. at War With Iran?”)
(This reminds me of the Times’s “Trump Incites Mob” banner headline the day after the January 6 insurrection. Sometimes, things are just obviously true in real time.)
An Associated Press article out of the Middle East today is headlined “Alarm grows after the US inserts itself into Israel’s war against Iran with strikes on nuclear sites.” But that is the exception to the rule. At least through this morning, most news sites referred to an “attack” or to “strikes” and avoided the use of the word “war,” especially in headlines.
Again, the national security experts at Just Security are clear:
[D]irect strikes against Iran on its territory with the obvious threat of regional escalation almost certainly rise to the level of “war in the constitutional sense,” such that the President could not rely on Article II authority alone but would need congressional authorization.
Trump’s claim that the strikes on Iran were isolated and should not set off a war with Iran were laughable even before Iran let its missiles fly today.
Going forward, the coverage should leave no doubt: We are at war, and for the worst possible reasons.