Trump Inches Toward Attacking Iran

The Trump administration is scrambling to deploy troops, warships, and bombers into the Middle East this week, with top officials talking up the possibility of attacking Iran, and analysts saying the US appears closer to such a war than any time since Trump took office.

As ever, the US is inching towards a war by taking hostile actions against Iran, and then convincing themselves that Iranian retaliation could be imminent. Israeli intelligence has only added to that perception, unsurprising since the Netanyahu government has sought a US-Iran war for years.

This has been a steady buildup of tension entirely of America’s making, with the US taking a unilateral action, like declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be terrorists, then predicting Iranian retaliation, then talking themselves into more hostile unilateral actions to “preempt” something they only imagined Iran was going to do.

Among administration hawks, these actions make total sense, both because they’re hostile to Iran in the first place, and because they assume Iran will react the same way they would: recklessly and ignoring the consequences.

Even among analysts trying to give the US more credit, the concern is that the constant US brinkmanship, spun as “maximum pressure” on Iran, is going to blunder the US into a war that they don’t really want, but which the administration can’t seem to help itself but to instigate.