In the weeks main as much as President Donald Trump’s determination to strike Iran and within the frenetic days since, the president and his administration have provided a number of evolving explanations — at occasions exaggerated or at odds with US intelligence — to justify why the assaults had been obligatory and what the US in the end hopes to realize.
Before Saturday’s joint US-Israeli navy strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump and his prime officers overstated Iran’s capabilities to assault the US and simply how shut Tehran was from creating a nuclear weapon, sources informed NCS.
Then after the preliminary wave of strikes, Trump cited an “imminent threat” to the US and administration officers mentioned that the US acted in response to potential preemptive assaults by Iran on forces within the area — claims that had been contradicted in Pentagon briefings to Capitol Hill that said Iran was not planning to assault until struck first.
Trump’s rationale for attacking the Iranian regime has whipsawed from defending the demonstrators who protested within the streets of Iran in January to defending the US in opposition to the chance of Iran constructing nuclear and long-range weapons and eliminating a regime that’s backed terrorists killing Americans for many years. He’s referred to as for the Iranian individuals to take management of their nation whilst prime officers say the war isn’t about regime change.
“We have seen the goal for this operation change now, I believe, four or five times,” mentioned Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the highest Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Warner spoke following a categorised briefing with prime administration officers on Monday, one in every of a number of alternatives the administration took inside a span of hours to clarify its war with Iran to the general public and to Congress. The administration officers will transient the total House and Senate on Tuesday forward of anticipated votes teed up by Democrats to curb Trump’s navy motion in Iran.
Trump’s shifting justification for enterprise “major combat operations” in Iran is very vital due to how little time he and his administration spent making a public case for war earlier than it began — and earlier than it started costing American lives.
Six US service members were killed by Iranian retaliatory strikes, a quantity Trump already warned is more likely to improve. On Monday, three US F-15E fighter jets were shot down in Kuwait attributable to an “obvious pleasant fireplace incident, the US navy mentioned. All six crew members ejected safely.
The war is poised to be among the many most consequential choices of Trump’s presidency, and it’s starting with a public already skeptical of navy intervention and a Congress that didn’t vote to authorize navy motion. A NCS poll conducted by SSRS after the strikes started discovered practically 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the US determination to take navy motion in Iran, as most say a long-term navy battle between the 2 nations is probably going.
In distinction, the general public initially supported President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, which was licensed by Congress. But Americans soured on that war amid mounting US casualties — and defective intelligence claims from administration officers that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
In the primary 48 hours after the navy operation in opposition to Iran started, Trump himself delivered the preliminary wave of messaging to the general public by means of movies posted to Truth Social from Mar-a-Lago — the place he was hunkered down throughout Saturday’s navy strikes — and quite a few telephone interviews with reporters.
Notably, no senior Trump administration officers or Cabinet members appeared on the Sunday show circuit a day after the navy operation started, leaving it as a substitute to Trump’s allies in Congress to talk on the administration’s behalf.
The Trump administration’s technique shifted on Monday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine briefed reporters on the Pentagon. Speaking at a Medal of Honor occasion on the White House, Trump detailed a number of causes for taking navy motion, together with destroying Iran’s standard missile capabilities and its Navy, and stopping Iran from funding terrorist teams and from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided one more rationalization for the strikes on Monday afternoon earlier than briefing lawmakers, arguing that Iran posed an “imminent threat” as a result of it was going to retaliate in opposition to US forces when Israel attacked. The US and Israel have each been bombing Iran since Saturday.
At the Pentagon, Hegseth declined to place a timeline on the US navy marketing campaign however mentioned that the operation was “not Iraq” and wouldn’t be limitless.
“This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission: Destroy the missile threat, destroy the Navy, no nukes,” Hegseth mentioned. “This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it.”
Trump, nonetheless, initially prompt completely different endgame goals. Speaking in two movies and a sequence of telephone interviews with reporters, Trump mentioned he wished “freedom for the people” and for Iranians to “take back your country.” But he additionally mentioned that he believed Iran might comply with Venezuela in a “perfect scenario,” the place a lot of the ruling authorities remained in energy after a US operation captured Nicolás Maduro in January.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned in an announcement that the US wanted to behave whereas the Iranian regime was weaker than ever, earlier than Iran was capable of construct up its capabilities “and attack us first.”
“As President Trump said today, this was our last, best chance to strike and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime run by terrorists,” Leavitt mentioned.
Trump and his prime officers distorted and overstated the menace that Tehran posed to the US on a number of events within the lead-up to Iran’s strikes, in accordance with sources and unclassified intelligence assessments.
At his State of the Union handle final week, Trump claimed that Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.” He repeated the same warning in his first video after the strikes on Saturday and in his remarks on Monday.
That assertion is not backed up by US intelligence, nonetheless, sources informed NCS.
An unclassified assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2025 mentioned that Iran might develop a “militarily-viable” intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”
There isn’t any intelligence to recommend that Iran is pursuing an ICBM program to hit the US at the moment, two sources mentioned. Rubio final week wouldn’t handle the DIA report, saying he wouldn’t “speculate as to how far away they are” from a missile that would hit the US.
“Suffice it to say that it’s a threat. We can see that it’s possible,” he mentioned at a press convention.
Trump officers have additionally exaggerated the potential development of Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump said was “obliterated” following US strikes on Iranian nuclear services final yr.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy who took half within the diplomatic talks with Iran in current weeks, mentioned in a Fox News interview that Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bombmaking material.”
A supply informed NCS that the intelligence exhibits Iran is actively making an attempt to construct again its enrichment functionality, together with putting in extra centrifuges, getting again on-line centrifuges that survived the navy strikes final yr, and rebuilding services — lots of which had been broken or destroyed — wanted to weaponize the enriched uranium.
But sources and specialists say that work would take for much longer than per week.
That doesn’t imply, in fact, Iran posed no menace to the US and its troops stationed within the Middle East. Iran possesses an arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles, which had been used to focus on US bases and personnel within the Middle East after Saturday’s preliminary wave of strikes.
Senior administration officers have additionally mentioned one motive the US attacked was that Iran was getting ready to launch preemptive strikes in opposition to US forces within the area.
“We had indicators that they intended to use it potentially, preemptively, but if not, if not simultaneous … with any actions against them, immediately against us,” a senior administration official mentioned in a name with reporters on Saturday. “And the president decided he was not going to sit back and allow America’s forces in the region to absorb attacks from conventional missiles.”
But sooner or later later, Pentagon briefers acknowledged to congressional employees in a briefing that Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases within the Middle East until Israel attacked Iran first, undercutting the administration’s claims, sources informed NCS.
Hegseth mentioned at Monday’s briefing that one motive for the US navy operation was that Iran was constructing “powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions,” although Iran has possessed an arsenal of missiles and drones for a number of years.
Protecting protesters and crippling Iran’s nuclear program
In January, Trump floated taking navy motion in Iran in response to Tehran’s violent crackdown on protestors who had taken to the streets.
Trump warned that if Iran killed peaceable protesters, “the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Later in January as Iranian protests grew, together with plans for a high-profile execution of a 26-year-old protester, Trump urged the Iranian individuals to “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS” in a Truth Social post, including that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
Trump was briefed on potential choices for hanging Iran. But the president held again.
As the US started talks with Iran that included Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the US additionally started amassing forces within the area. Trump turned his give attention to the specter of navy motion in opposition to Iran to its nuclear program. (On Monday night, the White House put out a press launch titled, “74 Times President Trump Has Made Clear That Iran Cannot Have a Nuclear Weapon.”)
The navy buildup continued into February within the days main as much as Saturday’s strikes. Trump prompt he wished regime change, saying it “would be the best thing that could happen” in Iran.
The war’s unclear size and endgame
Trump made headway towards that aim with Saturday’s navy motion, as Khamanei and dozens of different senior Iranian officers had been killed in joint US-Israeli missile strikes.
But talking in a sequence of transient telephone interviews with reporters within the days for the reason that strike, Trump has been muddied in suggesting what comes subsequent, each within the size of the US navy marketing campaign in Iran and who would possibly take over the nation.
In an interview with Axios Saturday, Trump mentioned that he might “go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days.”
On Sunday, he mentioned in an interview with the Daily Mail it could “be four weeks or so.” In an interview with NCS’s Jake Tapper on Monday, Trump mentioned: “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”
Trump has equally provided completely different explanations for what the US plan is in Iran now that Khamenei is lifeless.
The president mentioned that he had a number of good selections to steer Iran subsequent, although he has but to call them. And in an interview with ABC, he mentioned that these choices might have additionally been killed on Saturday.
“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump informed ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”
Trump has prompt that US navy motion in Venezuela — the place US forces captured Maduro and then his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, grew to become the nation’s performing president amid pledges to work with the US — would work for Iran, too.
“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Trump told The New York Times, suggesting one thing wanting regime change in Iran.
During Monday’s Pentagon briefing, Hegseth pushed again on the notion that the president needed to lay out the size of the navy marketing campaign publicly.
“President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take, four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up. It could move back,” Hegseth mentioned. “We know exactly where his headspace is, and he will communicate as he should, exactly what he would like, and we will follow those orders.”