by Jacob G. Hornberger

March 9, 2026

Political commentators are saying that President Trump has made a big political mistake by promoting many justifications for his war on Iran. They’re saying that he would have been better off settling on just one or two. They say that that would have made his reasons for launching his war more credible.

I say those commentators are wrong. I say that President Trump showed political brilliance in coming up with an extremely large number of justifications for his war.

Exactly how many justifications has he come up with? According to an article in the Washington Post, the number amounts to nine, as follows:

1. Trump told Fox News on March 1 that Iran was within two weeks of acquiring a nuclear weapon. Needless to say, that conjured up images of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, his infamous (and non-existent) WMDs, and “mushroom clouds” over American cities. Where is Gen. Colin Powell when we need him? Maybe Trump could use Powell’s famous WMD charts and just change the title of them from Iraq to Iran.

2. Iran has ballistic missiles. (Is it illegal for a nation to have ballistic missiles?)

3. Iran was being run by vicious people who supposedly constituted a threat to the American people. (Of course, this would be in addition to the Reds, the illegal immigrant invaders, the drug lords, the Muslims, the terrorists, Cuba, Russia, China, and other scary threats to the American people).

4. Iran might have attacked the United States after being attacked by Israel. (Or might not have.)

5. Iran supposedly tried to assassinate President Trump (after Trump’s forces assassinated Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. and Iran were not at war when Trump had him assassinated).

6. Iran supposedly interfered with U.S. presidential elections in 2020 and 2024. (Never mind that the CIA intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately destroyed Iran’s democratic system in 1953, for purposes of regime change and oil).

7. Regime change. This rationale, of course, involves the longtime central mission of the U.S. national-security establishment’s foreign policy — the ouster of independent recalcitrant foreign regimes and their replacement with pro-U.S. dictatorships. That’s of course what the CIA, which is a central part of the U.S. government’s national-security state governmental structure, did to Iran in 1953, setting in motion the events leading up today.

8. Freedom for the Iranian people, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. Empire has been enforcing one of the most brutal and vicious systems of economic sanctions on the Iranian people for decades, with the aim of targeting them with economic privation and death by starvation or illness in the hopes that they will violently revolt against their regime and replace it with a pro-U.S. dictatorship.

9. To bring peace to the world, which, of course, repeats President Wilson’s justification for entering World War I, an intervention that later led to World War II, which then led to the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the war on terrorism, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, and numerous coups and state-sponsored assassinations, kidnappings, torture, overseas prisons, indefinite detention, and alliances with brutal totalitarian regimes.

I would add another possible justification for Trump’s illegal (i.e., Nuremberg’s principle against wars of aggression, especially against weak Third World countries) and unconstitutional (i.e., no congressional declaration of war) war on Iran: to quell the rebellion within Trump’s MAGA movement regarding Jeffrey Epstein, by causing MAGA men (and MAGA women) to rally ’round the flag in a show of loyalty and patriotism. In fact, it’s interesting that this war is a joint Israeli-U.S. war given that the rumor that Epstein was connected to “intelligence,” which, if true, would inevitably mean the Israeli Mossad and/or the CIA.

So, why was Trump so brilliant to come up with so many justifications for launching his war on Iran? Because it gives his MAGA supporters a justification that is certain to satisfy all of them. In other words, if he had come up with only one or two justifications, there is a good possibility that a large percentage of MAGA men would not find them to be persuasive. Oh, to be sure, they would still be supportive, given their blind, loyal, patriotic, subservient, and obsequious support of whatever Trump says or does, but it might not be as enthusiastic as Trump would like it.

By coming up with a big smorgasbord of possible justifications, on the other hand, Trump offers a multitude of choices that his supporters can settle on, thereby ensuring that they will be enthusiastic supporters of his war. Thus, some supporters might exclaim, “We had to attack to stop mushroom clouds from appearing over American cities!” Others might exclaim, “Freedom for the Iraqi people!” Still others might say, “They tried to assassinate our leader in retaliation for our leader’s assassination of their general!”

And so it is that Trump’s MAGA men (and MAGA women) have come to enthusiastically support his illegal and unconstitutional war on Iran (and, in the process, have, by and large, set aside their Epstein rebellion). Never sell Donald Trump short. Whatever else might be said about him, he is a political genius.