Alan Zendell, June 22, 2025

Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities was something that had to be done – assuming our intelligence was correct, and that’s a pretty big IF. Faked (Gulf of Tonkin) or incorrect (Weapons of  Mass Destruction) intelligence involved us in costly wars for thirty of the last sixty years in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It’s not clear that those wars made Americans’ lives better or safer, and in each case we retreated with our tails between our legs.

Israeli intelligence is supposed to be the best in the world, but if we go back to October 7, 2023, we’ll recall that when Hamas committed the acts of murder and kidnapping that started the war in Gaza, the world, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed poor intelligence for not picking up warning signs of the attack.

In the current case, the vaunted American and Israeli spy networks contradicted each other. The issues were how much enriched uranium Iran possessed, how close it was to building a nuclear bomb, and whether it was even intending to. I have no use for the smug pundits paid to make predictions on cable news. They’re wrong as often as they’re right. In World War 2, intel that Germany was developing an atom bomb convinced President Roosevelt to create the Manhattan Project. We built the bomb first and used it in Japan to bring the war to a faster close. Hurray for us!

It wasn’t until after the war that Allied intelligence learned Germany had suspended its attempt to build an atom bomb in 1943. It turned out that our fear that Germany would have one first and use it in Europe or America was baseless, yet it drove us to make decisions that wound up initiating the era of nuclear warfare. That’s not to say that nukes wouldn’t have been developed anyway, after the war, but we can’t possibly know how things would have turned out if our intel about what the Germans were doing at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics had been correct.

There’s sufficient reason to question whether the intel that convinced Donald Trump to attack Iran was accurate. If it turns out that it wasn’t, and we wind up involved in another devastating Middle East war, what will that say about our leadership? What if, when all the post-war investigations are completed it turns out that we were sucked into a deadly, costly conflict because Netanyahu used faulty intel to attack Iran to sabotage diplomacy, because he knew that the moment Israel’s survival was at stake, the United States, no matter who was president, would not be able to stay out of the conflict?

The time to ask these questions is now. It’s clear from our history that had we asked them honestly during that last eighty years, the world might be a very different place today. Part of the MAGA movement is also challenging the constitutionality of the attack. The Constitution grants the power to declare war exclusively to Congress, but that’s an area where our founders got it wrong. The President can create a state of war simply by ordering an attack as Commander in Chief. This isn’t the first time that’s been done, and as a practical matter, a Congressional battle over whether to declare war televised around the world wouldn’t do much for security and secrecy.

If it turns out that Iran really was weeks away from building a bomb and the attack was as devastating as Trump claims, I’ll applaud him for having the courage to take the risk. I’m not opposed to pre-emptive strikes when they’re warranted. But forgive me for being suspicious. Trump claims to hate war, but he is enamored with military hardware and parades like the kind autocrats stage for themselves. He also loves acting like a tough guy, and nothing satisfies his narcissistic need for adulation like being a hero. His delusions of power and grandeur were terrifying enough when the consequences were hypothetical.

There is nothing hypothetical about the death and destruction that is occurring every day in the Middle East. There is also nothing hypothetical about the uncertainty of the next weeks, months, or years, and the possibility that the attack on Iran may not have obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability, but only encouraged them to build a bomb as quickly as possible. Trump’s bragging sounds more like the words of our autocratic adversaries in North Korea and Russia, not to mention Iran. It also reminds us of George W. Bush’s premature declaration of victory on an aircraft carrier.

Our teachers told us nations that fail to learn from their histories will commit the same mistakes over and over again. The problem is, every time we do it, the stakes are higher. I’ve tried to warn you how dangerous Donald Trump was for ten years. Now, all we can do is hope I was wrong.