President Trump just started a dangerous, pointless war against Iran

By Joe Cirincione, February 28, 2026

US President Donald Trump monitors the February 28 strike campaign against Iran, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan “Raizin” Caine, and other senior officials, at his Mar-a-Lago Resort in Palm Beach, Florida. (Official White House Photo)

Trump’s war on Iran makes no sense.

Iran does not pose an imminent threat to the United States, our troops, or allies. Iran’s nuclear program is dormant; it is not racing to a bomb. Iranian missiles cannot hit most of Europe and even less North America.

Active negotiations showed promise this week. Talks had brought the countries closer to a good deal in which Iran would suspend and severely restrict its uranium enrichment. On Saturday morning, Badr Albusaidi, the Omani mediator in the talks, wrote on X, “I am dismayed. Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined.”

No US ally, save Israel, supports this war, with several refusing permission for the US military to use their bases for the operation against Iran. Innocent civilians in Iran and the region will die needlessly. One of the first attacks on Iran reportedly hit an elementary girls’ school in Tehran, killing 50 people, mostly children.

On Saturday morning, as the strikes started, President Donald Trump finally offered his objective for his unilateral and illegal war: Regime change. This is a goal Trump mocked when campaigning for the presidency. It is also highly unlikely to succeed. In an early morning video announcement, Trump urged the Iranian people to rise. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” he said. Later, he told The Washington Post that his main goal was “freedom” for the Iranian people.

But there is a major problem in Trump’s strategy: No government in history has been toppled by air strikes alone.

The United States and Saudi Arabia could not even overthrow the Houthis regime in Yemen with years of air strikes and $7 billion spent. Now, weeks of attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States could kill hundreds of senior military and government leaders and destroy many military and nuclear sites. But Iran is a country of 90 million people in an area three times the size of Iraq.

Bombings and assassinations may well destabilize an unpopular and weakened regime. But it is highly unlikely that Washington can then fly in Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah of Iran, to establish a new monarchy. In a political vacuum, power goes to those with the guns.

The Revolutionary Guards, with 200,000 members and an estimated one million in associated militias, are most likely to seize control now that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is reportedly dead. They could be even worse for Iranians than the clerical regime.

Iran has already shut down traffic through the Straits of Hormuz. This will spike oil and gas prices and weaken global economies. There are many other possible broader consequences, including sustained missile and drone strikes on Israel and US Arab allies, terror attacks on US interests around the world, possible cyber attacks, and even Iran racing to process its stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium into a workable nuclear device.

Trump’s declared aim of regime change makes this an existential war for Iran’s leaders. Nothing is off the table.

The war is unpredictable, and death and destruction are coming without any serious deliberations in Congress or consultation with allies. It is the impulsive decision of one man.

Trump is exercising a power that Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon could only dream of. Trump did not go through months of arguments and manipulation of intelligence to convince Americans to go to war. He didn’t even pretend to mobilize democratic support. Instead, Trump went to war on a whim, solely on his order, alone and imperial.

This is not how democracies go to war. It is how dictatorships do. And we know it cannot end well.

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