[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on March 18, 2026.]
President Donald Trump is a victim of his own success. After a quick strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities last June and the capture of Venezuela’s corrupt president in January, the U.S. military made war look easy and Trump feel omnipotent.
Three weeks into a more daunting excursion into Iran, Trump is now a desperate leader.
Trump’s Latest Grudge Match
With Trump, everything is personal. A growing body of evidence suggests that a principal objective in attacking Iran was the assassination of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For example:
· When the C.I.A. learned that the Ayatollah and top Iranian officials would be meeting in a militarily accessible location, a previously planned nighttime strike was moved up to the middle of the day.
· On Sunday night, March 1, shortly after reports that the U.S.-Israeli attack had killed the Ayatollah, Trump said, “I got him before he got me.” He was referring to an alleged plot to kill Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign as retribution for the January 2020 U.S. strike that killed Iran’s military leader Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,
· The desire to downplay Trump’s desire for vengeance explains why he and his minions have offered more noble – and contradictory – justifications for the war, including:
· To eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability (although Trump claimed to have done that with the June attack).
· To help the Iranian people secure their freedom (Trump);
· To attack Iran because Israel was going to do it and that would result in Iran’s attack on U.S. assets in the Middle East (Secretary of State Marco Rubio);
· To attack Iran first, not because Israel was going to do it anyway, but because Trump had a gut feeling that Iran was going to attack the U.S. (Trump). But Pentagon officials informed Congress that no intelligence supported Trump’s opinion;
Mission Accomplished?
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