Former US State Department official Nayyera Haq joined me to share her insights on Donald Trump’s war on Iran. For starters, the war is illegal under international law. As Nayyera laid out, “the United States is vulnerable from an international law point of view because there has been no case made to the United Nations.”
In addition, Trump’s war is illegal under U.S. law given Trump didn’t seek congressional approval to declare war. And yes, this is a war as Trump has repeatedly stated.
Trump today made it clear that this war may go beyond the four weeks he initially predicted and could even result in boots on the ground. As Nayyera rightly noted, the Trump regime clearly has no long term goals. Rather this war was “very poorly thought out on the long-term side.”
Although the reality is that Israeli leader Netanyahu’s goal appears to be to pit the factions of Iranian society against each other—perhaps even arming them via the United States. The hope being that Iran fragments into smaller parts—similar to Iraq and Syria—so that the nation is no longer a threat to Israel. But to achieve that, war criminal Netanyahu understands that the death toll of Iranians will be horrific—but we all know he doesn’t care.
The sad reality is that Trump’s promise of freedom for the Iranian people appears to be a lie—like so many things Trump. As a reminder, in Trump’s video Saturday announcing the war, he had these encouraging words for the Iranian people, “I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”
But by Sunday, we heard Trump’s golf buddy/spokesperson Lindsey Graham say the United States was not interested in regime change. Meaning while the leaders are killed, the brutal Iranian regime will remain in charge.
And on Monday, Trump’s incompetent Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was even more blunt saying this war is “no democracy building exercise.” That means the US and Israeli’s actual goal is to destabilize Iran, but not deliver freedom to the millions of Iranians who have literally risked their lives and been slaughtered by the Iranian regime for protesting.
This is no surprise. Trump only is concerned with Trump—not human rights. We recently saw that in Venezuela where he simply removed one dictator and replaced him with another who was pro-Trump that gave him oil. The people there still live under an oppressive regime. In fact, Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently defended that, telling the Senate when pressed about democratic reforms for the people of Venezuela, "This is not a frozen dinner. You don't put it in a microwave and 2 1/2 minutes later it's ready. These are complex things." In other words, democracy is not a concern.
Hope you check out the conversation with Nayyera that was very informative!
