Every new war that the U.S. wages — at least over the past six decades — is accompanied by a series of official lies, shifting and inconsistent claims about the war’s goals, and constant exaggerations about the grand progress toward glorious victory. Now, a full week into the Iran War started by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partner, the American President Donald Trump, this war already equals, if not surpasses, the brazen war propaganda that instigated and fueled those prior ones.

For the first few days, Trump’s most loyal supportersinsisted— over and over — that this was not even a war at all. Americans have been so accustomed to a state of constant, endless war that when some watch their government heavily bombing another country, deliberately killing its leaders, sinking its navy, all while the U.S. President warns that “bombs will be dropping everywhere,” this somehow does not count as a “war.” We are told by supporters of the Iran War that whatever Iran has been doing to the U.S.constitutesa vicious, 47-year terrorist war against the U.S., but when the U.S. sends a “massive armada” to Iran and then attacks it with aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and 2,000-pound bombs, that this is somehownota war? O.K.

That insultingnot-a-warpropaganda was crushed, thankfully, by a rather large obstacle. Namely, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth began calling it a war and invoking war clichés virtually from the start. Israel has always described it as a war. And now President Trump is also calling it a war. That ought to end this rhetorical tactic among all but the most shamelessly dishonest.

Once that defensive wall fell, defenders of this new Netanyahu-Trump war resorted to a new rationale: Fine, it is a war. But it will be a very short one. It will not be like Iraq. Donald Trump is not George W. Bush.

One problem for this rationalization is that this is more or less exactly what Bush 43’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on February 7, 2003, less than a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq, when he was asked at a press conference how long he thought the war would last:

Supporters of the new Iran War have a response to this as well. This new war, they insist, is completely different from prior wars, including the Iraq War. They insist on this distinction even though most of the people who sold the Iraq War in 2002-3 are selling this new war now, based on the same exact scripts they used then (weexamined yesterdayhow Fox News exhumed key Iraq War architect and saleswoman Condoleezza Rice from whatever underground lair in which she lurks these days, all to cheer Trump’s new Iran War based on the same exact claims she used to sell the Iraq War, all as Fox News assumed the war cheerleader role yet again).

War defenders argue that this time we are not there for regime change or nation-building. One problem with that claim is that the war was sold from the start based on the need to rid the Iranians of their murderous, tyrannical regime and liberate them. During hismiddle-of-the-night war announcementon Truth Social, Trump told Iranians: “[The] hour of your freedom is at hand.” If this war is not a regime-change war, then how would it possibly liberate Iranians?

The evidence isnow overwhelmingthat it was a U.S. airstrike — likely guided and governed by Anthropic’s A.I. — that bombed that elementary school on the second day of the war, “liberating” 150 Iranian school girls (from life). But that is not the type of liberation that was promised by those who instigated this war. That could come only from regime change and the building of freedom and democracy.

But on Friday, this war defense— this is not a regime-change war or nation-building — ran into a much larger problem. Trump himself explicitly stated that the supreme goal and aim of the war he started is regime change, followed by nation-building. He also made clear he does not care how long it takes to achieve this: weeks, months, or even longer if necessary. Here is what the Presidentposted on Truth Socialabout this:

To summarize: there is no end to this new war with Iran absent “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER”. The last time the U.S. obtained that was when it dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.

Source: Glenn Greenwald