MaddowBlog-Trump still hasn't explained why he's moving the U.S. closer to war with Iran

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Offered a chance to explain why he’s pushed the nation to the brink of war, the president still had nothing new or coherent to say.

I don’t mean to sound picky, but if Trump could maybe take a moment — you know, at his leisure — to explain why he’s pushing us closer to another war in the Middle East, that’d be great.

Because that definitely hasn’t happened yet.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-02-25T17:09:48.533Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-still-hasnt-explained-why-hes-moving-the-u-s-closer-to-war-with-iran

Donald Trump spent much of last summer patting himself on the back for destroying Iran’s nuclear program with a preemptive military attack. “We destroyed the nuclear,” the president boasted in remarks delivered in the Netherlands in June. “I said, ‘Iran will not have nuclear.’ Well, we blew it up. It’s blown up to kingdom come.”....

This week, ahead of the State of the Union address, many observers here and abroad wondered if Trump would take the opportunity to discuss his policy and his plans. That didn’t happen. As The New York Times summarized:

It took President Trump about 90 minutes in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to get to Iran, the topic that much of the world was most eager to hear about.

When he did, Mr. Trump only spent three minutes talking about the country, largely repeating his vague talking points from recent days. By the time his most high-profile speech of the year was over, the president had done little to explain why he had amassed the largest amount of U.S. military firepower in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Toward the end of his address, Trump assured his audience, “The United States military obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” He added, “We wiped it out, and they want to start over again, and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions. We are in negotiations with them; they want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’”

The first part of the remarks reflected a breakdown in logic: The U.S. is on the brink of war because Iran is “pursuing” a nuclear program that has already been “obliterated” and “wiped out”?

The second part was, by some measures, worse: Trump appeared to defend the confrontation with Iran by saying he wants Iranian officials to say they do not want and will not have a nuclear weapon. Whether the American president understands this or not, Iranian officials have already said this many times, over many years. In fact, Iran’s foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, said it again just hours before the State of the Union address.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Telling the public why we're on the brink of war seems like the most basic of steps for any president

Telling the public why we’re on the brink of war seems like the most basic of steps for any president — but it’s a step Trump isn’t taking.

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-02-25T22:07:03.339Z