Trump’s ever-changing rationale for war on Iran – how the story has shifted

Regime change, nuclear threat – or something else? US officials seem unable to land on one coherent reason for war When the United States launched Operation Epic Fury last Saturday, the Trump administration had a major communications question to figure out: how to explain to the American public, Congress, and the world why it had just started a war with Iran. During war time, talking points and propaganda reflexively fly in every direction, but the Trump administration still hasn’t been able to land on one coherent answer. Some contradict each other, and some contradict Donald Trump himself. Some – delivered hours apart by senior officials – are flatly incompatible. Here is how the story has shifted over the first week of war. Trump announced the war in an eight-minute video posted to Truth Social at 2.30am ET last Saturday, framing Operation Epic Fury as a defensive response to decades of Iranian aggression – and, in the same breath, a campaign for Iranian liberation. The objectives multiplied with each sentence. We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated. He invoked the 1979 hostage crisis