The Trump regime has justified the joint U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran based on a series of lies. It has alleged that Iran had restarted uranium enrichment as part of jumpstarting its broader nuclear program and would have enough material to build a bomb “within days” and that it will soon have ICBMs capable of reaching the United States. It provides no evidence to support these serious allegations because none exists. This is the same pathologically mendacious Trump who asserted that 28,000 people a year die from poisonous snakebites in Peru, when fewer than one person dies a year. Trump claimed in June that the U.S. had demolished Iran’s nuclear program. While that claim was quickly refuted by his own intelligence agencies, the program was set back and there is no evidence that it has been reconstructed. Nor does U.S. intelligence believe Iran is anywhere near having missiles that can threaten the United States. But that doesn’t stop Trump and his advisors from making such claims.

This is not the first time that a U.S. president has lied the country into war. It has happened repeatedly throughout U.S. history. Vietnam and Iraq are the most flagrant and consequential examples. But in the past, presidents have at least tried to build a case before they send Americans off to war. Trump has not even bothered to make the effort. Coming on the heels of his “successful” kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela, his murdering alleged drug runners in the Caribbean, and his threatening to invade numerous other countries including Greenland, Trump has unleashed a war that is not only unconstitutional, it is illegal under international law. Iran posed no immediate threat to the United States. But Trump has already said he doesn’t feel constrained by U.S. or international law—he will only be constrained by his own “morality” and his own “mind,” both of which are at best limited and suspect.

I was on Indian TV today with the former Israeli ambassador to India Ron Malka, who spoke of the “murderous regime” in Iran. While I wouldn’t dispute that characterization, it is important to point out that that “regime’s” murderousness pales in comparison to that of the regimes in Washington and Jerusalem. In Trump’s first year back in office, he bombed seven countries. Since the brutal attack on October 7, 2023, Israel has attacked six countries. Netanyahu and Trump, the “butcher of Gaza” and his chief enabler, make Khamenei look like a choir boy even with his vicious response to the recent protests. That Trump threatened Iran in January because of the harshness of its repression of protesters, thousands of whom were murdered, was laughable to begin with as is his call for the Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government. This is the same Trump who in June 2020, according to former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, in the words of New York Times reporter Michael Bender, wanted the U.S. military to “beat the fuck out of” the protesters and “shoot them in the leg—or maybe the foot.” To think his actions are in any way motivated by concern for Iranian protesters is beyond absurd. U.S. and Israeli strikes have already killed many Iranian citizens including dozens of young schoolgirls.

Before the war began, barely a quarter of Americans told pollsters that they supported the U.S. bombing. One poll had that number down to 21 percent. Much of Trump’s MAGA base is also opposed, given the fact that he promised during the campaign not to drag the U.S. into another war in Southwest Asia. There may be a temporary rally-around-the-flag response, but it won’t last. And now that the Iranians are closing the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas prices will skyrocket hurting his MAGA base and further weakening his party’s chances in the November mid-term elections.

Even if this war ends without anyone resorting to nuclear weapons, which every sane person hopes will be the case, the message about nuclear proliferation is clear. North Korea learned it a long time ago. Hussein, Gaddafi, and Maduro didn’t. If you have nuclear weapons, the U.S. will not invade and overthrow you. If you don’t—beware. The danger of nuclear annihilation that U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned about on June 11 has taken another quantum leap with this reckless invasion.

The timing is also suspicious given that negotiations between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing and that Iran is in a weaker position internally and regionally than it has been in years. The foreign minister of Oman, Badr Albusaidi, who has been mediating between the two countries, reported “significant progress” in the last round of talks and decried the U.S./Israeli attack, as did UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres. Perhaps the urgency was influenced by the growing support for the Congressional War Powers Resolution in both the House and the Senate, which might have been up for a vote as early as Monday. The Resolution prohibiting the Trump regime from attacking without Congressional support had more than 80 co-sponsors in the House and 14 sponsors and co-sponsors in the Senate in addition to the aforementioned support of the American people.

Furthermore, this war will distract from Trump’s growing domestic problems. His disapproval ratings are at 63 percent. His 36 percent approval at this point is an historic low. And that CNN poll was taken before the latest revelations from the Epstein files that more than 50 pages are missing alleging that Trump sexually assaulted a 13-year-old child. His name is already in the files tens of thousands of times and we know that Epstein considered Trump his best friend. If that scandal isn’t enough, the usually obsequious Supreme Court just ruled that many of his beloved tariffs are illegal, throwing him into a rage and quandary. The war against Iran will certainly move these Epstein and tariff scandals from the headlines for a few days, but they will return with added fury.

Ambassador Malka also insisted, “there cannot be a diplomatic solution.” The Israelis said the same thing prior to the successful diplomatic solution reached by the Obama administration and the Iranian government with the help of the Russians in 2015–the JCPOA or Iran Nuclear Deal. In fact, under that agreement, Iran was at least a year away from building a bomb even if they had wanted one, which the evidence suggests they did not. The CIA said Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and there is no evidence they had reconstituted it. Under that agreement, Iran shipped out almost all of its enriched uranium, mothballed most of its centrifuges, and limited its enrichment to a very low 3.67 percent. Iran was also subjected to the most stringent and intrusive IAEA inspections regime ever. After Trump blew that deal up in 2018 for no intelligent reason other than his fragile ego, Iran began enriching up to 60 percent and expanded its program. After the June bombing, it sharply curtailed IAEA inspections.

So the war that began early this morning U.S. time has upended the global order. It was begun by two of the most tyrannical and violent regimes on the planet. We don’t know how or when it’s going to end. We do know that U.S.-imposed regime change in the past has required boots on the ground and has still had disastrous results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. When the CIA overthrew Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and replaced him with the Shah, the Iranian people suffered immensely. Mossadegh was enormously popular in Iran and throughout the region. The U.S. ambassador reported to Washington that he had the support of between 95 and 98 percent of the Iranian people. But he made the mistake of nationalizing the British-controlled oil industry in hopes of using Iranian resources to help the Iranian people instead of wealthy Brits—a cardinal sin. The current Iranian Islamic government has shown none of the humanity and concern for the people that Mossadegh did and if the Iranian people without the prodding and assistance of Mossad, the CIA, and MI6 decide it is time for a change, more power to them. But one thing is absolutely clear. We need regime change in the U.S. and Israel immediately. We must begin impeachment proceedings in Washington and legal proceedings in Jerusalem. This latest war is final proof that these two monstrous regimes cannot be allowed to continue their viciousness and brutality any longer.