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Washington, DC – As the US and Israeli militaries expand their strikes on Iran, the administration of US President Donald Trump has alternated its justification for the war between preventing immediate attacks and countering the long-term existential threat of a nuclear Tehran.

This was on full display on Monday, with Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth appearing to make the case that the culmination of Iran’s regional policies in the 47 years since the Islamic revolution, coupled with the future of its ballistic and nuclear programmes, represented an immediate threat to the US.

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, argued that Washington’s close ally Israel was planning to attack Iran. In which event, the administration expected Iran to strike US assets, therefore justifying launching a preemptive attack, he said.

To date, the administration has offered little clear evidence to support any of its claims, according to advocates and analysts, as well as Democratic lawmakers who have recently attended classified briefings.

“The reality is, they’ve put forth very little evidence, and that’s a huge problem,” Emma Belcher, the president of Ploughshares, a group that advocates for denuclearisation, told Al Jazeera.

“It says, one: They don’t think they need to [make the case] for the war; that they won’t necessarily be held to account for it,” Belcher said. “But it also says to me that the evidence quite possibly isn’t there, and that they want to avoid particular scrutiny.”

Republicans have largely coalesced around the administration’s messaging, even as Democrats have pledged to force votes on war powers legislation to assert constitutional authority over the president’s military action.

Still, the administration remains in a tenuous political position as Trump’s Republican Party stares down midterm elections in November. Early public polling indicates little outright support from the US public, even as Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base has been staid in its response.

But the more days that pass, and the more US service members are killed, the more likely that Trump will be confronted with the contradictions to his past anti-interventionist promises.

“The longer it goes on and the more costly it is in terms of lives… the more the lack of evidence becomes an albatross around the neck of the administration – one that it will have to account for come November,” according to Benjamin Radd, a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center’s international relations department.

A kaleidoscope of claims

Speaking from the White House on Monday, Trump praised the “obliteration of Iran’s nuclear programme” in US strikes last June. But moments later, he claimed that efforts to rebuild that programme, coupled with Iran’s ballistic missile programme, represented a menace to the US.

“An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat to the Middle East, but also to the American people,” Trump said. “Our country itself would be under threat, and it was very nearly under threat.”

Trump also said that, if not for US and Israeli attacks, Iran “would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America”.

Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Washington, DC-based Arms Control Association (ACA) said any claims of immediate or middle-term threats posed by Iran in terms of their ballistic and nuclear power are not supported by available evidence.

That is significant, as such “imminent threats” are required for a president justify attacks on foreign countries under both US domestic law and international law, save for approval from Congress.

“Iran did not possess, prior to this attack, the capability to quickly enrich its highest uranium to bomb grades, and then to convert that into metal for constructing a bomb,” Kimball told Al Jazeera.

“At the soonest, it might have taken many, many months to do that, but Iran does not have access to its 60 percent highly-enriched uranium. Its conversion facility is damaged and idle. Its major uranium enrichment facilities have been severely damaged by the US strikes in 2025.”

He explained that despite having “significant conventional short and medium range ballistic missile capabilities”, Iran has said it has imposed 2,000km (1,200-mile) limits on its ballistic missile range, and is not near having an intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

The “latest [US intelligence] assessment is that Iran could, if a decision is made, have an ICBM capability by 2035. So Iran is nowhere close to having an ICBM threat that could be called imminent,” he said, referring to intercontinental ballistic missiles, which have a range of at least 5,000km (3,400 miles).

Democrats say no new intelligence

Secretary of State Rubio on Monday said there “absolutely was an imminent threat” presented by Iran.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” he said. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

But top Democrats who received classified intelligence briefings in recent days said they had not been provided with evidence to justify the attack.

“I’m on two committees that give me access to a lot of classified information; there was no imminent threat from Iran to the United States that warrants sending our sons and daughters into yet another war in the Middle East,” Senator Tim Kaine, who sits on both the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN on Saturday.

Senator Mark Warner, who was briefed on classified intelligence related to Iran last week as part of the “gang of eight”, a collection of the top lawmakers from both parties in Congress, told the network: “I saw no intelligence that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of preemptive strike against the United States of America”.

Several sources speaking to both the Reuters news agency and the Associated Press, following a closed-door briefing of congressional staff on Sunday, said the administration presented no evidence that Iran was planning a preemptive strike, and had instead focused on a more generalised threat posed by Iran and its allies to US troops and assets in the region.

Trump looking for quick success

All told, the Trump administration appears to be arguing that “Iran has been a national security threat to the United States since 1979… that Iran was responsible for more American lives being killed than any other state or non-state actor; that Iran has never been held to account for this”, according to the Burkle Center’s Radd.

Trump, therefore, appears to be taking the position that given the totality of Iranian actions, including during recent indirect nuclear talks, the US “has no choice but to perceive Iran as an imminent threat”.

Oman’s foreign minister, who mediated the talks, had pushed back on the administration’s characterisation, maintaining that “significant progress” had been made before the US-Israeli attacks.

Radd noted that under the War Powers Act of 1973, a US president has between 60 and 90 days to withdraw forces deployed without congressional approval. Therefore, Trump appears to be saying, “We’re not obliged to prove to Congress any of that if we can conduct and execute this operation within the 60 to 90 day window,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ploughshare’s Belcher said that the administration’s own actions led to the current situation with Iran.

She pointed to Trump’s withdrawal of The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, which had seen the US impose maximum sanctions on Iran, and Iran, in turn, begin enriching uranium beyond the levels laid out in the agreement. Trump also derailed nuclear talks last year by launching attacks on Iran.

“We’re in this situation precisely because President Trump gave up on an agreement that was negotiated by his predecessor,” Belcher said. “He gave up on diplomacy.”

‘America First’ war?

In his speech on Monday, Hegseth, in particular, appeared to try to frame the war within Trump’s political worldview, pledging to “finish this on America First conditions”.

He drew a contrast with the US invasion of Iraq, describing the attacks on Iran as a “clear, devastating, decisive mission”.

“Destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy – no nukes,” he said.

He also sought to draw a distinction between a “so-called regime-change war” and US attacks that happened to lead to regime change. As of Monday, US strikes had killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several top officials, but the ruling government has remained intact.

Hegseth said that the US is unleashing attacks “all on our terms, with maximum authorities, no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars”.

It remains unclear how the message will resonate with the US public.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Sunday suggested dismal approval for Trump’s strikes, but also indicated that large swaths of Americans were unsure about the conflict.

That could create opportunities for those challenging Trump’s actions and his justification for them.

“I think it does seem as though the narrative is still up for grabs,” Belcher said.

United States President Donald Trump’s second term in office has been defined by the abduction of Venezuela’s left-wing President Nicolas Maduro, joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among hundreds, and new threats against other leaders from Latin America to even Europe.

This policy is testing alliances, legal norms, and the idea that shock action abroad yields predictable outcomes at home. At its core is a message Trump repeats in different ways: “We can reach you – and we might not protect you if you do not do what we want.”

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Trump talks directly to foreign leaders, promising swift punishment or personal favour, and casts himself as the only US president “with the gloves off”.

While his supporters see strength and candour, critics underline threats and deals aimed at domestic politics as much as foreign capitals.

A doctrine built around enemies

Trump’s decision to attack Iran has been described as the “biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency”, with analysts saying he has pivoted from “swift, limited operations like last month’s lightning raid in Venezuela” to what could be a more protracted conflict that is already morphing into a wider regional war.

His doctrine is anchored in identifying adversaries – Iran, China, Russia and North Korea – alongside a cluster of actors such as Venezuela, Cuba, certain Latin American leaders, as well as drug cartels, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Analysts at the Atlantic Council say Trump’s National Security Strategy “elevates great power competition with China and Russia while casting Iran and North Korea as rogue regimes”, creating an organising map of enemies reflected in his rhetoric and operations.

The Foreign Policy Research Institute describes Trump’s strategy as “a deeply transactional document”, arguing that security guarantees and pressure on adversaries are framed around what others “pay” or concede to the US.

Iran and the regional spread of war

The Pentagon has named its Iran campaign Operation Epic Fury, with Trump insisting the US “did not start this war”, but intends to finish it – a claim rejected by Iran’s foreign minister in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Trump said US forces would “lay waste” to much of Iran’s military, deny Tehran a nuclear weapon, and “give Iranians a chance to topple their rulers”. Some media reports said he has privately claimed Iran would “soon have a missile that can hit the US”, even though intelligence assessments do not support that.

Analysts say Trump is hoping the US-Israeli strikes would incite a popular uprising to oust Iran’s rulers, even though outside airpower has never directly achieved government change without ground forces. The Atlantic Council warns the Iran attack risks drawing Washington into a wider regional war “without a clear endgame”.

A briefing from the Royal United Services Institute says if Iran’s retaliation causes significant US casualties, Washington will be under intense pressure to expand Operation Epic Fury into a larger military campaign.

Meanwhile, hawks in Washington see an opportunity. A report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says the attacks on Iran provide “a historic opportunity to help the Islamic Republic fall”.

Trump has told the US media the military operation could take “four weeks or less”, even as his defence secretary acknowledged it could be shorter or longer, depending on how Iran and its allies respond.

Within days of the Iran strikes on Saturday, the war has spread across the region, with Israel on Tuesday saying it has launched ground operations in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Iran’s retaliatory attacks have targeted US assets and even civilian infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf nations.

This is exactly the escalation experts had warned about: strikes framed as targeted decapitation of Iran’s leadership now pulling in a weakened Hezbollah and even Lebanese civilians, reinforcing the perception that the US is willing to put an entire region at risk to prove that it can reach one man or topple one regime.

Like he did in Venezuela by capturing Maduro in an in‑and‑out raid in Caracas after a CIA tip – an episode analysts say emboldens similar thinking elsewhere.

‘Troubling precedent’

The Caracas raid came on the back of a “maximum pressure” campaign, which saw sanctions, criminal cases and asset seizures in a high‑visibility operation. Maduro’s abduction gave the US considerable control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies calls the Maduro operation “a military victory with no viable endgame”, arguing that while the exfiltration of the president was tactically successful, the structural drivers of Venezuela’s crisis remained in place.

A Brookings analysis warned that the raid “sets a troubling precedent for US‑led regime change by special forces”, suggesting that other Latin American leaders may see it as a potential US “template” rather than a one‑off.

Like Colombia, whose President Gustavo Petro was referred to by Trump as “sick”, suggesting a Venezuela-like intervention there “sounds good to me”, and warning Petro to “watch his a**”.

Petro in January said the US was behaving like an empire that treats Latin American governments as subjects, warning that Washington risks shifting from “dominating the world” to being “isolated from the world”.

The killing or abduction of leaders or prominent figures from other nations violates international law. Experts say Trump’s expanding “targeted killing” doctrine erodes the taboo on assassinating political leaders, making reciprocity more plausible.

Protection as transaction

With allies, Trump’s posture is less kinetic but equally blunt.

Trump once boasted about telling a NATO partner, “You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent … No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”

The comments triggered alarm in European capitals and prompted what analysts described as efforts to “Trump‑proof” NATO by locking in higher defence spending and deeper political commitments.

The European Council on Foreign Relations alleges Trump has “exported MAGA to Europe”, turning NATO into “a protection racket in all but name” where security guarantees appear conditional on allies’ political and financial alignment.

A declassified White House memo from 2019 remains the clearest example of how Trump’s transactional logic extends to partners. The memo shows Trump responding to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request for more weapons.

“I would like you to do us a favour though,” Trump purportedly said before asking Zelenskyy to investigate former US President Joe Biden and his son – a conversation that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Who could be next?

Put together, the Maduro raid, the Iran attack, threats to Petro and pressure on NATO suggest who could be next: Latin American leaders labelled soft on drug cartels; the Iran‑aligned groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon; or smaller European nations branded “delinquent” by Trump.

US media reports say Trump’s advisers have urged him to focus on the domestic economy, warning that a prolonged confrontation with Iran could alienate parts of his “America First” base that are sceptical of open‑ended wars.

Meanwhile, Trump’s backers cite the rising NATO outlays, the Maduro raid and Iran strikes as proof that Trump “does what he says”. Some argue that degrading Iran’s nuclear programme, even without regime change, would still count as a victory for Trump.

Critics, however, worry that the Iran campaign could escalate into the biggest US military campaign since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, with some of Trump’s stated claims on Iran not backed by intelligence.

Whether the US power produces durable outcomes without blowback – in Iran, Lebanon, Latin America and inside the US – is a key test for Trump in the days ahead.