Yesterday, the US  bombed Iran’s underground nuclear facilities using its B-2 long-range bomber and cruise missiles.  In his post-attack address to the nation, President Trump said Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been “completely and totally obliterated.”  He also warned Iran not to retaliate and urged it to make peace—or what to befall on the country would be far worse.   Somehow, his comment reminds me of Tacitus’s famous line about the Romans: “where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

In an interview on Meet the Press, Vice President Vance insisted to NBC’s Kristen Welker that despite the unprovoked attack, the United States is not at war with Iran—only with its nuclear program.   I found his logic bewildering. Isn’t this equal to saying, “I am not fighting you—I am just cutting off your right hand in case you might use it to snap my face someday?”  Also,  how can one bomb the territory of a sovereign nation and claim it doesn’t amount to war?   One explanation is that the US does not see in Iran  an equal, because it is not part of the so-called “community of civilized nations,” the interpretation of which, by the way, seems always subject to the discretion of the West.  The sceptics of Americanism may be forgiven for noticing the parallel between Vance’s legalistic contortions and Putin’s insistence that  his invasion of Ukraine—now more than three years old—is a  mere “special operation.”

By refusing to call the bombing a war, the Trump administration sidestepped constitutional challenges to the action.    As Lindsay Graham said with a glee in his interview with Welker, under the US constitution, Congress controls the purse and authorizes war—if  one is declared.  Since Trump asked for neither, he had the authority to act unilaterally. In this Trump is no  trailblazer.  Modern American presidents have long learned the trick of “it is not a war if you don’t declare it.”

Welker pressed both Vance and Graham on the question of timing.  According to Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony to Congress in March,   the US intelligence community “continued to assess that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader  Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. ”  So—why now? I recall Vance saying that intelligence is just one input in the president’s deliberation—and that Trump’s “instinct” is another. In other words, the commander in chief is permitted to start a war on a whim, even against the judgment of his own intelligence agencies.  To Graham,  timing is irrelevant.  The goal was always to destroy Iran’s nuclear program;  whether it presented an imminent threat to the US national security now—which seems necessary to justify a preemptive war—is beside the point.

Let me end my rant with a final, eyebrow-raising remark by  Vance. In his interview, he repeatedly said that Iran should sue for peace, because they’re clearly not very good at making wars.  The comment strikes me as arrogant and ignorant, unbecoming for a high-level official speaking on delicate diplomatic matters.  If Vance thought Iranians can be mocked and humiliated back to the  negotiation table, he would most likely be disappointed.