Donald Trump Promised War With Iran for 40 Years and Finally Delivered
Trump's hostility toward Iran predates his political career by decades, from advocating invasion in 1980 to ordering strikes on Kharg Island in 2026
Wars do not happen overnight, and the conflict with Iran that erupted in 2026 was no exception, representing the culmination of hostility that Donald Trump expressed publicly for more than four decades.
With Donald Trump potentially planning an assault on Kharg Island, he may be fulfilling a threat he first made nearly four decades ago. In 1988, while promoting “The Art of the Deal” in the United Kingdom, Trump told The Guardian, “One bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt cited the resurfaced interview as proof Trump had been “consistent his entire life on Iran.”
The consistency began even earlier. In 1980, a 34-year-old Trump appeared on television with Rona Barrett and advocated a military invasion of Iran to free the hostages. He called the situation “absolutely, and totally ridiculous” and said he had “no question in his mind” that the United States should have gone in.
Throughout the decades that followed, Trump’s posture never softened. In his 2011 book “Time to Get Tough,” he declared, “America’s primary goal with Iran must be to destroy its nuclear ambitions. Let me put them as plainly as I know how: Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped–by any and all means necessary. Period. We cannot allow this radical regime to acquire a nuclear weapon that they will either use or hand off to terrorists.”
When the Obama administration negotiated the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, Trump labeled it “absolutely horrible” and warned it would lead to a “nuclear holocaust.” At AIPAC in 2016, he declared dismantling the deal his “number one priority” as president, calling it “catastrophic for America, for Israel and the whole of the Middle East.”
The escalation accelerated once Trump took office. In October 2017, hedecertified the JCPOA. In May 2018, he withdrew entirely and launched the “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, aiming to “bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue.”
In April 2019, Trump designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, bragging, “If you are doing business with the IRGC, you will be bankrolling terrorism…This designation will be the first time that the United States has ever named a part of another government as an FTO.”
The most dramatic moment came in January 2020, when Trump authorized the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. Trump claimed Soleimani had been “plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.” Iran retaliated with missile strikes on U.S. bases, and the world braced for war.
Toward the end of his first term, Trump explored military options for targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley pushed back firmly, warning, “If you do this, you’re gonna have a f***ing war.” Milley held daily briefings to prevent an unchecked spiral, describing his efforts as trying to “land the plane.”
When Trump returned to office in 2025, the generals who had restrained him were gone. In February, he signed a presidential memorandum reimposing maximum pressure while seated beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He told reporters, “With me, it’s very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
In June 2025, Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer, the first direct American military strike on Iranian soil. B-2 stealth bombers dropped bunker-buster bombs on the Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities while a submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Isfahan. Trump declared on Truth Social that the strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites.
Then came February 28, 2026. Operation Epic Fury. The joint American and Israeli assault that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decimated the IRGC, and spread the conflict across the entire Persian Gulf. The culmination of everything Trump had promised over the course of 46 years.
These aggressive escalations are not mere spontaneous spasms of hawkishness; they are the calculated fulfillment of a role Donald Trump has played for decades as a golem for American Jewry. By promising populism on immigration and economic nationalism on the campaign trail, he expertly exploited the frustrations of the American electorate to gain power, only to abandon those voters and implement a conventional Republican agenda centered on Judeo-accelerationism.
Ultimately, Trump has proven himself a safe pair of hands for a Jewish community spooked by the events of October 7, delivering a devastating war in West Asia that serves the interests of world Jewry while offering nothing but peril to the American nation.In that sense, Trump’s two administrations are not a break from the neoconservative era but its final act: the Clean Break script brought to its logical conclusion, with ordinary people now paying in blood and at the pump for an unnecessary war decades in the making.
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Great article. I knew about his hawkish stance in "Time to Get Tough," but I didn't realise it went all the way back to the 80s. I have seen people debating recently whether Trump betrayed his supposed anti-war campaign promises by launching this war, or whether he is simply following through on his promises. Interestingly, both positions are actually correct: he did campaign in 2016 as an anti-interventionist candidate, and he did criticise Obama repeatedly before that for his hawkishness, but that anti-intervention posturing was itself actually the deception, and an anomaly in his otherwise consistently aggressive stance towards Iran.
Every American president has blood on their hands over various wars, executions, training of various terrorist groups. Every Iranian Ihave seen speak out is on Trumps side. I believe Trumps idea is to bring global peace and I for one trust he is on the path to do just that.