Pete Hegseth’s Crazed, Angry Tirades on Iran Give Dems a Big Opening

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth knows that playing a decisive tough guy on television is the way to keep Donald Trump happy, so he did just that while addressing reporters Monday about the United States’ bombing of Iran. He hailed Trump’s supposed decisiveness. He strutted and preened about the bombing death of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. He angrily ridiculed his questioners. He barked out hard-sounding phrases like “war is hell.”

But what came out of Hegseth’s mouth was substantively about as clear as Trump’s Truth Social word vomit. He wouldn’t say whether American troops will face combat. He offered confusing depictions of our objectives, seemingly suggesting they’re about depriving Iran of “offensive capabilities” that remain hazily defined. He declared that “this is not a so-called regime change war” while hailing Trump’s success thus far at...regime change. Which echoes Trump himself: In one weekend interview, Trump offered at least two competing versions of the changed Iranian regime he hopes to see.

All this gives Democrats an opening to take on this debate more forcefully. While some Democrats have gotten this right, more of them need to say forthrightly that this war is patently illegal and that Trump’s chief stated rationale for it—that Iran posed “imminent threats” to the United States—is utter nonsense.

“Democrats need to strongly make the point that there was no imminent threat and that this war is a violation of the Constitution—and illegal,” Representative Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told me. “Absent congressional approval, this is an illegal war.”

As Smith noted, there’s an important distinction between saying Iran poses a serious problem to the region and the world, and claiming it was so on the verge of attacking the United States that it required urgent defensive action. “It is made up to say that they were going to attack us—that they posed an imminent threat,” Smith said.

Some Democrats are stopping short of speaking this forcefully. Senate leader Chuck Schumer, for instance, has leaned hard on the suggestion that Trump officials merely have to be more forthcoming. They must “be straight with the American people about these strikes and what comes next,” Schumer said, demanding that officials divulge “critical details about the scope and immediacy of the threat.” Other Democrats have used similar language.

But this posture implies that there’s potentially a legitimate case to be made that Iran actually does pose a threat urgent enough to justify our attack—and that the administration merely hasn’t been sufficiently transparent about that justification. There is no reason whatsoever to grant even that much.

The evidence is strong that Trump’s central claims about Iran are false, not merely that they haven’t been sufficiently explained to lawmakers. As The New York Times reports painstakingly, American officials with access to relevant intelligence say he’s “exaggerated the immediacy” of the threat Iran poses. Trump has claimed that Iran is on track to develop missiles that can hit the United States, but as the Times reports, that’s contradicted by the administration’s own assessments. Top Trump advisers have said Iran is “a week” away from having the materials for a nuke, but the Times notes that American officials say that’s not so.

“Democrats don’t need the Trump administration to explain their reasoning,” Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, told me. “This isn’t a mystery to be solved. We already know all their reasons for war are bullshit. We already know everything we need to know to conclude: Iran does not pose an imminent threat to the United States.”

Similarly, the evidence is also strong that Trump simply doesn’t care about accomplishing precise objectives—if he’s even articulated them at all. That’s the problem. It isn’t that officials haven’t been clear or forthcoming enough about those objectives.

All this is overwhelmingly clear. Trump named at least two competing objectives in that aforementioned weekend interview. He also insisted protracted conflict “won’t be difficult,” but that notion has been privately undermined by his own top general, again illustrating his lack of serious deliberation. Trump has piously said he hopes the Iranian people take control of the country after the regime is (or isn’t?) deposed. Yet as Anne Applebaum shows, there is no sign anywhere of any plan to make this happen.

Hegseth’s barking at reporters leaves little doubt about the lack of meaningfully clear objectives here. His suggestion that Iran’s “offensive capabilities” are unacceptable is absurdly vague. It seems designed to function as a bar that Trump can arbitrarily say Iran has failed to clear, thus justifying more aggression, dictated only by Trump’s passing whims.

“By Hegseth’s standard, any country having any advanced defensive weaponry of any kind can be labeled an imminent threat,” Duss says. “Trump seems to be workshopping different objectives with reporters on the phone. Democrats don’t need a briefing to understand what’s going on.”

Yes, virtually all Democrats will likely vote for a war powers resolution—set for consideration in both chambers this week—that would constrain Trump’s ability to wage war without congressional authorization. Trump will veto this if it passes, but it’s an important exercise. Though previous presidents like Barack Obama abused warmaking authorities—which some liberals criticized, including yours truly—Trump is taking this further. He’s refusing to seek authorization for the killings of supposed drug-running civilians in the Caribbean as well as for the biggest military operation in the Mideast in decades. Democrats should relentlessly point this out.

But that can’t be the end of the story. This can’t simply be about Trump’s procedural failures. It also has to be linked to a larger argument that he’s functioning as a maliciously unhinged, out-of-control despot, and thus is wrecking our system of self-rule at a foundational level. As David French argues, one can view Iran as a serious long-term problem while insisting that Trump operate within his constitutional powers, and that fundamental principles are at stake:

Perhaps the most important aspect of this constitutional structure is that it creates a presumption of peace. Our nation cannot go to war until its leaders persuade a majority of Congress that war is in our national interest.

It’s precisely because Trump has no meaningfully articulated objectives for this war—and because American officials privately admit his Iran claims are false—that he’s launching it illegally without congressional authorization. The same Republicans who insist Trump needn’t seek congressional approval are doing so precisely because this liberates them from having to vote on the underlying proposition that this war is in our country’s interests.

Hegseth’s absurdities illustrate how big an opening Democrats really have here. It’s not enough to demand that officials be forthcoming and transparent. Democrats should argue that Trump has launched what is essentially a vanity war and nothing more—and that, as Smith put it to me, he’s “ruling like a king instead of the elected president of a constitutional republic.”