President Donald Trump’s refusal to engage in any coherent foreign policymaking process is the root of his decision to launch the Iran War.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of The New York Times have provided the most thorough account to date of deliberations in the Trump administration that led to the war with Iran. Although the journalists’ product may be only the first draft of this piece of American history, the details in their multi-sourced reporting—including even who sat where in a meeting room—have the aura of authenticity. Their story yields four main impressions. 

First, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played a central role in leading President Trump to launch the war, so much so that Israel can be called the prime mover of President Donald Trump’s decision. The opening of the journalists’ story features the unusual scene of a foreign leader being invited into the White House Situation Room to present his government’s agenda-setting proposal for subsequent discussion among US officials. The Israelis presented a best-case picture of the prospective war, predicting a popular Iranian uprising that would overthrow the Islamic Republic’s regime and asserting that this regime would be weakened so fast by the US-Israeli attack that it could not close the Strait of Hormuz or inflict any significant damage on other US interests in the region.

Several of the president’s cabinet members later expressed—appropriately, as events turned out—much skepticism about the Israeli forecast of an uprising and regime change in Tehran. “Farcical,” in the view of CIA Director John Ratcliffe. “Bullshit,” according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In the more measured words of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, the Israelis “oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.”

Despite those assessments from his own subordinates, Trump liked the Israeli pitch. “Sounds good to me,” was his immediate reaction to the presentation. The New York Times journalists write that “the president’s advisers could see that he had been deeply impressed by the promise of what Mr. Netanyahu’s military and intelligence services could do.” The ability to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and to inflict major damage on Iran’s military capabilities appealed to Trump. He did not even discard the idea of regime change, which he worked into his changing assortment of war objectives.

The part the Israeli government played in launching the US war against Iran is noteworthy, given how that government’s objectives regarding Iran differ significantly from US interests and from Trump’s own objectives. Now, Israel’s role as a spoiler, continuing its devastating assault in Lebanon, is the main thing that may prevent a shaky ceasefire from evolving into a lasting peace.

A second impression from Haberman’s and Swan’s account is that pre-war deliberations did not include many parts of the US government whose purviews the war would affect. The war-planning group excluded Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, not to mention Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The exclusion of Wright and Bessent is extraordinary, given how the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the interruption of oil shipments from the Persian Gulf would have worldwide economic repercussions. Additionally, the blockade of the strait has long been among the most frequently mentioned possibilities in analyses of how Iran would respond to an attack on its territory.

The exclusion of relevant parts of the government was even greater below cabinet-level principals. Apart from a quick intelligence analysis of the Israeli presentation—which seconded the principals’ skepticism about a popular uprising and regime change—and the information about military capabilities that General Caine conveyed, there appeared to be no use of insights from the working levels of the bureaucracies involved in foreign relations and national security. There was no process in which policy options and their repercussions were thoroughly discussed at any level before being presented to the principals and the president.

Third, even the senior members of the administration who were included in the discussions and had well-founded reasons to object to the war simply bowed to Trump’s visceral preferences. As Haberman and Swan put it, “Everyone deferred to the president’s instincts. They had seen him make bold decisions, take on unfathomable risks and somehow come out on top. No one would impede him now.”

Fourth, no attention appears to have been given to fundamental, long-term US interests and how the war objectives would or would not serve those interests. Instead, war objectives such as decapitating Iran’s leadership or disabling its missile force were simply taken as givens and assumed to be desirable. 

Left unanswered were such questions as whether regime change would yield Iranian rulers who were better or worse than those who came before. Or whether disabling a force Iran used for deterrence would mean more, not less, regional violence because some other regional state inclined to throw its military weight around would become less deterred in launching attacks. Or what effects starting a war of aggression would have on the United States’s relations with allies, its credibility as a negotiator, or its worldwide soft power.

Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran is consistent with his method for making most policy decisions, whether foreign or domestic. His modus operandi is impulsive and based on gut feelings—or on the last persuasive person he talked to—rather than on expert input. The failure of his senior subordinates to speak out against a coming folly reflects the overriding priority Trump places on political and personal loyalty over expertise or the capacity for independent thought in making appointments. His exclusion of the professional bureaucracy reflects his view of it as a “deep state” opposed to him rather than a resource for decision-making.

Trump is an extreme case, but his attack on Iran is not the only instance of the United States going to war without a policy process worthy of the name. The George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 with no policy process in the executive branch that ever considered whether launching that war was a good idea. At least the Bush administration sought and obtained congressional endorsement and some participation by allies for its war. It also requested United Nations approval. Trump has done none of those things with his war on Iran.

The extreme nature of decision-making on Trump’s war—a war that has failed to win most of its declared objectives while incurring substantial costs—might stimulate beneficial attention to the importance of an orderly policy process in making major foreign policy decisions. Such attention would be especially beneficial in Congress, where the current majority party has not only failed to assert Congress’s war-making powers but also failed to hold public hearings on the war. The nation needs a figure like Senator J. William Fulbright, who is willing to conduct a full public examination of a war waged by his own party’s president.

An orderly policy process does not guarantee the right decision. The war about which Fulbright held hearings 60 years ago was preceded by a similar process in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, but that did not prevent the Vietnam War from becoming a costly disaster. 

Nonetheless, a thorough process that engages all relevant parts of the government offers a better chance of producing wise policy and avoiding the worst blunders than does reliance on a single person’s instincts. 

Crafting such a process does not require re-inventing any wheels. Merely restoring the legacy of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who established the first comprehensive policy-planning apparatus suitable for a superpower in the post-World War II era, would be a huge improvement over the way the nation’s foreign policy is being crafted now.

About the Author: Paul Pillar

​​Paul R. Pillar retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the US intelligence community, in which his last position was as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier, he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA, covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts US Foreign Policy. He is also a contributing editor for The National Interest.

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