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The White House is asserting that sweeping and deadly U.S. military strikes against Iran were necessary to stop an imminent threat to American forces, but has so far provided no public evidence that Tehran was preparing such an attack.
Nearly two days after the United States launched its largest military operation in the Middle East in decades, the administration has yet to explain to Congress or the American public what specific Iranian actions justified a sudden escalation that has killed senior Iranian leaders, destabilized the region and raised the risk of a broader war.
The administration began offering its rationale more than 12 hours after U.S. forces started bombarding Iran with missiles, drones and long-range artillery. A senior Trump administration official told reporters Saturday that intelligence assessments showed U.S. troops would have suffered far greater casualties had Washington waited for an impending Iranian strike. Two other officials said the decision followed President Donald Trump’s conclusion that Iran would not agree to halt uranium enrichment entirely.
But the post hoc effort to justify the use of force has few modern precedents. Unlike previous presidents who launched major military campaigns, Trump did not seek congressional authorization, publicly rally U.S. allies or make a formal case to international bodies.
“This is an example of the president deciding what he wanted to do, and then making his administration go and find whatever argument they could make to justify it,” said Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey.
Administration officials briefed some congressional staffers on Sunday, but did not present evidence that Iran was preparing an imminent attack on U.S. troops, according to two people who attended the session. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
Senior national security officials — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe — are scheduled to brief House members on Tuesday and senators later in the week, according to multiple people familiar with the plans.
In an eight-minute video posted to Truth Social after the first wave of attacks, Trump said Iran continued to develop long-range missiles that could threaten Europe and U.S. forces — despite long-standing assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies that Tehran is years away from such capabilities.
In a second video released Sunday, the president warned that operations would continue and that U.S. casualties were likely to mount. Trump has not formally addressed the nation or taken questions about his decision beyond brief, one-on-one media calls.
The move represents a sharp reversal from Trump’s campaign promises to avoid “forever wars” and from his criticism of American military interventionism during a speech last year in Saudi Arabia.
“The interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Trump said at the time.
The United States Central Command said the strikes focused on Iranian air defenses, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields that “posed an imminent threat,” but has not identified any time-sensitive plan to attack U.S. forces.
“The United States did not start this conflict,” Hegseth wrote Saturday on X. “But we will finish it.”
According to a person familiar with the matter, the Central Intelligence Agency spent weeks cultivating contacts inside Iran, intelligence that helped inform the timing and targeting of the strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and other senior officials. The CIA declined to comment, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions to the White House.
In a statement, the White House said Trump preferred diplomacy and that U.S. representatives “worked extensively, and in good faith, to make a deal” to neutralize Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, but accused Tehran of refusing to engage seriously.
Skepticism has grown following Iran’s retaliatory strikes, which killed U.S. service members on Sunday.
Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN he had seen no intelligence showing Iran was “on the verge of launching any kind of preemptive strike against the United States of America.”
“The president has started a war of choice,” Warner said.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Iran and its proxies posed real dangers to U.S. bases, but argued those risks were being managed through existing missile and air defense systems.
“They simply don’t have a missile that can reach the United States, and probably won’t for years,” he said.
Republican defenders of the administration have largely avoided specifics. Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio described the threat as “imminent” in a CBS interview Sunday but declined to elaborate.
Outside experts also questioned the urgency. Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball said last week that Iran would need months to produce enough enriched material for a weapon and years to rebuild damaged nuclear facilities.
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, described the Iranian threat as serious but manageable.
“That makes this a preventive war, not a preemptive one,” Haass said.
