This time around, there has been no such concession. The Trump administration launched a war on Iran with no organized attempt to persuade the American public of the justice of their course of action, no effort to get the constitutionally required approval from Congress, and no attempt to put forward an even minimally coherent post-hoc rationalization for their decision. “Operation Epic Fury”, the inane name given to the war by Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense, has now been explained as a response to Iranian aggression; as a check on Iran’s nuclear program (which Trump claimed to have “obliterated” with strikes last June); as self-defense; as not self-defense; and as something the United States had to do because Israel was planning to start a war anyway.