Why This War?
It’s not as if no one warned him. For years, U.S. intelligence predicted that if the United States went to war with Iran, it might well close the Strait of Hormuz, causing oil prices to spike, and damaging both the domestic and the world economies (Kurt, 2026). That’s a major reason why former presidents held off. Israel, which sees the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat, has wanted to attack them for years, but was constrained from doing so by what was essentially an American veto (Estrin, 2025).
If the Iranians were on the verge of attaining a nuclear weapon, that would change the calculus, but there is no reason to assume they are, particularly if the June 2025 strikes — in which enormous “bunker-buster” bombs were dropped on an underground Iranian nuclear research facility — were remotely as effective as the Trump Administration has claimed. Attaining regime change has historically required boots on the ground, and bombing a country would seem to be an excellent way to inspire its people to rally around even a very unpopular government. Furthermore, even if one ignored all those other arguments, why do something likely to raise gas prices before the midterms?
The June 2025 strikes may or may not have been legal, and may or may not have been desirable, but they could, if you squinted, look rational. What can be said for the current war, which is much wider and costlier, and is starting to look as if it should be spelled with a ‘q’ for quagmire? We can see what’s in it for the Israelis, but what’s in it for the United States? Why did Trump start this war against the advice of his military and intelligence communities, his vice-president, his secretary of state, and some of his most prominent public supporters (Haberman & Swan, 2026)? One should never underestimate the power of stupidity, but why would the president choose this particular kind of stupidity?
In the absence of an answer rooted in the national interest, I can only offer a few hypotheses as to why this war might be in Donald Trump’s personal interest. The hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, and I think reality probably reflects a mix of them. In any other White House, these suggestions would sound far-fetched and paranoid, but Trump has taken the presidency into uncharted waters.
(1) He’s learned it’s fun to blow things up. While it was formerly part of Trump’s political brand to eschew foreign wars, history teaches us that a person with a big military and a big ego may well end up aspiring to be a Conqueror. In particular, the strikes against Venezuela seem to have given Trump the notion that he can use the American military to pummel obnoxious foreigners cost-free, or at least at a cost that only other people (such as military personnel and taxpayers) will have to pay. Some men, as they slide into second childhood, discover that they like to play with toy soldiers.
(2) The family is making money. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump recently invested in a company called Powerus, which makes military drones (Condon, 2026). The Ukraine War has shown that drones are now a key military technology, and that in a modern war, you go through a lot of them. In both the U.S. and the Gulf states, the Iran War has burned through drone stores, presenting a juicy economic opportunity, especially for the well-connected.
(3) The Israelis possess kompromat. “Kompromat” is the Russian term for compromising material, i.e. material that could be used to blackmail someone. Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, a British newspaper tycoon who died at sea under mysterious circumstances, was long rumored to be a Mossad asset (Davies, 2019). In addition, no one has been able to explain how Jeffrey Epstein acquired the resources to go into his pimping-and-blackmailing business. Since intelligence agencies, by their nature, hunger for kompromat, it would be distasteful but not surprising if Epstein had been staked by one or more of them.
While this suggests many possibilities, two nations that would especially benefit from possessing kompromat on Donald Trump — and the two nations that have traditionally most been spared his fits of temper — are Russia and Israel. The New York Times reported that before Trump’s decision to attack Iran, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented an argument for the war in the White House Situation Room (Haberman & Swan, 2026). (If you’re wondering, it is not normal, except in Dr. Strangelove, for foreign leaders to enter the Situation Room.) Netanyahu has dreamed of attacking Iran for decades (Estrin, 2025). Perhaps Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell gave him a way to make his dream come true.
In certain ways, Trump has always seemed like one of the most blackmailable people on the planet: between his financial practices and his sexual proclivities, he presents a wealth of high-value targets. There is a catch, however: his political base seems willing to overlook almost anything. His boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes (Vitali, 2016) has proven to be well-founded. Thus, Trump may also be well-positioned to resist blackmail. He has generally been able to say, “Publish and be damned,” although that hasn’t prevented him from suing the publishers.
One area remains sensitive, however: his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s sway over his base seems as if it might be vulnerable on that point. If someone were to produce direct, authenticated evidence that Trump had engaged in pedophilia — if he turned out to be the person QAnon warned us about — that might break him. It also might not. But perhaps the Israelis have persuaded him that he does not want to find out.
All of this is more salacious and personal than I usually like to be in a political discussion. Even quite bad people — and there have been some in the Oval Office in my lifetime — tend to take the responsibilities of the presidency seriously. Donald Trump, however, may be the exception who proves the rule. Anyone who makes it to the top in politics is likely to be egocentric, but Trump appears to be uniquely incapable of caring about anything but himself. If he has entered into a war that, on the face of it, makes no sense, it seems logical to ask, not “What is in it for the United States?”, but “What is in it for him?”
References
Condon, B. (2026, April 3). Company backed by Trump sons looks to sell drone interceptors to Gulf states being attacked by Iran. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/company-backed-by-trump-sons-looks-to-sell-drone-interceptors-to-gulf-states-being-attacked-by-iran
Davies, C. (2019, August 22). The murky life and death of Robert Maxwell — and how it shaped his daughter Ghislaine. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/22/the-murky-life-and-death-of-robert-maxwell-and-how-it-shaped-his-daughter-ghislaine#:~:text=Throughout%20his%20life%2C%20he%20was,and%20he%20threatened%20to%20retaliate
Estrin, D. (2025, June 25). Israel was once deterred from striking Iran. Now Netanyahu takes a victory lap. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/25/nx-s1-5444864/israel-iran-war-netanyahu
Gritten, D. (2026, April 7). Trump condemned over threat that Iran’s ‘civilisation will die’. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyk7xgkzvzo
Haberman, M., & Swan, J. (2026, April 7). 6 takeaways from the story of Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-war-takeaways.html
Kurt, S. (2026, March 13). US underestimated Iran’s determination to close Strait of Hormuz after strikes: Reports. Anadolu Agency. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-underestimated-iran-s-determination-to-close-strait-of-hormuz-after-strikes-reports/3863268
Vitali, A. (2016, January 23). Trump says he could ‘shoot somebody’ and still maintain support. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-says-he-could-shoot-somebody-still-maintain-support-n502911
