By Cliff Kincaid
June 25, 2025
When the Trump-hating The Atlantic magazine runs a piece praising Trump, you know something is very strange and seriously wrong. Eliot A. Cohen’s article on the Iran war, “Trump Got This One Right,” is fascinating for many reasons that ought to concern constitutional conservatives. One danger is that President Trump will continue to want to please those who hate him.
Another danger, of course, is that the piece constitutes disinformation, designed to confuse people about what the military strikes by Israel and the United States accomplished, and to encourage deeper U.S. involvement in another Middle East war.
Cohen defends Trump’s Iran strike and war on the Mullahs for their “dangerous” nuclear programs. He admits North Korea has one as well but he skips over that.
A contributing writer at The Atlantic who is professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, he doesn’t seem to care about the lack of constitutional justification for the strike on Iran. Cohen mentions the regime’s hatred of Israel and America and killing of Americans in the past, but fails to make the case for a declaration of war against the regime based on these facts. He just assumes the president can do anything he likes, including the “acts of war” against Iran.
Those who argue for congressional involvement are identified as “right-wing isolationists.” He adds, “The isolationist wing of the MAGA movement was smacked down.”
In fact, the MAGA movement was about staying out of foreign wars. This one was started by Israel and the U.S. got involved anyway.
But Cohen has a point here. What has happened to MAGA? This was a movement that is supposed to survive the Trump presidency. Instead, Trump has undercut it. He has changed it. It has become neo-conservative in its orientation.
Cohen claims Iran’s “nuclear fangs have been pulled,” despite the lack of evidence for this claim. He claims Iran won’t have a nuclear option for five or ten years. Again, he offers no evidence for this claim.
General Dan Caine declared, “Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.” That is not the same thing as “obliteration,” as Trump claimed.
There is no evidence the Iranian nuclear materials were even in those three sites.
It looks like Trump ordered the strike without any U.S. intelligence information that Iran had a bomb. He relied on Israel. The evidence is still secret.
Trump’s announced “ceasefire” between Israel and Iran, not immediately confirmed, ignores the role of the United States under President Trump in going to war in the absence of U.S. Congressional approval.
Equally significant, if there is a ceasefire, the war has been concluded without total victory. The “ceasefire” saves the Iranian regime from destruction, even though Trump had himself suggested regime change in Tehran.
I am forced to conclude that this is a time-saving mechanism for Iran to regroup and reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, this time with overt Russian and Chinese assistance.
So the danger remains and could in fact accelerate.
This is another limited war, conducted on an illegal and unconstitutional basis, which offers false hope.
Iran’s sponsors and backers in Moscow and Beijing understand this is the perfect time to step back and assess the damage to its client state in Iran and save the Mullahs to fight another day.
Meanwhile, the MAGA movement must review this episode to see whether it will hold their president accountable for what he said on the campaign trail.
It is possible the United States emerges from this illegal and unconstitutional military intervention without any loss of life involving its soldiers or civilians, although the Russians may have other ideas, and they may decide to unleash Iranian terror cells against America.
This is one fact we must acknowledge – that the Iranian regime is weak and now even more susceptible to Russian (and Chinese) influence and control.
Whatever happens, and despite the gloating after the “ceasefire,” the danger is still ongoing and will accelerate.
This is not a “victory” over Iran because there is no surrender.
But assuming there is some time to reflect on what happened, rather become cheerleaders for the war, the Congress must get back to the matter of representing the American people, who elected a president who vowed not to be a “warmonger.”
One thing I have learned is that partisan considerations determine many reactions to what is going on in the world. Many in MAGA suddenly became pro-war because their hero Donald J. Trump joined the war on behalf of Israel.
I, too, wanted Israel to win the war, but without American direct involvement. And if American involvement was to be necessary or required, the Congress was obligated to debate and vote on that proposal. None of that happened.
© 2025 Cliff Kincaid – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net
Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org