The Iran War - How did we get here?
Why is the US at war? It's way simpler than you think.
Hey guys, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a piece for you all, but don’t worry. I’ve been watching everything and taking notes. The US is at war with Iran. We’re going to be talking about how this whole thing started. As always, I don’t talk out of my ass. Besides my analysis, everything I talk about will have sources linked.
Let’s Begin.
I’ve been looking online and hearing a lot of people giving their takes on why the Iran war started. Their reasoning ranges from “Trump did it because of China” to “the U.S. always planned to do this and it’s where the U.S. empire will fall.” While these takes may seem plausible, the people making them are making fundamental analytical mistakes. I don’t look down on them too much because when I was new to geopolitical analysis I used to make the same mistake. When you’re analyzing why something happened, you have to look at the sequence of events that led up to it. You can’t just invoke, for example, “China” as the reason out of nowhere like most people who call themselves analysts do. Just because this war might affect China in some way, it doesn’t mean the US reasoning had anything to do with China.
For example, let’s say a man’s wife was cheating on him with a police officer. With no knowledge of the infidelity, he ends up committing assault on a co-worker. The officer that arrives on the scene and arrests him is the same one that’s having sex with his wife. An amateur analyst would say, “well the officer arrested him so he can have his wife to himself.” But if we follow the sequence of events we know that this is not the case. The officer might benefit from this, but that’s not why the man got arrested.
So let’s analyze the sequence of events:
During Trump’s first term, he assassinated Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force. After that, the Iranians were looking for revenge. There was intelligence that Iran was trying to get Trump assassinated. We don’t know the validity of this intelligence, as it’s still classified, but we do know that Trump was informed. There have also been multiple plots and attempts on Trump’s life, some of which were linked to Iran.
After Trump took power in early 2025, he began engaging in nuclear talks with Iran. Trump had sent a letter directly to Khamenei demanding full nuclear disarmament within two months, offering sanctions relief in return. In the middle of these negotiations, Israel initiated a surprise attack on Iran, now known as the 12 Day War. During that war, the Trump administration saw the opportunity to bomb nuclear facilities in Iran, and they took it. You could also say the Israelis presented Trump with the opportunity to bypass negotiations and potentially destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities by creating favorable battlefield conditions.
The White House claimed victory, but unfortunately a lot of analysts knew this was not the case. I talked about the attack in detail here:
Now we fast forward to late last year to early January, when major protests erupted all across Iran. Trump encouraged the people to rise up and explicitly warned the Iranians not to kill protesters, or else.
The Iranians didn’t listen and massacred/executed thousands of people.
Trump publicly gave them a red line, and they crossed it. This put Trump in a bad position, optics wise. Those people got killed partially because of his encouragement, and he didn’t have a big enough force in the region at the time to do anything about it. So it seemed like all those people died for nothing.
With some encouragement from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and neoconservatives like Lindsey Graham, Trump ordered the U.S. military to start a major force buildup in the region. The Trump administration seemingly engaged in some fake negotiations with the Iranian regime just for PR purposes. I personally knew these negotiations weren’t going anywhere.
Another force that was pulling Trump toward war is a logistical one. There is always a psychological point of no return when it comes to logistics. You spent so much money moving equipment that it feels like a huge waste not to use it. And it is. Now, a formidable person can overcome this, but the chances are low that Trump would have that kind of impulse control.
And the war started.
Trump, who already had personal beef with Iran, created a red line. The Iranians crossed it. The Israelis and neocons encouraged him and he decided to do it. That’s it. This is not about nuclear weapons. There’s no bigger “4D chess” geopolitical analysis. That’s it.