When Donald Trump returned to power, he did so on a promise he repeated with unusual clarity: the United States, he said, had spent too long fighting other people’s wars.The pledge was central to his political identity. Trump campaigned on ending wars in Ukraine and Gaza, brokering stability across the Middle East and putting “America First” at home, promising a return to what he called the country’s “golden age.” The message also focused heavily on domestic concerns, lowering costs, tackling the affordability crisis and making everyday life cheaper for American families. When the United States instead launched its campaign against Iran under the almost cartoonishly titled ‘Operation Epic Fury,’ the contrast with those promises was hard to miss. The internet quickly offered its own alternative name for the moment: “Operation Epstein Distraction,” a sardonic label suggesting the war arrived at a remarkably convenient time for a president whose name has surfaced repeatedly in discussions surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files.He often portrayed himself as a dealmaker who could restore stability to a disorderly world through negotiation and the force of his personality. At times he spoke about the prospect almost playfully, suggesting that if the conflicts he claimed he could settle were resolved, the scale of the achievement might well place him in contention for the Nobel Peace Prize, an ambition he pursued openly and which, in January 2026, produced a symbolic moment when Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado handed him her Nobel medal at the White House in thanks for the US operation that removed Nicolás Maduro from power, a gesture meant as a token of personal gratitude and recognition, even though the Nobel Committee made clear that the peace prize itself cannot be transferred or shared.
María Corina Machado handed trump her Nobel medal at the White House/ Image: Whitehouse
By the end of 2025, however, the language had begun to change. In early December, Trump dismissed concerns about rising living costs, an issue that had dominated much of his campaign rhetoric, describing the affordability crisis as a “hoax,” a “fake narrative,” and a “con job” created by Democrats.A few weeks later, in January 2026, he spoke more openly about his frustration with the Nobel Committee after once again being passed over for the Peace Prize. Trump said he had helped stop eight wars but had received no recognition. The committee, he suggested, was influenced by Norway’s political establishment, a criticism that quickly spilled into wider policy complaints as he threatened tariffs against Norway and revived his demand that the United States should gain control of Greenland, a Danish territory he has long argued is strategically important.During the same remarks, Trump said he no longer felt obligated to “think purely of peace.” Although he insisted that he did not care about the prize itself, “I don’t care about the Nobel Prize,” he said, adding that his priority was “saving lives,” the shift in tone was difficult to ignore.Within weeks, the United States had entered a direct military confrontation with Iran.
From peacemaker to war president
The shift from campaign rhetoric to military action came with Operation Epic Fury, the large-scale US campaign that targeted Iranian missile installations, naval bases and other strategic sites. The strikes proved immediately consequential. Among those killed was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, whom Donald Trump later described on Truth Social as “one of the most evil people in History.”The White House presented the operation as decisive and necessary, arguing that overwhelming force was required to dismantle Iran’s capacity to threaten American allies and regional stability. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz described the attacks as a “pre-emptive strike” designed to remove immediate threats to Israel, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington had acted in anticipation of Iranian aggression.Trump himself offered several explanations for the campaign, pointing at different times to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile programme and its network of militant groups across the Middle East. Critics, however, have focused on the way those justifications have shifted. Intelligence assessments have complicated some of the administration’s claims: an analysis by the US Defense Intelligence Agency suggested Iran was unlikely to possess missiles capable of reaching American territory until 2035, raising questions about the immediacy of the threat. Others noted that if the central aim was to halt Iran’s nuclear programme, Trump had previously declared that programme “obliterated” during earlier strikes on Iranian facilities.
This partially redacted image from video provided by U.S. Central Command shows a complex of structures in Iran being struck by missiles fired by U.S. forces on Sunday, March 1, 2026. (U.S. Central Command via AP)
The war’s human cost has also mounted quickly. In Iran alone, more than 1,255 people have been killed and over 12,000 wounded, according to the latest casualty trackers. Among the victims are at least 168 children, including 165 primary-school girls killed when a missile strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab in southern Iran while classes were in session. Retaliatory attacks have widened the conflict beyond Iran’s borders: Israel has reported 13 deaths and nearly 1,929 injuries, eight US soldiers have been killed in the Gulf with 18 wounded, and renewed Israeli operations in Lebanon have left more than 570 people dead and over 1,400 injured. Iran has responded with drone and missile strikes across the Gulf, targeting sites in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, Qatar and Cyprus, causing civilian and military deaths and injuries, compounding the human toll and heightening tensions across an already fragile region.Among the many critics of the war, one voice carries an unusual authority not because of political position but because of proximity. Mary L. Trump, the president’s niece and the daughter of his late older brother, Fred Trump Jr., has spent years analysing the internal dynamics of the Trump family and the psychological forces that shaped it. she believes shaped her uncle’s worldview. A trained psychologist, she laid out that argument most famously in her bestselling memoir: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, a portrait of a family culture she describes as defined by competition, emotional deprivation and relentless demands for dominance.In her account, the family patriarch Fred Trump Sr. ruled the household with a cold, transactional logic that rewarded strength and punished vulnerability. Mary describes him as a “high-functioning sociopath,” a father who encouraged rivalry among his children while equating weakness with failure. Donald Trump, she writes, grew up in the shadow of his older brother Fred Trump Jr., who initially appeared to be the natural heir to the family business. When Fred Jr.’s struggles forced him out of that role, Donald moved into the position, absorbing a lesson Mary believes became central to his personality: humiliation must be avoided, and dominance must be asserted before it can be imposed on you.
Fred Trump with his son Donald. Picture: ABC News
That psychological framework, she argues, offers a clearer explanation for the Iran war than the official policy arguments offered by the administration.Speaking on her YouTube channel Mary Trump Media, described by the channel itself as: “You might know Donald Trump as the authoritarian conman wrecking the country from the Oval Office. Mary Trump just knows him as her f**ing loser uncle. This channel is where fake news goes to die,” she acknowledged the suffering of ordinary Iranians under the country’s political system but rejected the idea that the American campaign was motivated by any meaningful concern for their future. “The Iranian people have suffered long and horribly under the cruel and repressive authoritarian theocracy currently in power,” she said, adding that they deserve the freedom to determine their own system of government. But she argued that the American president ordering the bombardment had no such objective. “The man who is bombing their country has no interest in them, and he has no plan to create the conditions in which they can become free.”Mary Trump’s explanation is not primarily geopolitical. It is psychological. In her view, the war reflects a familiar pattern in her uncle’s behaviour, a pattern she believes has defined his career in business and politics alike.“For Donald, there is one reason and one reason alone,” she said. “He’s in trouble, and he knows it. This isn’t simply about changing the subject. That, of course, would be bad enough. This is to keep himself and the world from knowing what an inept, depraved, compromised fraud he is.”She added: “This is about his unfathomable desperation to avoid being humiliated. Donald Trump has taken us to war at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Israel. But that wouldn’t have been enough of a reason if doing so didn’t also coincide with his own self-interest.”She also describes a dynamic in which disruption becomes a method of control. Trump, she says, “wreaks havoc and then expects other people to pick up the rubble of his destruction,” a pattern that has often allowed him to escape responsibility while forcing others to manage the consequences.
The question she keeps asking
Mary Trump has expanded that argument in a blog post titled “What Is It All For?”, where she challenges the strategic logic behind the conflict itself. If the war is meant to protect American interests, she asks, the benefits are difficult to identify.“In what universe does starting a war of choice against a nation that posed absolutely no imminent threat to us help the bottom line of the American people?” she wrote. “How exactly is a war of choice halfway around the world going to improve the lives of the American people? There is no good answer to that question. There isn’t even a coherent one.”For her, the changing explanations for the conflict, nuclear deterrence one week, regime change the next, reinforce the suspicion that there was never a consistent strategic rationale. “The rationale for this war has changed repeatedly which means there was no legitimate rationale for waging it in the first place.”Her criticism also extends to the broader consequences of the conflict. The war, she warns, will cost “untold lives and untold billions of dollars,” while damaging the credibility of the United States among its allies. “Our allies are already suspicious of us, and we will no longer be able to be perceived as a nation that can be trusted or taken seriously.”The danger, she argues, lies not only in the immediate destruction but in the volatility of the region itself. “The Middle East is a tinderbox.”
The costs of a war far from home
Events since the start of the conflict have begun to illustrate exactly what she meant. Iran’s response has included threats to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which a significant share of the world’s oil and liquefied gas passes. Even the possibility of disruption has already sent energy markets into turmoil. Prices for fuel and LPG have surged in many countries, forcing small businesses and restaurants to cut back or close and adding pressure to households already struggling with rising costs.The economic shock runs directly against the agenda Trump campaigned on. His return to power was framed around lowering costs, tackling the affordability crisis and making everyday life cheaper for Americans. A conflict that pushes global energy prices upward does the opposite.
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and other warships crosses the Strait of Hormuz, which is a vital route for oil, into the Persian Gulf.
Mary Trump argues that the contradiction is not accidental. When the president insists the economy is strong enough to absorb shocks, she argues, he is describing the world as it appears from the vantage point of extreme wealth. The people making the decisions, she says, are insulated from the pressures facing ordinary Americans.“They will continue making more money because the person leading the United States of America is the most greedy and corrupt grifter in modern history,” she wrote. The consequences of the war, the economic strain, the risks to American soldiers, the devastation in Iran, fall elsewhere.“If you are struggling to pay your bills, if you are staring down a deductible that could wipe you out financially, if you are wondering how you are going to afford groceries next month,” she wrote, “understand this: none of this is accidental.”“They are insulated. They are enriched. They are protected.”“You are not.”
