Thinking About

03/08/2026

A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or “federalize” the coming Congressional elections.

Self-terrorism might not have been the initial aim; but as time goes by, and failures and atrocities mount, its appeal will grow. Trump could think that he has much to gain; the war itself makes terrorism more likely; there are plausible vectors of terror; and the United States has let down its defenses.

Trump has already telegraphed the move. We know that he is obsessed with the fall elections, which his party will almost certainly lose by spectacular margins, and that he fears the accordant loss of power. This is clear from his own statements and actions. In a social post right after starting the war, he claimed (wrongly) that Iran had tried to hurt his cause in past elections.

We lack any other explanation for the war, at least from the American side. Trump is incoherent, and his administration is inconsistent. Much of what has been said about Iran is not true. The propaganda is contradictory. It is as though the war itself is not the main goal, but that it was simply important to somehow get the thing started.

War, famously, is the extension of politics by other means. But what are the politics? The president and especially the Secretary of Defense present the United States as a kind of war crimes central, a place where the rules do not apply. War crimes to do not win wars. Instead they provoke further war crimes and other retribution.

The Tehran regime is, so to speak, a convenient partner in the mutual provocation of terror. Iran is ruled by ruthless people with a record and a capacity for carrying out terrorist attacks beyond its borders. A terrorist attack on the territory of the United States might be a response by Iran or one of its proxies. Trump seems to have anticipated this, without seeming to careabout loss of life: “Like I said, some people will die.” And if they do, he has his pretext.

The actions of Americans and Israelis in Iran could give rise to the sort of rage that could generates spontaneous terror by people associated with Iran and by people who are not. We bombed a school and killed 175 children. We are killing first responders. Bombing Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure and setting Teheran on fire is not simply a war crime; it is an experience of millions of people. After last night’s (apparently Israeli) strikes on oil depots, people are being warned that the air is not safe to breathe, and black rain is falling from a black sky. Because Iran is largely cut off from the internet, we are not seeing much of this.

Worse, we stand at the brink of a water war that could threaten the lives of tens of millions of people. The region lacks fresh water and depends upon the desalinization of sea water. Iran was facing a catastrophic drought before the war began. Its government is now claiming that one of its desalinization plants was targeted. And Bahrain is also claiming that Iran has attacked one of its desalinization plants. The truth will emerge with time. If this war becomes a water war, there will be plenty of blame to share. But people who survive the deprivation of water would not be wrong to believe that an American war was the ultimate cause.

Another possibility is an American act of terrorism on the territory of the United States, either presented as an Iranian attack or not. Most terrorism inside the United States is domestic and is right-wing, and this war has been very divisive among American fascists. Historically, fascist competitions for power have been accompanied by internal violence.

Russia is another possible source of a terror attack inside the United States. It is not hard to see why Moscow would contemplate such a thing. In the current circumstances, it would be easy to deflect blame. Given that Putin himself consolidated authoritarian power on the strength of wars against Muslims and terrorist attacks inside his own country, he will have had no trouble imagining such a path for Trump. It is not hard to see him giving Trump such a gift. Russia has some relevant capabilities.

During the first year of this second Trump administration, defenses against all of these vectors of terrorism have been removed. There are three levels of the problem: policies have been changed; leadership is incompetent and experienced personnel are gone; and fiction about immigrants has displaced the actual problem of terrorism.