Depending on who you want to trust — whether it be Donald Trump — the war in Iran is either going exactly as planned or, according to Trump again, it now requires allies to chip in. Regardless, Trump claims that his predecessors approve of everything he has been doing in Iran. The only problem is that all of them claim not to have been in touch with him.
At this point, the war in the Middle East has led to the deaths of multiple Iranian citizens and leaders alike — the latest being Israel claiming it killed Ali Larijani. But there are greater consequences to this conflict that go beyond military targets. Despite Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that this war will push Iranians to start a revolution against what’s left of the regime, the reality is that the targeting of critical infrastructure within Iran has now left 45 million Iranians at risk of acute hunger, according to the World Food Programme.
Even Joseph Kent, head of the US National Counterterrorism Center, has ended up resigning from his position, now claiming that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.” And that’s not even factoring in the increasingly dire situation at the Strait of Hormuz, which is completely upending global oil prices. Yet Trump claims that things could not be better.
BREAKING: Joseph Kent, head of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned over the US-Israel war in Iran, saying in a letter to President Donald Trump that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation". pic.twitter.com/SmSSeTarQk
— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) March 17, 2026
In fact, Trump claims an unnamed former president wishes they were the one in his shoes. Trump said, “I’ve spoken to a certain president — who I like, actually. A past president, former president — he said: ‘I wish I did it. I wish I did.’ But they didn’t do it. I’m doing it. Yeah?” According to NBC, however, none of the aides to former presidents have any idea what Trump is talking about.
The first aide to be reached was George W. Bush’s, who claimed “they haven’t been in touch.” That was also the case with Bill Clinton, who had multiple issues with Trump during the height of the Jeffrey Epstein saga — which has now been pushed aside due to the ongoing war. Barack Obama’s aides also revealed that there have been “no recent conversations” with Trump. A source further revealed that Joe Biden has not spoken to Trump. But considering Trump still has an autopen in the “walk of fame” instead of Biden’s portrait, that last one should have gone without saying.
Trump has a long history of using aliases to speak to the press in order to sound more objective when complimenting himself. Throughout the 1980s, he used a pseudonym called John Barron, calling reporters under that name with a slightly muffled voice. This kind of behavior is not at all surprising.
But Trump doubled down, insisting that a former president must be lying — and not him. When asked by a reporter which president it was, the POTUS said, “I don’t want to say because a member of a party, a member of a party — they have Trump derangement syndrome. But it’s somebody that happens to like me, and I like that person, who’s a smart person. But that person said, ‘I wish I did it.’ OK, but I don’t want to get into who. I don’t want to get him into trouble.”
