Is the war in Iran over? Within hours of secretary of state Marco Rubio’s assurance that “the operation is over” last week, Donald Trump used social media to declare that it most decidedly was not. Should Iran fail to accept the US peace plan, Trump warned that the bombing would resume and “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before”. No bombs have since fallen, but the standoff remains. If it is unclear when and how this war will end, can we at least agree on when it began?
Evidently not. That is the upshot of the state department’s document of 21 April, the administration’s first full effort to supply a legal justification for “Operation Epic Fury”. The document was notably tardy, coming nearly two months after the bombing campaign began. More remarkable still is how completely it rejects the justification offered by the president on 28 February in his prerecorded television address announcing the start of the assault: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
