TORONTO – The major assault against Iran launched by the United States and Israel has already triggered retaliatory strikes across the Middle East. A broader regional conflict looks increasingly likely, with grim unintended consequences, such as the downing of three U.S. warplanes by “friendly fire” in Kuwait. So, why did U.S. President Donald Trump – a self-proclaimed peacemaker – start a foreign war? The official justification strains credulity. The Trump administration’s claim that Iran was building a nuclear weapon has not been established. Nor can it be reconciled with the administration’s repeated claims that it destroyed Iran’s nuclear-weapons program in airstrikes last June. Trump’s insistence that the Islamic Republic must be replaced by a democratic – or at least U.S.-friendly – regime is just as bizarre, given that staunch opposition to foreign military entanglements and regime-change wars was supposedly a core tenet of Trump’s MAGA movement. I see two plausible reasons for his decision, neither of which is legitimate: to destroy American democracy or
