“CNN appears to now be doing straight up pro-Iran regime propaganda because someone gave this guy a coffee…” read a post on X from a member of the U.S. State Department.

The comment was in response to a video of reporter Fred Pleitgen, who, far from praising the Iranian leadership, had simply observed that, despite the war, grocery stores in Iran were still stocking fruits and vegetables, holding the coffee in question.

This exchange captures the absurdity of the Trump administration’s approach to communicating their “war”; at once, a hostility to those who deviate from its narrative, and at the same time an inability to provide a coherent one of their own.

“What is War” and “what is it for” ?

Much media scrutiny in the U.S. has focused on the administration’s flurry of inconsistent and even contradictory justifications. A patchwork of overlapping, and bizarre narratives has emerged from Washington–perhaps best captured by American political satirist and commentator Jon Stewart’s farcical segment, in which multiple clips show the President repeatedly and ever more bizarrely contradicting himself when faced with basic questions, including whether this could even be called a “war.” 

The Trump administration seems not only unwilling to provide a consistent justification for its war on Iran, in which over 2,000 people have already been killed, but increasingly unconcerned with producing one at all. 

Among the many fictions used to market American intervention, none has endured quite like that of nation-building. But at a Pentagon briefing on March 2, Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth declared that even this pretense was no longer worth maintaining: “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”

Hegseth’s quote also makes clear the administration’s disdain for the “rules” of war. Indeed, the headlines of the U.S. mainstream press hovered around the issue of ascertaining the “legality” of the conflict, both from domestic and international sources of law.

One clear narrative that has emerged from the administration has been the murky and ever expandable idea of “self-defence”, a condition under which engaging in conflict is permissible both in U.S. and humanitarian law doctrine–both for the entire nation and President Trump personally. After the assassination of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the President smugly declared: “I got him before he got me.”

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the president simply had a “good feeling” Iran was planning an attack, necessitating U.S. action. At the same time, several right-wing media outlets have begun warning the American people of copious Iranian “sleeper cells,” (underground groups that lie “dormant” until a call from their government sponsor “awakens” them to carry out violence on U.S. soil) with little evidence. These narratives seek to cement the idea of an indefinite Iranian “threat” in the popular consciousness, seeking legitimacy through the faulty logic of  “preemptive” action. 

Another unsettling narrative that emerged was one of this being a “holy war.” Journalist Jonathan Larsen reported that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation had received complaints from service members alleging commanders invoked “God’s divine plan,” Revelation and Armageddon in relation to Iran, with one complaint describing Trump as “anointed by Jesus.” 

Initial reporting put the number of complaints at over 110; wider coverage days later said it had risen past 200. Hegseth himself, who began holding monthly worship services at the Pentagon, to which he began inviting defense contractors, preached that the U.S. fights on a “spiritual battlefield,” armed with the “arsenal of faith.”   

America or Israel “first” ?

The current war marks a staggering development in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. For decades, Washington has supplied Israel with a free-flowing stream of funds, arms and diplomatic immunity. But in their joint-assault on Iran, for the first time the two have entered into battle alongside each other. 

Writing for Equator magazine, Séamus Malekafzali calls this dynamic one of “collaborative impunity,” amid a wider backdrop of the “Israelisation” of American power: a process that sees the two countries grow towards each other, and together away from international law.  

Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefly indicated that concerns raised by Israeli leadership about regional threats had effectively pushed Washington over the line of military action–a claim the administration later attempted to walk back. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” he said. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” Similarly, when U.S. Senator Chris Murphy emerged from a closed-door briefing, he was asked a simple question: why are we at war with Iran? His response was blunt: “Israel made us do it.”

More recently, Director of National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, confirmed this dynamic in his resignation letter, stating “it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

The relationship has also become a fault line along which the “America First” universe is splintering. Tucker Carlson has been among the clearest voices on this front: “This is Israel’s war. This war is not being waged on behalf of American national security… This war is waged purely because Israel wanted it to be waged,” he said on his March 2 broadcast.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, former U.S. Representative, has also joined the ranks of the anti-war MAGA universe. On March 1, she tweeted that the war is “AMERICA LAST” and a “blood sacrifice” for a foreign power. But other voices, like Laura Loomer, have openly cheered for the “total annihilation” of Tehran.

In the absence of a coherent narrative from the administration, clips on social media of lawmakers and officials emerging from closed-door briefings on the war have taken on heightened significance. “This illegal war is based on lies and was launched without any imminent threat to our nation,” says Senator Elizabeth Warren in one well-circulated video. 

“It is so much worse than you thought,” she warns her fellow Americans. “You are right to be worried.”