George Washington, during the American Revolution, often invoked the imagery of violence not as a spectacle to be relished but as horrors to be faced—from ‘mercenary hirelings battling for the sake of lawless ambition, plunder, and destruction’ to those who sought to maintain revolutionary America in ‘bondage and suffering’. Furthermore, upon receiving reports of British atrocities, Washington remarked that ‘their senseless cruelty harms rather than aids their cause; that, through our restraint, rightly ensures the loyalty of all virtuous individuals.’
This is a far cry from what Trump and his administration have been doing since starting the war in Iran as echoed by his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gloating: ‘We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be’; or his request of Pentagon officials to pray for ‘overwhelming violence’ against enemies in Iran and elsewhere in the ‘name of Jesus Christ’ at a Christian worship service last month—this is not only blasphemous, and I speak as a Roman Catholic priest, it is also self-righteous.
Perhaps even more belligerent was President Donald Trump’s pledge to bomb Iran ‘back to the stone ages, where they belong.’
This bellicose rhetoric reflects a fundamental viewpoint regarding power and its association with violence, which in turn affects strategic choices, as with Trump’s obtuse demand for an ‘unconditional surrender‘ from the regime, as if that is a reality. The same can be said of the U.S.–Israeli engagement in Iran dubbed Operation Epic Fury, which is meant to convey a great magnitude of aggression, evoking an internet-era expression for when someone crashes and burns.
Winston Churchill, who had a lot of opinions about war operation names, once warned that operations in which many men could die ‘ought not to be described by code words which imply a boastful or overconfident sentiment’. He also advised against using names that might later be considered embarrassing.
Equally disconcerting was the president’s inflammatory post on his Truth Social account:
‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP’
‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!’
Aside from the fact that such a proclamation was made on Easter Sunday of all days, it reflects a man who is both unhinged and frustrated that the war has not gone his way.
There are also the falsehoods being stated by the president and members of his cabinet. Aside from the old narrative that Iran rebuilds its uranium enrichment capability, contrary to his own intelligence reports, Trump has propagated a series of inaccuracies concerning the conflict. He has asserted that the U.S. has ‘eliminated 100 percent of Iran’s military capacity’, while Tehran persists in causing harm across the region. Furthermore, he has stated that the war is nearing its conclusion, even as he requests additional troops from various parts of the world.
Leon Panetta, who served as Secretary of Defense and CIA director, said he has ‘seen enough wars where truth becomes the first casualty’.
The Trump administration is ‘not the first administration that has not told the truth about war. But the president has made it kind of a very standard approach to almost any question, to, in one way or another, kind of lie about what’s really happening, and basically describe everything as fine and that we’re winning the war.’
It appears that those who call the shots do not grasp that America’s failed military interventions, which were launched with honorable intentions, like those in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, often arise from a failure to recognize that the people in other countries have their own passions and beliefs. They do not simply mirror our wishes, yearning for what we wish for them, and detesting what we wish for them to detest.
Benjamin Franklin once said: ‘We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.’ And, it did not take much effort this time around.
The war is now in its second month, and after the bombardment and the systematic targeting of senior officials, the Iranian regime has not collapsed. This is because the U.S.–Israeli intelligence’s inability to grasp Iran’s governmental and military strategy that is not structured around a singular decision-making core but a multi-faceted one. Its command structures are still operational, authority is well intact, and the regime persists in conducting the war with a sense of coherence.
More importantly, Iran is not simply enduring pressure; it has transformed the cost dynamics of the conflict. By targeting essential energy infrastructure in Gulf nations allied with the U.S. and by effectively shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran has expanded the battlefield beyond its own territory—it now has the Houthis in Yemen coming to their aid. The aim is not to achieve a conventional victory, but to impose costs—escalating the economic, political, and military toll. In this process, it injects volatility into energy markets, strains regional alliances, and challenges the resolve of external actors to withstand extended disruption.
The political ramifications of this colossal miscalculation are also significant. Instead of provoking internal division, external aggression has, at least temporarily, bolstered nationalist sentiment and suppressed dissent. A murderous regime that was once viewed as vulnerable is now functioning under the unifying pressures of wartime survival—further diminishing the chances that external force alone can lead to internal collapse, especially after Trump accepted Iran’s ‘ten-point peace plan’.
And yet, the communication from the White House remains, at best, grandiloquent.
The views expressed by our guest authors are theirs and do not necessarily represent the views of Hungarian Conservative.
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