Is Biden Teeing Up an Iran War for Trump?
Trump was considered reckless for wanting to start a war at the end of his term. Now, Biden is doing the same.
President Joe Biden has less than a month in office, but that might be enough time to leave a very big mess on President-elect Donald Trump's desk. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan presented Biden with plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites before the end of his term "in a meeting several weeks ago," Axios reported on Thursday. A source told Axios that Biden's inner circle believes that he has both "an imperative and an opportunity to strike" now.
The same day, former Biden administration official Richard Nephew published an essay in Foreign Affairs arguing that "the case against military action is not so neat" anymore and that the United States "may have little choice but to attack Iran—and soon." Nephew had once been a harsh critic of Trump's attempts to pressure and threaten Iran. Now, like many other Democrats, he seems to be shifting from a dove to a hawk.
The Biden camp is following a path trod by the first Trump administration. Throughout Trump's last year in office, his own inner circle talked about "military action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons if Trump were to lose the election," The New Yorker reported. A week after he lost the election, Trump asked for military options, The New York Times confirmed. The final discussion happened exactly four years ago—on January 3, 2021—when Trump's advisers agreed that it was "too late to hit them," according to The New Yorker.
In other words, the president starting a war that close to the end of his term would be severely overstepping his mandate.
At the time, Biden and his supporters called Trump a reckless warmonger. In January 2020, Biden accused Trump of "bringing us dangerously close to starting a brand new" war. In November 2020, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D–Ill.) cited Trump's interest in attacking Iran as an example of him endangering the "smooth, stable transition" of power. In December 2020, columnist Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic that there was a "real danger" that Trump would try "saddling Joe Biden with another war in the Middle East."
Ironically, Biden's advisers are now using the reduction of Iranian threats to make the case for war. Over the past two months, Israel has worn Iranian-backed forces down in Lebanon, and rebels forced Iranian troops out of Syria, a pair of successes that Biden took credit for. But at a conference last month, Sullivan warned that Iran's regional weakness might push it to develop a nuclear weapon. And in private, Sullivan has been arguing that the same weakness would "decrease the risk of Iranian retaliation" to a U.S. attack, according to Axios.
A victory that immediately leads to an even bigger war is some victory indeed.
Sullivan's bet on a limited war—that Iran would not shoot back if shot at—would be an extremely risky gamble. And even Nephew, who has warmed up to the case for war, does not believe that bombing the Iranian nuclear program would be a one-time job. "To permanently quash Iran's nuclear aspirations, the United States may have to attack Iran in perpetuity or carry out a much larger assault—one that takes out elements of the country's security forces or regime," he wrote in Foreign Affairs.
The situation resembles the U.S. stance towards Iraq after 1991. At the time, the U.S. military intervened to stop an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. U.S. officials such as Dick Cheney insisted they only supported a limited war rather than an invasion aimed at regime change. But over the next few years, the United States found itself committed to costly, permanent military containment of Iraq. By 2002, Cheney was arguing that only an invasion and regime change could bring stability.
Of course, there's an important difference between 2025 and 1991. Back then, Iraq had fired the first shot, and the United States stepped in afterward. If a war starts now, it would be a U.S. first strike. Again, Sullivan's case is based on Iran no longer being able to threaten other countries. And U.S. officials have never publicly defined their red lines around Iran's nuclear program.
Although a U.S. intelligence report last month strongly implied that Iran hasn't decided to build a bomb yet, U.S. officials have hinted that they would attack short of that point. In May 2023, the Biden administration reportedly warned during a private meeting that "Iran will pay a heavy price" if it enriches uranium to 90 percent. (The same number came up in yesterday's Axios report.) In March 2023, American and Israeli sources told Bloomberg that even installing new air defenses in Iran's nuclear sites "would accelerate a decision on a possible attack."
Biden has signed America up for a serious commitment without ever consulting with the American people. The threats to Iran were made through private back channels, and only became known to the public because of anonymous leaks. Congress has never voted to authorize an attack on Iran, under any circumstances. The only time the question was ever posed to Congress, in early 2020, a bipartisan majority rejected war.
Back then, Biden left no wiggle room around the president's constitutional obligations.
"These are matters of deadly import, so let me be unmistakably clear: Donald Trump does not have the authority to go to war with Iran without Congressional authorization. Working with Congress is not an optional part of the job," Biden wrote in a January 2020 essay. "And no president should ever take the United States to war without securing the informed consent of the American people."
