Trump, who campaigned against 'endless' wars, enters Iran with no end date

Source: NBC News

March 2, 2026, 4:53 PM EST


To win the White House in 2016, Donald Trump first had to get by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two past presidents inextricably linked with U.S. wars in the Middle East.

Attacking the Bush family dynasty — and its legacy — became a feature of Trump’s campaign. And that meant doubling down on criticism of the Iraq War that President George W. Bush had led the United States into under the premise of finding weapons of mass destruction that never materialized.

“The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump responded, when asked at a Republican presidential debate in February 2016 if he still believed, as he said he did in 2008, that Bush should have been impeached for it. “We can make mistakes,” Trump added. “But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq.”

The moment was one of many in Trump’s long history of denouncing forever wars and promising, as president himself, to keep the U.S. out of the sorts of foreign entanglements that could lead to them. But one year into his second term, Trump has ordered military action in multiple countries, including the January strike on Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro. And now with the war in Iran, Trump has plunged America into its most significant conflict since the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — without any congressional approval.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-campaign-endless-wars-iran-no-end-date-rcna261323