The New Forever War in Iran Keeps the Dog Wagging

At press time, the U.S. is engaged in a war with Iran—or at least very warlike behavior, including taking out much of a sitting government, killing Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several top military commanders, dropping 2,000-pound bombs from B-2 stealth bombers on missile and nuclear facilities, and launching Tomahawk cruise missiles and drones at hundreds of targets across the country.

Why? That depends on whom you ask and on which day. Perhaps there was an imminent threat—maybe even a nuclear threat?—to the United States. Or perhaps the Iranian regime is a sponsor of terror, on which we have already declared war. Or perhaps we need to support our allies in the region. Or perhaps just because Khamenei was just a world-historically murderous bastard, even in a region famed for its murderous bastards.

Here's a good rule of thumb, both for understanding foreign policy and also for life in general: When someone offers a bunch of rapid-fire and mutually irreconcilable justifications for a controversial decision, they're not telling you the whole story.

William Shakespeare might have invoked letting slip the dogs of war to describe the unleashing of violence, but these days we just "wag the dog." Popularized by Our American Cousin—the play being performed at Ford's Theatre when President Abraham Lincoln was shot—the phrase took on an explicitly political meaning after the ripped-from-the-headlines 1997 film Wag the Dog. In that otherwise pretty awful movie, a fabricated military conflict was used to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. Since then, the term has become shorthand for the idea that leaders sometimes use military action to divert attention from problems at home.

A wag-the-dog allegation need not mean the reasons for war are made up from whole cloth. Real geopolitical tensions, real strategic dilemmas, and real threats obviously exist. But the utility of a foreign conflict as a tool for domestic political positioning—especially when electoral outcomes are looking shaky—is a recurring theme in American history.

Trump's approval ratings are notably terrible. National polling aggregates suggest his job approval stands somewhere near 40 percent. A president facing a highly competitive election year and significant scrutiny on issues ranging from the economy to the ongoing incredulity and disappointment about the release of the Epstein files might well cast about for a distraction.

The war also doesn't necessarily have to be popular to accomplish some doggish goals. Though reporting suggests that President Donald Trump believed Americans in general, and his MAGA supporters more specifically, would rally around the war, a Reuters/Ipsos survey shows only about 27 percent of the country approving of the strikes on Iran, while 43 percent disapprove and many are uncertain. A larger poll conducted by the University of Maryland before the attacks suggested that even fewer Americans support a U.S. attack on Iran under current circumstances, as low as around 21 percent.

The two Trump terms have dramatically shortened the public's attention span. After a strike on Iran in June, which the administration declared a total success in eliminating Iran's nuclear capability, the president might have hoped for a polling bump, some "strange new respect" from the more hawkish Republicans on the Hill, or at least a few more days of coverage. But that episode quickly faded from view (and didn't resolve any of the underlying problems in the region). But Americans didn't seem to hate it either. So the temptation emerged to try again.

Even when wars are unpopular or divisive, they command attention and can reframe political discourse away from domestic grievances and toward questions of national security. A war does not need majority support to serve this function. It needs only to be salient enough to shift the conversation.

Even days of online dunking and pushback on Trump's inconsistencies on war with Iran can have a kind of invigorating effect. And at least the topic has some gravitas, unlike the slow-moving Epstein disaster or the dismal economic data constantly trickling out.

Trump ran as an opponent of "forever wars," and he won over at least some voters with that emphasis. Those voters—and perhaps more importantly, increasingly fractious GOP influencers such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly—are justifiably angry. Democratic politicians and voters are, of course, more than happy to pick holes in the confused and confusing justifications for a war launched without respect for Congress or the opinions of the American people.

Too little, too late, Congress has creaked into slow action to hint at protecting its privileges to wage war. Once military action begins, it becomes easier for leaders to justify extensions, surges, and escalations without ever obtaining the degree of popular backing that a war with clear goals—or a thoughtful peace—might command.

The current conflict with Iran, unlike the fictional war in Wag the Dog, is rooted in decades of geopolitical friction, sanctions, proxy battles, and strategic competition. Many Iranians, at least in these early days, have reacted with joy to American bombings. But it remains true that when foreign policy is conducted in the service of domestic politics, wars become tempting as tools of distraction, puffery, and electoral signaling.

Perhaps the many competing explanations offered for this war each capture some part of the truth. But when the list grows long and the emphasis keeps shifting, that often means the conflict is doing more than one job. And wars that do multiple jobs for the people waging them—military, diplomatic, electoral—are the ones most likely to stick around forever.

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