The United States began a war with Iran to re-obliterate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, which purportedly was originally obliterated just eight months ago. Or maybe it’s because Iran refused to make a “deal.” Or perhaps to replace the hard-line Islamic regime with democracy and freedom. Or replace the current ruler of the hard-line Islamic regime with a different hard-line Islamic ruler. According to President Donald Trump, it is all of these reasons. Or some mix of them. Or something completely different. As the biggest US military build-up in two decades and its resultant massive air attack on Iran winds up its third day, the rationale for it still appears to be a work in progress. Trump, after a brief video early on Saturday morning announcing that the attack had started, still has not given Congress or the American people a detailed explanation of why he is doing so. “The decision to put American service members in harm’s way demands clarity, consistency, and honesty with Congress and the public,” said Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “So far, we’ve got none of those things.” In remarks before a White House ceremony for Congressional Medal of Honour recipients, Trump claimed on Monday the attack was to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons programme — a programme he repeatedly insisted he had “obliterated” last June. “We warned Iran not to make any attempt to rebuild at a different location because they were unable to use the ones we so powerfully blew up,” he said. “But they ignored those warnings and refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons.” Donald Trump discusses combat operations in Iran on Sunday in Palm Beach, Florida. Prior to those brief comments, Trump had spent two and a half days floating a variety of different explanations with a number of short interviews with nearly a dozen different print and television outlets. To The Washington Post , just three hours after the attack began in the pre-dawn hours Saturday, Trump said he did it for the Iranians themselves: “All I want is freedom for the people.” He told The New York Times the following day that he hoped Iran’s military and security forces would simply give up and give their weapons to protesters. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he said. Yet he told both the Times and Fox News that the attack on Venezuela’s capital in January and arrest of its dictator could serve as a “template” for Iran, in which Trump could install a new leader who was more accommodating to his demands without altering the nature of the regime. But he told ABC News that he couldn’t do that because the air strikes killed too many of Iran’s top officials, including those he might have installed in power. “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told ABC . “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.” And to The Atlantic , Trump blamed Iran for not agreeing to one of his favourite words, a “deal.” “They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute,” he said before bragging that presidents for half a century had wanted to do what he just did, but that only he had the guts to do so. “People have wanted to do it for 47 years.” Trump expanded on that in an interview with CNN on Monday morning: “We don’t know who the leadership is. We don’t know who they’ll pick. Maybe they’ll get lucky and get someone who knows what they’re doing ... we don’t know who’s leading the country now. They don’t know who’s leading. It’s a little like the unemployment line.” Trump’s lack of a focused message on why he has put service members in harm’s way ― four have been killed to date, with four more seriously wounded ― has also left Americans confused. According to a new CNN poll , 60% of respondents said Trump lacked a plan for his attacks, including 70% of self-described independents. The conflicting explanations were not restricted to Trump personally. On Saturday, a group of hand-picked reporters received a “background” briefing from Trump administration officials who said the attack happened because of intelligence reports that Iran was about to attack US air bases in the region. That, though, was contradicted the following day when congressional staffers were told there was no intelligence that Iranian strikes were imminent. “His team has suggested in the media that this action was necessary because of a planned preemptive attack by Iran – a fiction totally unsupported by any intelligence that I’ve seen or been presented as a member of the ‘Gang of Eight,’” Senator Mark Warner said.