President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Sunday, March 1, 2026, in West Palm Beach, Fla. Donald Trump sent the Middle East into chaos when he decided to launch strikes against Iran along with his Israeli allies on Saturday. Tensions were already rising between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s nuclear capabilities after talks on a settlement failed last week, but the US and Israel launched the first blow. Now, as Iran hits American military bases across the region – after targeting a UK RAF base in Cyprus – the aggression continues to escalate. The US president has since warned the war could last “far longer” than four or five weeks. While his vice president JD Vance has insisted that Trump would not allow the US to fall into a multi-year war with “no clear objective”, the reasons behind the White House’s aggression remain unclear. Here are the varying reasons both the president and his top officials have come up with in recent days. 1. Eliminating Threats From The Iranian Regime Immediately after bombing Iran, Trump said his goal was to eliminate threats from the Iranian regime – though he had no evidence to back it up. He also sent a message to the protesters in Iran, saying when the US was “finished”, the country was “yours to take”. That call for an Iranian revolution has faded significantly since the attacks started at the weekend. 2. Stopping Iran’s Nuclear Capabilities Two days after the attack, US secretary of war Pete Hegseth said it was not a “regime change” war. Instead he said the operation was meant to “destroy Iranian missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and security infrastructure” – all to prevent Iran from developing its own nuclear weapons. But Trump and Israel already launched a 12-day offensive on Iran last summer, and claimed to have obliterated its nuclear capabilities at the time. It’s worth remembering Trump actually pulled the US out of an international agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear abilities back in 2018. Tehran subsequently terminated the entire agreement in October 2025, following the US-Israel strikes. US intelligence has previously indicated Iran was not building a nuclear weapon any time soon, though Trump has said that information was “ wrong ”. 3. A Response To An Israeli Plan Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered up a different theory, telling reporters that it was all down to planned actions from Israel. He said: “We knew there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that was going to precipitate an attack against American forces.” “We knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them [Iran] if they were to launch those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” he claimed. Bizarrely, Trump then contradicted his top diplomat, saying, “I might have forced Israel’s hand” to attack Iran. Rubio then U-turned, insisting he had never said the “imminent threat” pushing the US to attack Iran was a pre-planned strike from Israel. He said: “The president made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks.” He insisted that is what he said the day before too, accusing the press of flipping his statement “to reach a narrative that you want”. Rubio also told the press that the US attacked because Iran is “run by lunatics”. 4. A Particular Feeling Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt had yet another reason to explain the violence. She told reporters on Wednesday: “This decision to launch this operation was based on a cumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to the United States of America, and the president’s feeling, based on fact, that Iran does pose an imminent and direct threat to the United States of America.” She added: “The president had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region, and he made a determination to launch Operation Epic Fury based on all of those reasons.” 5. A Personal Vendetta The president also suggested that this may have all come down to his own desire to hit out at a particular individual. “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first,” Trump told ABC, alluding to Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. US intelligence believes there was a plot to kill Trump in 2024 during his presidential campaign though Iran has denied that it plotted to kill the president. Hegsethalso  told reporters on Wednesday: “Yesterday, the leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.” He did not name any individuals. Then he said this was not the goal of the attack. Hegseth claimed: “While that was not the focus of the effort by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, never raised by the president or anybody else, I ensured, and others ensured, that those who were responsible for that were eventually part of the target list.” Related... Private Eye Puts 4 Brutal Spins On Donald Trump’s Iran Situation Room Snap Karoline Leavitt Tried To Explain Why Trump Bombed Iran And... It Didn't Help Keir Starmer Says Trump's Bombing Of Iran Is Illegal And He Has No Plan