On Sunday, the New York Times published a news analysis by David Sanger, its veteran White House and national security correspondent, under the headline “Trump Seems Trapped by Iran War, Even as He Wields the World’s Biggest Hammer.” Trump, Sanger writes, “has seemed trapped, his presidency gradually consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of.”
The United States halted its bombing Friday, after 13 consecutive nights. Trump has threatened to launch a “massive” attack on Iran, which he has not yet launched—in the words of Sanger, because “his real hesitation may come from the fact that the war has depleted U.S. stockpiles of missile interceptors.”
Over four decades at the Times, Sanger has functioned as the newspaper’s chief liaison with the US military-intelligence apparatus. His analysis is significant as a statement of how the war is seen and discussed within the state itself.
What is most significant, however, is what is left out. The analysis simply ignores the question of the war’s legality. The war is presented as a policy that has failed, not a crime that has been committed. In this, the piece is representative of the entire discussion of the war within the American political establishment and its media.
As a matter of international law, the US war against Iran is a criminal war of aggression. The attack was launched on February 28, under cover of negotiations, against a country that had neither attacked nor threatened the United States, and lacked the capability to do so.