It turns out that Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “candidate of peace,” is just as eager to start new wars. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pitched himself as the antithesis of his Democratic opponents Joe Biden, and later, Kamala Harris. Trump insisted he would use his deal-making skills to end multiple global conflicts that started under the Biden administration, including Israel’s war on Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In his election night victory speech in November 2024, Trump told his supporters: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” Two months later, in his inaugural address, he went even further in trying to establish himself as a global peacemaker. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” he said.

Many of Trump’s top advisers and supporters made the same pitch to a war-weary American public. The national Republican Party portrayed Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, as the “pro-peace ticket.” In 2023, when Vance was still auditioning for the role as Trump’s running mate, he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”

And yet in his first year back in office, Trump bombed seven countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Venezuela. Early on Saturday, Trump launched his most extensive, and dangerous, military campaign so far: a war against Iran, which could spiral into a regional conflagration, especially as the Iranian regime sees this joint US-Israeli attack as a fight for its survival.

In an eight-minute video posted on his Truth Social site, shortly after the bombing began, Trump said the US had launched a “massive and ongoing” attack against Iran intended to destroy its military capabilities and overthrow the........

© The Guardian