President Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller came unraveled while trying to explain away the war with Iran in a live interview.
After the U.S. teamed up with Israel to launch massive strikes on the country over the weekend, the White House has struggled to justify the war or offer a clear timeline and strategy, with critics warning that it is shaping up to be the same kind of “forever war” that Trump had always campaigned against.
Miller, appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity late Wednesday, said the operation was launched due to fears that Iran was planning an attack of its own.
Trump and his administration have not been overly clear on the precise basis on which they have attacked Iran. The Washington Post/Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
“He [Trump] wasn’t going to let Iran strike first,” Miller said, voice raised. “He wasn’t going to let this regime make the first attack, as he feared and believed they would on American soldiers and American troops. Wasn’t going to happen. He was going to decapitate that regime.”
He went on to claim that the reason people had grown tired of U.S. wars in the past was that the military was too “woke.”
“One of the reasons I fear, Sean, that some people in this country lost faith in the military and the capacity to use that military to defend us is because we had a woke Pentagon,” he said. “Because we had a military who at the very highest levels, not the war fighters, was forced to fight a less than full fight.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed early in the U.S. strikes. Iranian Leader’s Press Office – Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty
“What you’re seeing now, Sean, is a military that is unleashed in all of its lethal prowess to go out and seek, destroy, and kill the enemy, which is what militaries are for.”
Miller’s colleague, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has waged a war of his own within his department, pushing an anti-woke, macho agenda that uses buzzwords like “lethality” and “warrior ethos” as cornerstones.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the strikes, which were accompanied by mixed explanations from Trump officials, ranging from fears Iran was developing a nuclear weapon to liberating the oppressed citizenry living under the authoritarian Islamic regime.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Talks between the U.S. and Iran had been underway, mediated by Oman, but Trump later said he believed Tehran was merely stringing U.S. envoys along.
In his speech announcing the operation on Saturday, Trump touched on multiple reasons: preventing Iran from funding terrorism, destroying its navy, nukes, and ending its missile capabilities.
In a later Truth Social post, he had also claimed that Iran had been “developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland,” CBS News reports.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Last year, a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggested Iran wouldn’t reach that stage until 2035. After Trump’s Operation Midnight Hammer last year, he said U.S. bombers had severely hindered Iran’s ability to develop nukes after they struck key underground bunkers.
There has also been misalignment between the president and his top lieutenant, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio claimed that the U.S. had become aware that Israel was planning an offensive. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces,” he said.
Trump, however, has scrambled to claim that his hand was not forced by Israel, but rather it was the other way around.
“No. I might have forced their hand,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”
