The Two Arguments Trump Must Make On Iran
He who frames the argument, likely wins the argument.
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by Tom Del Becarro
March 9, 2026
Last week, the United States and Israel attacked Iran. They achieved an enormous tactical victory at the outset. Now, Republicans need to win the rhetorical war at home.
As any good attorney will tell you, he who frames the argument likely wins the argument. To date, despite 86 percent support among Trump 2024 voters and 98 percent support among self-identified MAGA, Republicans have not succeeded in framing the argument to the rest of the country, which is currently divided 50-50.
Here are the two arguments they must make.
1. We Were Already at War: Iran Has Engaged In A Fifth Generation War (5GW) Against the United States for Years.
Many critics of Trump’s actions are living in the past. Wars are no longer two armies standing across a field from one another.
According to Brig Gen (ret) Blaine Holt, a former Deputy Representative to NATO, the “Battlespaces for 5GW include the grid, cyber, information and deception operations, assassinations, arsons, false flags, bioweapons, terrorism, and economic war.”
That is the war Iran was fighting against the United States under the now-deceased Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
Consider these three examples.
First, according to U.S. Senator Mike Rounds, “on March 24, 2016, the U.S. Justice Department indicted 7 Iranian individuals, who were employed by two Iran-based computer companies, involved with a 2013 cyber-attack against the Bowman Avenue Dam in New York and a 2011 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) campaign against the U.S. financial sector.”
That matters because, as Fed Chair Powell highlighted in the Fall of 2024, cyber-attacks on the U.S. banking system present one of the greatest threats to the United States. Is there really that much difference between doing this electronically and doing it explosively?
Keep in mind that disabling an opponent’s economy as a part of making war is anything but new. Consider William the Conqueror, who conquered England (1066–1087), in part by destroying the economic capacity of his potential English foes, thereby restricting their ability to fight back.
Imagine the danger to America if its banking system were disabled even for several hours. It would have a far greater impact against the United States than any missile strike.
Indeed, just as long-range missiles dramatically changed warfare, cyber-warfare is doing that again.
Iran, under Khamenei, not only imagined that: they took aggressive action to accomplish it.
Second, according to Biden’s Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, in 2024, “Iran is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions. They continue to adapt their cyber and influence activities, using social media platforms and issuing threats…We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Third, as for outright killing and maiming of Americans, “Iran paid Taliban fighters $1,000 for each U.S. soldier they killed in Afghanistan”
Further, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Iran and its proxies have conducted more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East [just] between October 17, 2023, and November 19, 2024, resulting in more than 180 wounded and three killed U.S. service members.”
That is not to forget Iran’s multiple threats and repeated actual attempts to kill President Trump and other U.S. officials.
Those are just three examples of how Iran’s dictators have been in an ongoing 5th generation war against the U.S. for years.
Recognition of the nature of what Iran was doing is not merely a rhetorical point to be made. It is a necessary understanding of reality.
2. Trump Has An Unfettered Right To Respond to Iran’s War.
The D.C. Democrats would have you believe that Trump had to come to them to request authority to attack Iran. Some of them seem to think he had to ask each of them personally.
That is false.
Every President, dating back to our Founding has an unfettered right to respond to attacks from other countries.
According to Alexander Hamilton, “[W]hen a foreign nation declares, or openly and avowedly makes war upon the United States, they are then by the very fact, already at war, and any declaration on the part of Congress is nugatory: it is at least unnecessary.”
On this issue, I trust Hamilton more than Chuck Schumer, AOC, or for that matter, Candace Owens. You should too.
Once the attack on Iran was underway, President Trump stated: “For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted Death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries.”
The President is right and, therefore, given the continuing nature of their attacks in this 5GW pursued by Iran, Trump had no obligation to seek a Congressional declaration of war.
Nor can President Trump be constitutionally restricted when responding to Iran's current kinetic attacks.
Of course, the President could always remind the Democrats that Obama and Hillary Clinton did not seek Congressional authorization for regime change in Libya. Indeed, they fought that claim and went further by deceiving Congress along the way.
In the final analysis, President Trump took bold action against the ideologically driven Iranian dictators. In my view, history will look favorably on that action.
It will even look more favorably on the President and all Republicans if Trump makes the winning argument at home as to why he had the constitutional authority to likely change all of history.
— Tom Del Becarro is an historian, Author of The Divided Era and The Lessons of the American Civilization, and former Chairman of the California Republican Party. This article first appeared at his Substack, which you should follow.
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A most cogent and common sense analysis. And if I were the Trump administration, I’d recognize that the guy who placed his hand on the Koran while being sworn in as Mayor of New York, is perhaps the greatest threat to destroying Wall Street, and creating chaos in our banking system.
/Again with the penguin joke/
I’d like to know the author's opinion on the level of warfare being waged against the USA by the Russian special services. These are the ones who taught at the universities where the KDS, the Taliban, Hezbollah, and ISIS all studied. In general, they invented all the current theory of sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and other 'active measures' sciences.
Furthermore, my father-in-law taught various 'fun things' to the locals in Yemen back in the late seventies. Most Yemeni 'commanders' had a Soviet or Russian military education, and the second (or rather, third) language in ISIS was Russian.
Of course, I believe in the superiority of North Korean and Iranian hackers, but still—both places lack a high-level school of programming. )))