It Been Almost Two Months Since the U . S . Invaded a Country . Is It Iran Turn to Be a Trump Distraction ?

jezebel.com · Feb 23, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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It was less than two months ago–certainly not the lifetime that it feels like–when the American military rolled into Venezuela to abduct authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro. Since that time, we’ve watched as the U.S. installed an increasingly pliant puppet ruler in the form of “Interim” President Delcy Rodríguez, tasked with reviving a national oil industry that the U.S. has relatively little use for, with what may be a more important end goal of strangling the remaining life from an oil-depleted and starving Cuba. For a moment, this particular obsession of Marco Rubio made it seem like Cuba might have the dubious honor of being the next nation blessed by American combat boots on its shores, but it now looks like that title belongs once again to Iran. Even as negotiations continue and irreconcilable differences pile up on the topic of Iran’s nuclear capacities this week, you can be certain that Donald Trump’s trigger finger is getting itchy. The “Peace President,” seemingly denied the chance to have a war over Greenland, will simply find somewhere else to dump U.S. munitions instead. In particular, you know that shit is about to hit the fan when we start getting into “Iran is ____ weeks away from nuclear weapons” calculations from Trump administration mouthpieces. An lo and behold, here comes Middle East “special envoy” Steve Witkoff this week, claiming that Iran may be “a week away” from having all the “industrial-grade bomb-making material” they would need to make weapons of mass destruction. It’s certainly a very scary calculation, given that Iran has been “a week away” from this mark for what … roughly 30 years at this point? It’s especially impressive for the nation of Iran, given that Trump himself told the American public that the country’s entire nuclear program had been “obliterated” thanks to U.S. airstrikes in the midst of Israel’s brief war with the country last June. Wow, they really got back on their feet quickly! Perhaps our bombs somehow went awry and sped up the uranium enrichment process instead? Donald Trump couldn’t have been lying in his assessment of Iran’s capabilities then or now, could he?!? Trump, July 19: "All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service." Witkoff, Sunday: "They're probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material." — Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt.bsky.social) Feb 23, 2026 at 7:31 AM It’s all gamesmanship of course, as Trump attempts to gauge public willingness for a conflict in Iran by dropping various lines to the media about engaging in a “limited” strike on the country, or the prospect of what The New York Times referred to as a “much bigger attack in coming months intended to drive that country’s leaders from power.” Just how many wars will MAGA accept their Peace President declaring? How short a conflict can Trump get away with engaging in while saying that it’s not a “war” in the first place? The invasion of Venezuela got several U.S. troops shot, but not killed. Is that the dividing line between a “limited” strike and a war? Iran, it must be noted, shows no particular signs of being willing to kowtow to U.S. threats, or concede its nuclear program, which it continues to ever-so-plausibly claim is for “peaceful purposes,” a phrase that always reminds me of the oxymoronic quality of MST3K‘s death ray created for “peaceful purposes only.” Experts on the nation and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have repeatedly suggested that Iran views the compromising of its core ideology and sovereignty, as represented by the nuclear program, to be of even greater importance than avoiding a war with the United States–that demonstrating weakness would doom the regime just as thoroughly as U.S. jets and soldiers could. Already, the country’s social order is tenuous following mass killings by the government of demonstrators and protestors, and the recent renewal of some of those protests over the weekend. “Avoiding war is indeed a high priority, but not at any cost,” said Sasan Karimi, a former strategist in Iran’s previous government quoted by NYT. “At times, a political state — especially an ideological one — may weigh its place in history as heavily as, or even more heavily than, its immediate survival.” This has seemingly led to an immovable impasse in U.S./Iran talks, despite Trump’s insistence that the country immediately cut one of his famous “deals”–ignoring, of course, that he terminated the previous Obama-era Iran nuclear deal that limited the country’s nuclear build-up. The countries seem to be far apart on their current absolute demands, with the U.S. wanting Iran to agree to zero further nuclear enrichment and the dismantling of longer range ballistic missiles, and Iran insisting that it can’t abandon its “peaceful” nuclear program or missiles it sees as critical to self-defense from the likes of Israel. The two sides are reportedly scheduled to meet again in Geneva on Thursday for what have been described as “last-ditch negotiations” to avoid military conflict. Trump, meanwhile, just seems to want to see some pyrotechnics, ordering more and more military hardware into the region. Already, there are at least 17 U.S. warships in the area, including destroyers, missile boats and two aircraft carriers, in addition to land-based military aircraft. So in order to avoid a full scale war in Iran the trump administration is in talks to give Iran "a very limited nuclear enrichment program that they could carry out solely for purposes of medical research and treatments." You mean the fucking deal Obama made? That you fucking trashed? You suck. — TheRoadie. (@roadie63.bsky.social) Feb 23, 2026 at 12:17 PM Iran, meanwhile, has made no secret of its willingness to lash out (or instruct proxies to do so) at U.S.-affiliated targets in the region should things escalate to armed conflict, which is putting all U.S. military bases and embassies on high alert, and causing some embassies to evacuate all but the most essential personnel. Things must be bad indeed on the home front for the Trump administration to believe that a war in the Middle East would provide a refreshing news cycle or two. Perhaps this is all Donald Trump’s way of hoping that the never-ending revelations from the Epstein files will eventually wash away, even as commentators are left wondering why England is able to prosecute its own royalty for Epstein connections, while the U.S. doesn’t even charge former Trump advisors who are on the record as having promised to help Epstein “crush the pedo/trafficking narrative.” Maybe, at the end of the day, Trump just wants our daily dose of nightly news/social media violence to be in the form of bombs dropping on Tehran, rather than 80-year-old protestors being hurled to the concrete by agents of ICE. Who can say what’s going on between the ears of Trump, as they fuel the jets and load the bombs for the country’s latest invasion? We’ll just observe that if the first bombs fall tonight, the United States will be on roughly a 13.5 wars-per-year pace for 2026. Truly, the Peace President is outdoing himself. Keep scrolling for more great stories.