Donald Trump spent years accusing then-President Barack Obama of wanting to “start a war with Iran” — first to get reelected, then “because of his inability to negotiate properly” and curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Now in his own second term, Trump has launched a “massive and ongoing” military campaign against Iran while urging Iranians to topple their government — a dramatic departure from the non-interventionist brand that Trump and his top officials spent years building.
“It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said in a video statement in the early morning of Saturday. “They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore. Instead, they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe.”
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to “expel the warmongers” from government and branded himself as the “peace” candidate against a Democratic opponent he warned would trigger “World War III.” Vice President JD Vance built his foreign policy reputation on denouncing Middle East interventions as disasters. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just last December pledged to end “regime change” and “undefined wars.”
The record of statements from Trump and his top officials reveals a consistent pattern of anti-interventionist rhetoric that has collided with the administration’s choice to bomb Iran.
Here’s what they said then — and what they’re doing now.
President Donald Trump
In May 2025, during his remarks at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, Trump celebrated a “new generation of leaders” in the Middle East while disparaging western interventionists.
“The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation-builders,’ ‘neo-cons,’ or ‘liberal non-profits,’ like those who spent trillions failing to develop Kabul and Baghdad, [and] so many other cities,” Trump said at the time. “In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
It was one of the clearest distillations of the political identity Trump has spent years cultivating: For more than a decade, Trump has made anti-interventionism central to his brand. During the 2016 presidential election, he highlighted Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq War. And during the 2024 presidential election, he wielded the campaign slogan “peace through strength” as he claimed his negotiation capabilities would deter wars from breaking out.
“We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers, those horrible warmongers from our government – those stupid, stupid people. They love seeing people die. We will drive out the globalists,” Trump said during a campaign speech in New Hampshire in 2023, in what went on to become a signature line that was repeated throughout hundreds of his 2024 campaign stops.
Yet while frequently characterized as an isolationist, Trump has at times wavered on military interventionism over the years, especially when it comes to Iran’s nuclear development. During the Obama administration, even as Trump disparaged what he claimed was the then-president’s attempt to use a military conflict with Iran for political gain, Trump occasionally urged a U.S. military intervention in Iran, at one point in 2013 musing on then-Twitter: “While everyone is waiting and prepared for us to attack Syria, maybe we should knock the hell out of Iran and their nuclear capabilities?”
Vice President JD Vance
Vance, who served in the Marines from 2003-2007, built his political identity in part on rejecting what he characterized as decades of failed American interventionism in the Middle East.
“The most important thing I want to say about foreign policy in 2024 in the United States of America is that we really have to get past the tired old slogans,” he said during a speech last year at the Quincy Institute. “The way that American foreign policy has proceeded for the last 40 years — think about the wreckage and think about the actual results. One of my favorite passages from the Bible is ‘By your fruits, you shall know them.’ What are the fruits of the last 40 years of American foreign policy? Of course it’s the disaster in Iraq. It’s the disaster in Afghanistan. It’s Syria. It’s Lebanon.”
He’s been particularly vocal about Iraq. In March 2023, on the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion, Vance posted on X: “The war killed many innocent Iraqis and Americans. It destroyed the oldest Christian populations in the world. It cost over $1 trillion, and turned Iraq into a satellite of Iran. It was an unforced disaster, and I pray that we learn its lessons.”
In a January 2023 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal defending Trump’s foreign policy record, Vance wrote: “In Mr. Trump’s four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration. Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that’s a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump’s predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed.” Vance officially endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election as he shared this op-ed on his social media.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
More recently, last December, Hegseth laid out his vision for the Pentagon under Trump.
“The War Department will not be distracted by democracy-building interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, woke moralizing and feckless nation building. We will instead put our nation’s practical, concrete interests first,” Hegseth said during a keynote address at the Reagan Defense Forum. “We will deter war. We will advance our interests. We will defend our people. Peace is our goal. And in service of that objective, we will always be ready to fight and win decisively if called upon.”
Less than a month later, the U.S. launched strikes against Venezuela as part of its operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller
As a Trump campaign adviser in November 2024, Miller argued that Trump was the candidate of peace.
“To anyone still gullible enough to fall for scummy media hoaxes: Trump said warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala’s top advisor. Liz wants to invade the whole Middle East. Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace,” Miller wrote on X.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
Days after announcing her break from the Democratic Party, Gabbard appeared at a Trump rally in October 2024 to make the case for his election.
“A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney, and it’s a vote for war, more war, likely World War Three and nuclear war,” Gabbard said. “A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a man who wants to end wars, not start them, and who has demonstrated already that he has the courage and strength to stand up and fight for peace.”
Soorin Kim is a White House producer with MS NOW.