President Trump’s stunning and reckless lack of planning before launching us into a war with Iran was a striking and costly failure of leadership. We are more than a week into the largest war the region has seen in years, without a clear sense of why or for how long. The president may not care about these questions, but I do — and Americans deserve answers to them right now.
Let’s be clear — the brutal Iranian regime deserves to be wiped away. It has the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands going back decades, and, just this year, it massacred thousands of Iranian protesters. Iran has consistently talked about wiping Israel and the United States off the map and has worked at some level for years to develop that capability.
We are more than a week into the largest war the region has seen in years, without a clear sense of why or for how long.
While this brutal dictatorship’s end would be a markedly good thing for the world, that’s not enough to justify sacrificing American lives or raising prices for Americans already struggling to make ends meet. We all saw the high and deadly cost of a war of regime change in Iraq — and that followed months of deliberation and planning and followed the express authorization of Congress. We’re jumping into this lethal endeavor almost casually. I pray I’m wrong, but the most likely outcome from this war of choice is chaos and civil war — followed by an even more brutal and repressive regime.
To understand where we are today, we have to begin last year. From the beginning of his second term, Trump has been setting himself up to fail. He has dismantled our homeland protections. He and his departing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved vast resources away from counterterrorism to their campaign of random, illegal and cruel immigration enforcement. Just last week, days before the Iran strikes began, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents who worked on counterintelligence, “devastating … the FBI’s Iran program” at the worst possible moment because the agents worked on a probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.
The president explicitly said he wants regime change — presumably to an opposition that is pro-American. Unfortunately, there is no large, unified and popular opposition movement. Building one requires a group of experienced people with relevant background in trying to support civil society and resistance movements. The U.S. used to have such a group — within USAID and at Voice of America. It could have been raising up young leaders, making connections and communicating with Iranians through Farsi language broadcasts. Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency downsized or dismantled them.
Even as the president moved almost a third of our naval assets to the Middle East, he never told Americans why we had to go to war. After he launched that war, we were told that Trump consulted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than he consulted Congress or Americans. Israel is a longtime ally — but it doesn’t get to dictate how to keep Americans safe.
Now, more than a full week after he started the war on Iran, the president still hasn’t explained why this is happening. On Feb. 24, Trump gave a nearly two-hour State of the Union address. If he had a case for attacking Iran, he could have made it then to Americans. Instead, he spent only three minutes on Iran. Instead of talking to Americans after the first strikes were launched, Trump recorded a video for social media and hosted a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. It took him two days to address the nation.
The president is afraid to face Americans because he doesn’t want to face his failures. His administration hasn’t adequately protected our service members. The six soldiers who died in Kuwait did not have the protection necessary to withstand a drone strike, despite repeated requests for them.
The administration had no plan for our diplomats or civilians trapped in the region. We see the administration also had no plan for our diplomats or civilians trapped in the region. Multiple of our embassies are burning and our consulates have been attacked, while hundreds of thousands of Americans are being told to evacuate without any help from the government. Italy and the United Kingdom were ready to swiftly evacuate their citizens; the government that planned and began the war was not. We still don’t know what an end to this war would look like. The president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth won’t rule out boots on the ground. The president said the strikes accidentally killed everyone he had in mind to take over Iran. Now, he’s saying he wants to arm Iranian rebels as we did in Syria and Afghanistan. I’m the ranking member of the Senate subcommittee that funds the Pentagon’s budget. This war has already cost Americans billions of dollars, and the administration is saying it will request more money to pay for it, even though there is plenty of money for our military from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that the administration hasn’t allocated or accounted for. Congress and Americans need a public hearing from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Hegseth about how this happened. They need to lay out a real plan with specific goals they can actually achieve. They shouldn’t be putting more American lives at risk until we get answers.
Chris Coons is the senior U.S. senator from Delaware. He serves on the Senate Appropriations, Foreign Relations, Judiciary, Small Business and Entrepreneurship and Ethics committees and is the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee. 
