After all, his advisors and partners told him this would be easy, and good for his presidency.  A cakewalk, if you will.  Israel will do the heavy lifting, they said.

Saturday's attack on Iran was posed as a decapitation strike; it also decapitated several dozen schoolgirls in southern Iran within the first few hours, but thats just war, right?  Trump told Americans that the latest unconstitutional mayhem was based on five facetious factors:  1) No nuclear weapons or nuclear enrichment for Iranians, 2) no long range ballistics missiles for Iranians, 3) no Ayatollah for the Iranians, 4) no Iranian support for anti-Israel forces like Hezbollah or Hamas, and 5) liberation of the Iranian people, first of their weapons.

For good measure, Trump later added that Iran had also tried to manipulate our presidential elections.   Charges of smuggling fentanyl or trying to kill Trump's Daddy back in the day are probably being held in reserve.

"Facetious" applies, but "false" or "fake" works just as well. To break it down, and most Americans already have, we recognize that Iran doesn't have nukes, and won't have them in a few weeks, no matter how many times Bibi or AIPAC lobbyists say it.  Strangely enough, Iran has more motivation than ever to make, buy or borrow them, given the routine attacks they suffer by the twin nuclear pariahs. Netanyahu's more recent requirement that Iran eliminate their conventional ballistic missiles is as idiotic as it is vague – what Trump means to say is he and Israel simply wish to be able to strike Iran at will without those annoying retaliatory strikes.  Israel and Trump no likey the Ayatollah, and would prefer a pet of their own running Tehran and dictatoring the great and long-suffering Iranian people just the way we like it. Assassination attempts have happened before, and Bibi and the Donald both wax poetic about their past achievements in this arena. Trump proudest first-term moment was his assassination (extra-constitutional and extra-judicial) of Major General Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful person in the Iranian leadership at the time.  He'll take credit for the death of Khamenei in any case, and he likes the way "decapitation strike" sounds.

Much like his penchant for regime change, Trump, like his predecessors, also believes in nanny-stating the rest of the world.  Support and coziness with terror groups, like ISIS or Hamas?  Only allowed when Israel and the US do it.  Trump and Bibi – and past US administrations – bedhop with the best of them, and they are jealous bitches.  Color revolutions, hand-picking and grooming another country's leadership, pushing the political and electoral scales with money, media and hubris are part and parcel of post-Constitutional America. Thus, even though the US fostered and sheltered ISIS for decades, and Bibi made his career creating and funding Hamas, Iran mustn't.

The happy ending in Trump's fantasy, and the end goal for Israel, is the 5th reason for this illegal war.  Iranians must be free, to take their government into their own hands, and prosper. This simplistic formula, regime change or spontaneous civil war, as guided by Daddy CIA and Mother Mossad, has never worked, with or without decapitation strikes.  Some would say it's because we just haven't perfected the technique yet.  But most Americans already understand that chaos itself is the end goal.  They understand that "let's you and him fight" is Israeli and American policy, ideally maximizing death and destruction, creating new military markets and buyer's clubs, and more opportunistic theft of real estate, resources and rights.