What was true in June still is true now: There’s no evidence the Iranian government is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon (despite Netanyahu’s claims to the contrary for the past 30 years), the Iranian military do not have weapons that can strike the US (despite Trump’s claim to the contrary) – a fact confirmed by my old employer, the Defense Intelligence Agency – and Iran’s leaders had no intention of preemptively attacking US forces in the Middle East.

The Trump administration’s pained justification that Iran planned to fire missiles “preemptively, but if not, if not simultaneous, against with any actions against them,” is beyond dubious given that the Iranian government watched US forces posturing to attack for weeks and did not, in fact, launch a preemptive strike against them (and “simultaneous” is an exceptionally creative way to say “firing missiles after we start attacking them”).

If Iran really represented an immediate threat to the American people, why has Trump been telegraphing this attack since mid-January?