In one of the photos, Donald Trump, surrounded by his ministers, looks straight ahead, following on a screen the mission against three Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. Trump is not always sitting: in another photo he is standing, next to the chief of staff, Dan Caine, who is saying something to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.
The president’s official account shared photos from the “Situation Room”: Trump, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, was surrounded by Vice President Vance, the Pentagon chief, the Secretary of State, and top advisers.
Five presidents have faced this decision – whether or not to use military force against Iran: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the only president who has ultimately decided to take military action, and this – however things go in the coming days – will be a crucial part of his political legacy. The images taken in the “Situation Room” during the attack on Iran, like the photos of Barack Obama in May 2011 when he followed the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, or of George W. Bush in 2003 when he gave the order to start the war in Iraq, will remain in history. Unlike the time when Trump ordered the strike to kill Qassem Soleimani, the right-hand man of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, this time the president was wearing the red “Make America Great Again” hat.
The photos, released by the White House, offer a rare opportunity to enter the decision-making room at that moment – also known as the “JFK room”, because it was built during the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
In one photo, Donald Trump, surrounded by his ministers, looks straight ahead, watching the mission against three Iranian uranium enrichment facilities on a screen. Trump is not always seated: in another photo, he is standing next to his chief of staff, Dan Caine, who is saying something to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff. On the table are half-empty water bottles, colored markers and a ring binder in front of a general. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio are sitting closer to Trump – perhaps an indication of their influence; meanwhile, CIA director John Ratcliffe looks ahead with clasped hands. Not seen in the photo is the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – with whom he has had disagreements over Iran – while in the background are deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and White House counsel David Warrington, who gets up to whisper something in the Pentagon chief’s ear.
Dan “Razin” Caine, the chief of staff of the armed forces – a retired general, former F-16 pilot, appointed by Trump for this role and who today, together with the head of the Pentagon Pete Hegseth, will explain the impact of the attack in a press conference – is, along with the president, the protagonist of these photos: he is seen explaining, even with gestures, the attack to those present. Trump has publicly praised him later, when he told Americans on television that now the choice is Iran’s – and if he makes the wrong choice, the US will continue to strike.
Trump’s relationship with Caine began during a trip to Iraq in 2018. As Trump himself revealed a few months ago at the Conservative Conference of America (CPAC), he asked the general why everyone was telling him it would take two more years to end the war against the Islamic State. Caine replied that it could be done in a week. “We’re just hitting them from a temporary base in Syria,” he told him. “But if you give us permission, we can hit them from behind, from the side, from any direction, Mr. President. They won’t know what hit them.” Trump has called him “a real general, not a TV general” – words that also indicate how the most televised president in American history views military force.
That wasn’t what some MAGA supporters, who have been arguing for days that intervention in Iran was inconsistent with Trump’s “America First” doctrine, were hoping for. But the president’s MAGA hat on the “Situation Room” reinforces a message he’s already made clear in an interview with The Atlantic: “America First” means whatever I say.
“Since I coined ‘America First,’ and since the term was never used before me, I decide what it means. To those who say they want peace, I say to you: there can be no peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. To those who don’t want to get involved, I say to you: this is not peace.” Even most of those who don’t want to get involved joined the president in the wake of the attack, emphasizing that it was a limited and targeted operation. “Iran left President Trump no choice,” said activist Charlie Kirk, one of the newest voices of the MAGA movement and a critic of the Republican warmongering wing. Former congressman Matt Gaetz — whom Trump had nominated for attorney general — compared the attack to the one on Soleimani: “This is not a war for regime change. Trump is a peace broker!”
In Congress, among the most enthusiastic Republicans was Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, a “warmonger”: “It was the right choice, the regime deserved it.” Even senators who had previously been skeptical of Fordow’s strike, like Tim Sheehy of Montana, congratulated the president: “He made the right decision. And to the critics, I say: this is not the start of a war, it is the end of it. Iran has been at war with the United States for 46 years. The Iranian people must rise up and put an end to this murderous regime.”
Steve Bannon hosted an all-night live broadcast on his War Room program, where he talked about the danger of World War III. “It’s the biggest and boldest act of Trump’s first or second term,” he said — but he suggested the president not let the warmongers pull him “in a direction that could overturn his entire presidency” and the goals of America First. “It’s an Abraham Lincoln-style choice — because now you’re part of the war. Even if you say it’s limited and you’re not going to pursue regime change, you’re going to be under pressure.”