Love him or loathe him, Donald Trump understands power. More importantly, he understands when it is slipping and how to seize it back. When scandals refuse to die, when courts inch closer and when the Justice Department is accused of protecting rather than prosecuting, there remains one proven remedy. You change the subject. You go to war.

The Epstein files revived scrutiny of Trump’s past associations with Jeffrey Epstein, a sex trafficker of minors whose crimes thrived amid wealth, access and silence. What gave the issue fresh bite is the allegation that Attorney General Pam Bondi has acted to shield Trump politically, reinforcing the perception of a Justice Department deployed less as an instrument of justice than as a defensive wall around the President.

Likewise, immigration enforcement has come under renewed fire after the cold-blooded murders of American citizens Renée Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti on ice-covered Minnesota streets by ICE and Border Patrol agents, incidents that have intensified criticism of enforcement tactics and the use of force under Trump.

None of it makes for comfortable headlines. So Iran — after Venezuela.

Trump’s justification is well-rehearsed. Iran must be stopped from becoming a nuclear power. A regime accused of financing Hamas and Hezbollah cannot be trusted with weapons of mass destruction. The argument is blunt, emotionally charged and difficult to oppose without sounding reckless.

But Washington has used that cover story many times before, including in 2003, when President George W. Bush used the same logic to invade Iraq, promising to destroy weapons of mass destruction that were never found. What followed was not vindication but instability, bloodshed and a region left more volatile than before.

What deserves scrutiny is not only Iran’s record, which is troubling enough, but the leap from concern to conflagration, from fear to missiles, from constitutional restraint to executive command. Trump did not seek congressional approval for Venezuela and Iran, and he did not have to.

US presidents rarely do anymore. They invoke imminent threats or recycle authorizations passed so long ago they might as well be heirlooms. The US Congress, meanwhile, responds the way it has trained itself — through statements, hearings and expressions of indignation after the fact. Yes, power, once surrendered, is rarely reclaimed.

Foiled in Europe after his bid to seize Greenland ran aground, Trump pivoted. Shut out of the Arctic, he turned to the Middle East, where force travels faster than diplomacy, and war offers leverage he could not extract from European allies who said no and preferred quiet treaties to public ultimatums.

The irony deepens with Trump’s creation of the so-called Board of Peace. Supposedly tasked to oversee the postwar governance and reconstruction of Gaza, the board’s membership and timing suggest a broader purpose. Many of its participants — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, Morocco and Qatar — sit directly along the fault lines of Iran’s regional influence.

The board’s authority to deploy an international stabilization force, backed by troop commitments and billions in funding, effectively creates for Trump a US-led security framework parallel to traditional UN mechanisms.

Less neutral peacekeeping than coalition-building, Trump’s Board of Peace has tied regional states into a post-Gaza order that also serves to isolate Iran and reshape Gulf geopolitics under an American and Israeli strategic umbrella.

None of this proves Trump ordered the attack solely to bury domestic controversies. Motive is rarely that neat. But politics does not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It requires pattern recognition. When bombs fall abroad as pressure mounts at home, skepticism is not cynicism; it is common sense.

The real danger is no longer Iran alone. It is the normalization of war as an executive reflex. Each time Congress is sidelined, legality becomes optional. The precedent hardens.

America is once again at war without fully admitting it, under rules that loosen with every strike.