Despite boasting that he is the “president of peace,” Donald Trump is threatening to lead the U.S. into three new wars, against Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria. All three would shred what is left of America’s claim to uphold the international order, and all of them would further endanger America’s standing in the targeted regions. All of them are also pointless because they are based on false premises.

The U.S. has already dropped some of the largest bombs in the world on Iran, and Trump has threatened that he would “absolutely” and “without question” consider bombing Iran again if the Islamic Republic continued to enrich uranium to concerning levels. 

The threat to go, once again, to war with Iran if it reconstitutes the civilian nuclear program that the U.S. claims to have “obliterated” is especially real and worrisome, since Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated as recently as last week that Iran’s damaged nuclear program is purely civilian and that “destroying buildings and factories will not create a problem for us, we will rebuild and with greater strength.”

The threat of war with Iran is built on two premises. The first is that Iran’s purportedly civilian nuclear program masks a frantic pursuit for a bomb. The second is that war is necessary because this problem cannot be resolved by diplomacy. Both premises are false.

The first is manifestly false because it has been the consistent consensus of the U.S. intelligence community that Iran is not building a nuclear bomb. The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review concludes that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.” That conclusion was repeated and reinforced by the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, which “reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community,” and which clearly states that U.S. intelligence “continue[s] to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Ayatollah] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

The second is proven false by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA)—aka the Iran nuclear deal—which proved not only that diplomacy can resolve the problem, but that Tehran would stand by an agreement. Multiple International Atomic Energy Agency reports verified that Iran was completely and consistently in compliance with the commitments made under that agreement.

Moreover, prior to the bombings in June, Iran was, once again, negotiating a diplomatic solution to Washington’s nuclear concerns. Iran was prepared to discuss two paths of compromise on its civilian nuclear program. One would see Iran export or convert its highly enriched uranium and limit future enrichment to 3.67 percent while agreeing to maximum transparency and inspections in cooperation with the IAEA. The other would see Iran fold its nuclear program into an international consortium that would allow Iran to enrich uranium but deny it access to the full enrichment cycle by distributing various roles in the process across different member states, probably including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The premises upon which the threat of war with Iran is built are both false. Iran is not building a bomb, and they are prepared to assure that diplomatically. War would be pointless.

Closer to home, the U.S. is conducting the largest military buildup in the region in over three decades off the coast of Venezuela. The Trump administration has notified Congress that the U.S. is in a formal “armed conflict” with Venezuela’s drug cartels. The president has terminated all diplomatic outreach to Venezuela, and he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, including “lethal operations” and “covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government.” The U.S. already has bombed 19 small boats and killed at least 75 people.

The threat of war with Venezuela is based on two premises. The first is that Venezuelan drug cartels are terrorist organizations who pose a threat to the national security of the U.S. because they have turned Venezuela into a fatal source of drugs flowing into the United States. The second is that Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is at the head of those drug cartels.

As with Iran, neither premise is true. 

The falsity of the first is revealed by the 2025 UNODC World Drug Report that assesses Venezuela as a territory essentially free from the cultivation of coca leaves, cannabis and similar crops. The report says that only about 5 percent of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela. The EU’s European Drug Report 2025 does not even mention Venezuela.

According to current and former U.S. officials, while most of the boats the U.S. military has sunk have been in the passageway between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, that passage is neither used to transport fentanyl nor is it used to transport drugs to the United States. Most of it is marijuana en route to West Africa and Europe. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 90 percent of the cocaine that transits into the U.S. enters through Mexico, not Venezuela. And Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl.

The falsity of the second premise is revealed by a “sense of the community” memorandum dated April 7, 2025 that collected the findings of the 18 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community and was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The memorandum states that “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA [Tren de Aragua] and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.” It states that the intelligence community “has not observed the regime directing TDA.” Furthermore, the memorandum finds that “Venezuelan intelligence, military, and police services view TDA as a security threat and operate against it in ways that make it highly unlikely the two sides would cooperate in a strategic or consistent way.” The Venezuelan National Guard has arrested TDA members and “Venezuelan security forces have periodically engaged in armed confrontations with TDA.”

The premises upon which war with Venezuela is based are both false. Venezuela is not a significant source of fentanyl or other drugs flowing into the United States, and Maduro is not Venezuela’s drug kingpin. War with Venezuela would be pointless.

The newest threat of war has been made against Nigeria. The Trump administration has declared Nigeria a “Country of Particular Concern” under the U.S. International Religious Freedom Act, a label reserved for countries engaged in, or tolerating, “systematic, ongoing, (and) egregious violations of religious freedom.” Trump says that “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” and he has instructed the “Department of War to prepare for possible action.” Trump warned that the U.S. “may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” and that, if the U.S. attacks, “it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

In response to Trump’s instructions—“Yes, Sir,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth quickly responded—the U.S. military has drawn up three options that are escalatory to varying degrees. The light option is “partner-enabled operations,” in which the U.S. military supports Nigerian government forces in targeting Boko Haram and other Islamic militants. The medium option involves drone strikes on militant camps, bases and vehicles. The heavy option is to deploy fighter jets and long-range bombers to conduct strikes deep into Nigeria from an aircraft carrier group.

The problem with these war plans is that, as in Iran and Venezuela, the premise that the planned war is based on is faulty. 

The premise is that Islamic militant groups, including Boko Haram and the local Islamic State affiliate, ISWAP, are massacring Christians. They are. But that narrative isolates those killings from the context. 

Islamic militants are killing Christians. But Christians are killing Muslims too. And even that is not the whole story because Islamic groups like Boko Haram are also killing Muslims that they regard as infidels. 

Nigeria is nearly evenly populated by Muslims and Christians with Muslims predominating in the north and Christians in the south. Along a belt in the middle, Christian farmers and Muslim Fulani herders have long lived together.

According to the monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, between 2020 and today, 318 Christians were killed in 389 cases of violence, while 418 Muslims were killed in 197 cases of violence. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom in its 2024 Nigeria update states that the “violence affects large numbers of Christians and Muslims.”

The only part of Nigeria where Christians have been the victims of a disproportionate amount of the deaths is in the belt in the middle. Here, and in the south, the Fulani have been responsible for way more deaths than Boko Haram or ISWAP and for 47 percent of the 36,056 civilian deaths in Nigeria between 2019 and 2024. Though that gives the misleading appearance of Muslims slaughtering Christians, the Fulani killings are not religiously motivated. They are not Muslims killing Christians for their faith so much as herders killing farmers in a competitive battle for land and water that results from climate-driven, not religious, disputes. Even the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria states that the crisis is due, in part, to “high levels of food insecurity.”

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The premise for war is wrong. Nigeria is not a simple case of Christians facing an existential threat at the hand of Islamic terrorists. Rather, there is violence against Christians and Muslims and there is violence that is motivated by land disputes and not by religion at all. War in Nigeria would be pointless.

It is worth noting that past pointless wars have contributed to current pointless wars. In the 2015 book Tomorrow’s Battlefield, Nick Turse reports that the UN Security Council’s Group of Experts found that the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya led to a proliferation of weapons flowing throughout Africa, feeding conflicts and nourishing terrorist groups. Nigerian Islamist fighters who were forced out of Mali returned to Nigeria battle hardened with training and new tactics, not to mention heavy weapons.

The current threats of war in Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria are all based on premises that are false. The conclusion that war is necessary is also false. Far from establishing peace, safeguarding Americans or protecting Christianity, we are on the brink of blundering into yet more pointless wars and more tragic deaths.