On Feb. 28, the U.S. and Israel launched strikes killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Since then, tensions have risen sharply, and President Donald Trump sent troops to the Middle East and has publicly debated sending more. With Jeffrey Epstein’s files looming, ICE’s raids all over the country and gas prices rising by roughly $0.93 in March alone, it isn’t too far of a reach to suggest that the Trump administration needs a distraction, and the war with Iran might just be it.
There is a reason we don’t stick our nose in every conflict on the planet. If we did, there would be no more soldiers left to fight. However, this war isn’t only unnecessary, it is also projected to increase inflation rates to 3%, which is one percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve's goal rate.
U.S. citizens should be questioning why we are fighting this war, especially when Trump has made multiple suggestive remarks about starting a war to maintain power.
First, Trump has previously made many suspicious comments regarding the future of our elections if we were to enter a war. For example, while in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year, Trump said, “So, you say during the war you can't have elections, so let me just say 3.5 years from now, so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections.”
The president implied that if the U.S. were to be in a war by 2028, there wouldn’t be elections, meaning that he and his administration would unconstitutionally maintain power.
The previous comment standing alone could be pushed to the side; this isn’t the first or only time he mentioned weaponizing military conflict against voters to win or to cancel elections.
In 2011, Trump posted on X, “In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.”
These posts show the hypocrisy of our president, due to the way he accused former President Barack Obama of using a war with Iran to get re-elected, even though that is exactly what he is doing to maintain power.
Additionally, while Trump tries to steer the country’s focus toward Iran, the Epstein files have been haunting U.S. citizens and the administration. By December, little information had come out, so Congress passed a bill requiring the Department of Justice to release all of the files.
After the release of roughly three million documents, the public noticed that a large portion of the information was redacted, and a lot of documents regarding survivors' personal experiences were disclosed.
The public has been pushing for the full release of the files for years, and that fight continues; however, Sen. Jeff Merkley suggested that the administration will do anything to take the Epstein files out of the public eye, including going to war with Iran.
In an interview, Merkley was asked if he believed the strikes in Iran are connected to the Epstein files, to which he responded, “There's a more complicated story about the strikes in Iran, but I think it's one of the maybe contributing reasons that Trump was tempted to go to war without getting an authorization.”
There are thousands of reasons a country would go to war, but distracting the citizens of our country should never be one of them. The Trump administration has an extreme talent for getting the people of the U.S to look the other way as they commit egregious attacks on communities around the country, but all it takes is opening your eyes to things you don’t want to see to reveal the full truth.
Alaina Sayre is a sophomore studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Alaina about their column? Email them at as015023@ohio.edu.
