“I will not send you to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never end,” Donald Trump promised a crowd in Pennsylvania in 2024. While the disastrous conflict in Iran, which has escalated in recent days, may make it seem like the president has reneged on that promise, that’s inaccurate. It would be wrong to say that the president has dragged the US into yet another disastrous forever war in the Middle East because, as government officials keep insisting, what’s happening in Iran isn’t actually a war.

“I wouldn’t call it a war,” JD Vance told reporters early this month, for example, after being asked whether the fighting in Iran might be over by the November midterms. “Right now, there is no active shooting.”

Maybe not, but there has been quite a bit of active bombing. Earlier this month, a US missile strike hit a wedding at a private home in southern Iran, killing at least four people, including a four-year-old child and a 16-year-old. That’s fairly restrained compared to the massacre in March when a US precision-guided missile hit an elementary school in Iran, killing 150 people, including 120 children, but it’s still something I would personally file under “possible war crimes”.

But not only does the Trump administration keep insisting this isn’t a real war, they’re also adamant there aren’t any real crimes being committed: the vice-president would like to stress that you shouldn’t believe your eyes or ears when it comes to the civilian deaths being reported. Despite a weapons expert and a visual analysis by the New York Times concluding that........

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