I think it’s good to see an American president finally take military action against Iran — first with the initial wave of strikes against the country’s nuclear program last June, and now with the broader strikes against the country.

Presidents from both parties have considered taking such actions for decades. Donald Trump is finally willing to take the necessary step. Our military, of course, has executed the mission nearly flawlessly on both occasions, with the latest attacks heavily degrading the Iranian military’s capabilities.

The problem is not that Trump chose to launch an attack on Iran, nor the performance of our military, but rather his own leadership and decision-making process throughout.

While it may seem like a meaningless aesthetic decision, it was wrong that Trump announced major military action with a social media post rather than with a national prime-time address.

We may be in the social media era now, and he is a social media president, but certain occasions deserve solemnity and gravity. This was one of them. He ought to have taken the opportunity to lay out his reasoning, strategy and justification to the nation directly, not merely made an announcement. 

While the White House did, apparently, brief congressional leadership that they were about to carry out the strikes, it’s disappointing — although not legally required — that they did not seek full congressional authorization. The strikes were fully legal without it, but they could have laid out the case for congressional authorization by seeking a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) shortly after the conflict began.

Instead, they never did, and that left congressional Democrats scheduling a series of votes expressing disapproval of the strikes through a variety of other means. That’s put Republicans on the defensive in a way that an AUMF would not have, and it’s not the appropriate way to get congressional approval. Even if it had passed on a simple party-line vote, that would have lent greater legitimacy to the decision.

Once the conflict began, the goals of the operation were never truly clear, and that’s never a good idea in any war. The Trump administration has, at various times, claimed that it was and was not about regime change; that the goal was to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability; and that the goal was to severely degrade or eliminate their ballistic missile program. All of those are good and laudable goals, but they should have been laid out clearly at the very beginning — perhaps in the aforementioned hypothetical prime-time address — so the American people, and the world, understood what we were doing. 

Instead, they’ve launched a war that, simultaneously, the White House can end at any time and that has no clear objectives. Tomorrow, Donald Trump could declare mission accomplished and end the military operation if he wished to do so. He’ll be criticized by both parties if he does that, of course, but he’s already being intensely criticized by them just for launching the war — including by some of his strongest supporters. 

The lack of clarity makes it hard to conduct any meaningful negotiations, which is why the first Vice President Vance-led negotiations collapsed and the second were canceled (although they may well be back on by the time you read this). If we’re not clear in our goals how can the Iranians possibly know what we’re willing to accept in negotiations?

The White House might be willing to accept any proposal, or they might come to agreement and then hostilities resume in a month, or a year.

We’ve already almost seen that happen with the fragile two-week ceasefire. Iran was, apparently, under the impression that the ceasefire also covered Israel’s operations against Hezbollah; the Israelis quickly made it clear that they felt otherwise, and the White House agreed. Meanwhile, they haven’t actually reopened the Strait of Hormuz, even though the administration has at various times declared it open before imposing their own blockade.

It’s important to realize that if Washington’s strategies and goals are muddled, Tehran’s are not. It simply wants the regime to continue. If Tehran can extract some concessions from us, that’s great for it; if not, it will ultimately settle for staying in power.

That’s why we shouldn’t give an inch in negotiations, like accepting some sort of pause of Iran’s nuclear program. Now is the time to extract maximum concessions from a regime that is desperate to survive, not kowtow to them over economic or political fears. If we do that, this entire operation will have been for nothing.