He billed himself as "The Peace President" and jockeyed for the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming to have ended multiple wars.
Then, he attacked Iran in June last year.
And today, US President Donald Trump has done it again.
What makes things worse for the Republican leader and his administration is that the United States' record on justifying wars, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, has always been patchy, and may be even more so this time, especially since both countries were locked in negotiations. Live Updates
In June, after 'Operation Midnight Hammer', which saw the US using B-2 bombers to help Israel target Iranian nuclear sites, a triumphant Trump declared that key nuclear enrichment facilities had "been completely and totally obliterated". This is a claim he has repeated several times since, even as he moved to citing reasons for his military buildup in the Middle East, targeted at Iran.
This has given ammunition to his critics, who have questioned how he and his allies could then also claim that Iran was close to having the material to make a nuclear bomb.
"They are probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material. And that's really dangerous. So they can't have that," Steve Witkoff, a close Trump ally and his special envoy to the Middle East, said earlier this week.
Pushed into damage control mode, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "Operation Midnight Hammer was an overwhelmingly successful mission that did, in fact, obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities. However, this does not mean Iran may never try again to establish a nuclear programme that could directly threaten the United States and our allies abroad; that is what the president wants to ensure can never happen again."
Ballistic Missiles
The other issue brought up by the Trump administration in the lead-up to Saturday's attack is Iran's alleged work on building ballistic missiles that could target the United States in the near future.
This claim was made by Trump himself during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
"But these are some terrible people. They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they are working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America," he said.
The US president also harped on the nuclear angle. "After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and in particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue. They're starting it all over. We wiped it out and they want to start it all over again, and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions."
On negotiations, he said Tehran wanted a deal but he had not heard the words he wanted: "We will never have a nuclear weapon."
Several reports and experts, however, have questioned the missile justification as well. A Defense Intelligence Agency report released last year said Iran "has space launch vehicles it could use to develop a militarily viable ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) by 2035, should Tehran decide to pursue the capability".
Officials in the US also said there was no evidence Iran had ramped up work on its missile programme or was closer to developing any enhanced capabilities.
Iran itself asserted that Trump's claims in his speech were wrong on both fronts, with foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei rubbishing them as "big lies".
Post-Attack Rationale
None of this stopped Trump from joining Israel in attacking Iran on Saturday morning, in an operation the US dubbed 'Epic Fury'.
In a video post on Truth Social, the US president stuck to his guns and portrayed Iran as a major threat to his country.
"Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world," he said.
"It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I'll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon. That is why, in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime's nuclear program at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons... They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can't take it anymore," he asserted.
