This morning, Israel and the US launched a wave of attacks on Iran. The operation was not approved by the UN security council, nor by US congress, nor was it in response to credible threats from Iran. To be clear, I am no fan of the Iranian regime, but I consider that (more) unilateral aggression from the US puts the world on a dangerous path.

Using the TrumpActionTracker, I've created a timeline of administration actions against Iran since January 2025. I've colour coded actions by type.



This has clearly not come out of nowhere. Trump first threatened to bomb Iran over its nuclear programme in March 2025 - just two months after his inauguration. Then there was a flurry of activity precipitated by Israel's strikes on Iran last summer - Trump quickly joined in and claimed to have obliterated Irans's nuclear capabilities.

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BUT there is one other pattern from the timeline that is important to note - and that is the actions I've highlighted in orange which represent attempts to control information about the strikes and suppress any domestic dissent within America. There was a flurry of these after last summer's strikes, from attacking media for questioning the claims of "obliteration", to falsely accusing Democrats of 'leaking', to denying Democrats access to security briefings, to firing the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for not supporting Trump's assessment of the success of the strikes.

We need to watch out for a similar pattern now of propaganda and attacks on any oversight. Indeed it has already started, with Trump already linking Iran to his ongoing false narrative on election interference. Trump and his administration want to exert total control both nationally and internationally, and are increasinly emboldened to use force to do so.