Rachel Maddow

You're having a neighborly dispute with your neighbor on your block.

And the cops break down your door with a battering ram.

They arrest you and your whole family.

They ransack your house and then they light it a fire and bulldoze it.

And they tell your neighbor, hey, it's all done.

You can take his whole backyard and you can take his house now, too.

And as you're trying to figure out why this has just happened, you come to learn that your neighbor has been paying massive bribes to the police in your town.

Oh, that's what's going on.

I mean, there's a lot of attention on Israel, and indeed Israel and the United States have worked together in the bombing campaign, not only the one that started today, but the campaign against Iran in June.

But it is the Gulf Arab states—

who are arrayed against Iran, who want Iran removed as their regional rival.

It is those countries that have been assiduously buying up members of the Trump family and the Trump administration with just astonishing amounts of cash in recent years and particularly in recent months.

And now, for that low, low price, they appear to have rented the services of the United States military to start a war that they want but that the American people do not.

and that our American government hasn't bothered to explain in terms that are even internally consistent, let alone rational or sound.

Why did Donald Trump today just start a war with Iran?

You tell me.

The New York Times editorial board writes today that in this second term, Trump's, quote, appetite for military intervention grows with the eating.

And that seems observably true.

Iran doesn't have ballistic missiles that can reach us.

Iran has not achieved some kind of breakthrough in nuclear enrichment that is a new sudden emergency.