The Trump administration is making the case that it ordered expansive, deadly strikes to stop an imminent threat from Tehran, but is providing no evidence Iran had such plans. The White House, amid the largest military buildup in the region in decades, has yet to explain to the public or to Congress what Iranian threat prompted the massive attacks that have upended the region and could draw the U.S. into another Middle East war. The administration first tested out its justification more than 12 hours after the U.S. began bombarding Iran with missiles, drones and long-range artillery. A senior Trump administration official told reporters Saturday that the U.S. had determined American troops would have suffered far more casualties by waiting for an impending Iranian strike. In the same briefing, two other officials said the president ordered the strikes after he determined Iran would not agree to stop uranium enrichment altogether. But the administration’s efforts to construct a case for war only after the shots have started flying has few historical parallels. The Pentagon has held no briefings nearly 36 hours after the U.S. military strikes, bucking a practice of doing so after attacks that goes back to the Vietnam War. And unlike past presidents embarking on major military campaigns, Trump made little effort to drum up support from Congress, U.S. allies or the American people. The administration did not try to convince the Senate to authorize the war, as President George W. Bush did in Iraq, or plead to the United Nations, as George H.W. Bush did to build a coalition against Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait. “Whatever imminent threat they’re posing was likely in reaction to our unprecedented military buildup in the region,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.). “This is an example of the president deciding what he wanted to do, and then making his administration go and find whatever argument they could make to justify it.” The administration briefed some Hill staffers Sunday on the operation. But officials did not present clear evidence the Iranians were preparing an imminent attack on U.S. troops, said two people who attended. They, like others in this report, were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe will give an Iran briefing to House members on Tuesday, according to four people with direct knowledge of the meeting. They will also meet with senators, according to two people familiar with the plans. Trump, in an eight-minute video on Truth Social after the first wave of attacks, said Iran had continued to develop long-range missiles that could threaten Europe and U.S. troops — although American intelligence agencies have assessed Tehran won’t acquire those weapons for years. The president, in a second video posted online Sunday, said operations will continue and U.S. casualties will likely mount. But Trump has not formally addressed the country or taken questions about his decision to deploy force, other than brief one-on-one calls with several media outlets. His actions are a surprising reversal from campaign promises he made to end forever wars and from his criticism of longstanding American nation-building in the Middle East during a speech last year in Saudi Arabia. “The interventionists,” Trump said, “were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.” U.S. Central Command has said the strikes were “prioritizing locations that posed an imminent threat,” including Iranian air defense, drone and missile launch sites and military airfields. But it has not mentioned anything specific about a time-sensitive threat to U.S. troops. “The United States did not start this conflict,” Hegseth said Saturday evening in an X post, “but we will finish it.” The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment. The CIA had spent several weeks making inroads with some Iranian officials, according to a person familiar with the covert effort. The intelligence informed the timing and location of Saturday’s strikes that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials, the person added. The CIA did not respond to a request for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions to the White House. The White House, in a statement, said diplomacy had been Trump’s preferred course of action and that “his representatives worked extensively, and in good faith, to make a deal that would ensure that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities posed no threat to our homeland. Unfortunately, the Iranian regime refused to engage realistically with the United States.” But a growing number of skeptics of the administration’s justification are emerging, especially after the first U.S. troops were killed Sunday in an Iranian retaliatory strike. Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.), who was among committee leaders briefed by senior officials last week, told CNN he had seen no intelligence “that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of preemptive strike against the United States of America.” The president, he said, has “started a war of choice.” Iran, and its proxies Hezbollah and the Houthis, presented ongoing threats, and U.S. bases in the region faced real risks, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a Senate Armed Services member, said in an interview. But he argued those dangers were being managed with existing U.S. and allied air and missile defense systems. “They simply don’t have a missile that can reach the United States, and probably won’t for years, ” he said. The administration’s defenders in Congress also shied away from discussing any Iranian plans. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) on Sunday repeated the word “imminent” to describe the threat in a CBS interview, but resisted getting more specific. Experts did not see immediate danger ahead of the strikes. Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a membership organization dedicated to nonproliferation, noted last week that it would take Iran months to enrich sufficient material for a weapon and years to rebuild nuclear facilities the U.S. military damaged last year. Richard Haass, the Council on Foreign Relations president and a former State Department official under George W. Bush described the threat posed by Iran as manageable. That, he said, makes this a “preventive, not a preemptive war.” Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

PARIS — There is a risk of nuclear proliferation in the world today, according to a French official from the Elysée Palace. “We are living in a period that is fundamentally conducive to nuclear proliferation,” the official told reporters on Wednesday, adding that pressure was mounting on the international non-proliferation regime. The comments come ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech on France’s nuclear doctrine, scheduled for March 2. He is expected to provide more details on how France’s nuclear weapons can contribute to Europe’s security. Countries such as Germany and Sweden have publicly confirmed talks with France about the country’s nuclear deterrent. Since the war in Ukraine started, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has made repeated nuclear threats, also updating the country’s doctrine to lower the threshold that would trigger a nuclear strike. In the past few years, several Cold War-era treaties that limited nuclear arsenals have also expired. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as INF, ended in 2019. The New Start agreement, which capped American and Russian strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550, expired earlier this month and is not expected to be renewed in the near future. “We are clearly witnessing an erosion of everything that remains of the arms control framework,” the Elysée official stressed, adding that nuclear-armed countries now no longer shy away from military confrontations, pointing to India and Pakistan. China is also pushing to increase its nuclear arsenal — the U.S. estimates that Beijing could have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 — and other countries, such as Iran, are looking to develop their own. The French official addressed the open desire of some countries in Europe and Asia to have their own nuclear weapons. “Another reason [for the risk of proliferation] is the feeling of insecurity in a number of countries, particularly when political shifts among various actors mean that those who believed they could rely on guarantees are no longer assured of them,” they said, in a thinly veiled reference to Washington’s recent geopolitical actions under President Donald Trump. While no countries were named, there are talks ongoing in South Korea and Japan about whether they should develop homegrown nuclear deterrents. Earlier this month, Polish President Karol Nawrocki said his country should start developing nuclear defenses, given the threat from Moscow. However, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, known as NPT, still remains one of the cornerstones of arms control in the world, the official said: “NPT is not dead.”

The killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minnesota has led to a rare rebuke of top Trump administration officials by leading 2nd Amendment advocates. Multiple national gun-rights organizations, as well as a prominent Minnesota gun rights group, have expressed horror at top Trump administration officials’ criticism of Pretti for being armed with a handgun that he had a legal permit to carry. “The FBI director needs to brush off that thing called the Constitution, because he clearly hasn’t read it,” National Association for Gun Rights President Dudley Brown told POLITICO. “I know of no more crucial place to carry a firearm for self defense than a protest.” FBI Director Kash Patel said Sunday on Fox News that “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have a right to break the law.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Saturday that she didn’t “know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that “any gun owner knows” that carrying a gun raises “the assumption of risk and the risk of force being used against you,” during interactions with law enforcement. Gun-rights groups rushed to push back on an administration that was breaking with conservative orthodoxy on the right to bear arms in public places. Several were particularly outraged by Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, who posted on X: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” The National Rifle Association, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, posted that Essayli’s remarks were “dangerous and wrong,” and called for a full investigation rather than “making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.” Aidan Johnston, the director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, called Essayli’s remarks “absolutely unacceptable.” “Federal prosecutors should know better than to comment on a situation when he didn’t know all the facts, to make a judgment in a case like this, and then also, just to make a blanket statement, threatening gun owners in that way,” Johnston said Monday. It’s not the first time Trump and the gun lobby have tangled since he returned to office. In September, gun rights advocates were shocked by reports that the administration was looking into a gun ban for transgender Americans. During Trump’s first term, his administration issued a regulation to ban bump stocks, but the Supreme Court ultimately blocked the rule in 2024. There are still conflicting accounts surrounding Saturday’s shooting — including whether Pretti’s hand at any point during the incident was near his gun. Video verified and analyzed by several media outlets, including the New York Times, show the item Pretti appeared to be holding was a phone he was using to film the scene before he attempted to help a woman who had been pushed to the ground by Border Patrol agents. According to a Washington Post analysis of video footage, federal agents appear to have secured Pretti’s gun moments before an agent shot the 37-year-old ICU nurse, who was also a U.S. citizen. “We can all see what is on video,” said Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus chair Bryan Strawser, arguing statements from Trump’s officials have not lined up with footage of the event. Strawser hoped the incident would help Democrats understand the importance of gun ownership. “If it has helped move the needle and helped individual folks realize that they should be protecting this right, I think that’s a good thing,” he said. “I think the more political-minded part of my brain would say, ‘are they just using this for their own political purposes and this isn’t going to change their position at all?’ I think time will tell as to where that goes.” California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — who became a gun owner last year — responded on X to Noem’s remarks: “The Trump administration does not believe in the 2nd Amendment. Good to know.” Rep. Dave Min (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) also used the moment to highlight the right to carry. “Joining the gun lobby to condemn Bill Essayli was not on my bingo card but here we are,” Min said on X. “Lawfully carrying a firearm is not grounds for being killed.” Brown argued it was Newsom and Democrats who were being hypocritical, pointing to Newsom’s longtime support for more gun control. “The irony is thick,” he said. Jacob Wendler contributed to this report.