Saturday, February 28, 2026

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Iran: A War of Choice


NEWS ANALYSIS

For Trump, the Iran Attack Is the Ultimate War of Choice

There was no immediate threat from Iran. But the president saw a chance to push a weakened government over the edge, and is betting he can spark a popular uprising.

Listen to this article · 9:25 min Learn more
Lines of cars on freeways, with a tower and buildings in the background.
Iranians jammed the highways after explosions began in Tehran on Saturday.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
David E. Sanger

By

David E. Sanger has covered conflicts among nations and superpowers in more than four decades as a foreign and Washington correspondent for the Times.

With his broad attack on Iran early Saturday morning and his call to the Iranian people to overthrow their government, President Trump has embarked on the ultimate war of choice.

He was not driven by an immediate threat. There was no race for a bomb. Iran is further from the capability to build a nuclear weapon today than it has been in several years, thanks largely to the success of the president's previous strike on Iranian nuclear enrichment sites, in June.

While Mr. Trump claimed Tehran was ultimately aiming to reach to the United States with its array of missiles, even his own Defense Intelligence Agency concluded last year that it would be a decade before Iran could get past the technological and production hurdles to produce a significant arsenal.

And there were no indications of a coming Iranian attack on the United States, its allies or its bases in the region. Instead, Mr. Trump struck the Islamic Republic largely because he apparently sensed a remarkable moment of weakness for the government — and an opportunity for the United States to topple Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps after 47 years of episodic confrontations, which he described at length in an eight-minute video.

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But unlike past presidents putting American forces at risk — and, in an age of terrorism and cyberattacks, perhaps civilians as well — Mr. Trump did not spend months building a case for war. He never presented evidence of an imminent threat, or answered the question of why a nuclear program he claimed he had "obliterated" eight months ago was now on the brink of revival.

His pretaped video, released in the middle of the night as the missiles started exploding in Tehran, recited a list of long-running grievances with Iran, including its brutal use of terror. But he never explained why in the pantheon of threats facing the United States, including an already-nuclear-armed North Korea and the expanding nuclear arsenals and territorial ambitions of Russia and China, a weakened Iran ranks first.

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Smoke rising after an explosion in Tehran on Saturday.Credit...Associated Press

So in choosing this moment, and this vector of attack, a man who came to office promising an end to reckless military interventions — and wars intended to prompt regime change — is taking a huge risk. There are few, if any, examples in history of toppling the government of a large nation — in this case about 90 million people — with air power alone.

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And yet Mr. Trump has made clear that is his plan. He has no intention, administration officials have insisted, of sending in ground troops to finish the job, the invitation to the "forever wars" that he campaigned against.

"The idea that we're going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight — there is no chance that will happen," Vice President JD Vance, who is famously skeptical of American military interventions and openly called for the United States to withdraw support from Ukraine, told The Washington Post days before the attack on Iran.

So Mr. Trump's strategic bet rides almost entirely on the ability of the Iranian people, largely unarmed and unorganized, to seize the moment and overthrow a government that millions of them find both brutal and odious. The protests that filled the streets of Iranian cities, and led to a crackdown that killed thousands, gave him his chance.

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An image taken from a social media post showing demonstrators in Tehran in January.Credit...UGC, via Associated Press

But if Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who urged him starting in December to launch this war, and who joined in it from the start, have a plan to accomplish that goal, they have yet to reveal it, even to their closest allies.

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Senior officials of three of those allies, ranging from Europe to the Gulf and interviewed in the past few days, said that in their interactions with Mr. Trump's top aides, they heard little enthusiasm for these attacks, and no plausible legal justification for striking Iran now. Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. But their experience partly explains why Britain, America's closest ally, barred the United States from using Diego Garcia and bomber bases in Britain to launch American fighters and bombers.

"It is not as if Iran poses a threat to our interests that it hadn't for 47 years," said Richard N. Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the 2009 book "War of Necessity, War of Choice," a study of the two conflicts with Iraq, in 1991 and 2003. The first, he concluded, was defined by narrow and achievable aims: liberating Kuwait after Saddam Hussein invaded. Once Iraq was driven from Kuwaiti territory, George H.W. Bush decided against overthrowing Hussein.

But Mr. Trump's decision on Saturday was more like George W. Bush's decision to rid the world of Hussein and his government, because of the long-festering threat it posed to international peace.

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People rushing after several rounds of explosions were heard in Tehran on Saturday.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

"As in the second Iraq war, there wasn't a necessity to attack Iran, there was an opportunity," Mr. Haass said. "This is a classic preventive attack, to keep Iran from gaining a capability in the future. What's missing is 'why now?' because there were other choices: diplomatic accords under military pressure, economic embargoes, interceptions of Iranian ships."

In international law, the difference between a war of necessity and a war of choice is huge. A pre-emptive strike — where one nation sees an attack massing across the river or the ocean and strikes first — is considered legitimate.

A preventive strike, in which the powerful hit the weaker state, is considered illegal. An example would be Russia's decision to invade Ukraine, which the United States and much of the world denounced as a gross violation of the international order.

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Mr. Trump's response is that he did not need a precipitating event. He ran through more than four decades of deadly Iranian actions — from the 1979 hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days, to attacks on American bases and ships. "We're not going to put up with it any longer," Mr. Trump said in a recorded video he posted on his social media account. And even the Pentagon's name for the mission, Operation Epic Fury, seemed to reflect the accumulation of grievances.

The international legal ramifications are not likely to influence Mr. Trump's view of the attack. "I don't need international law," he told four reporters from The New York Times during an interview in January. "I'm not looking to hurt people." And he added that while he thought his administration should abide by international legal principles, he made it clear he would be the arbiter of when those principles applied to the United States.

"It depends on what your definition of international law is," he said.

It may also depend on what the definition of "war" is. In his statement, Mr. Trump called this action a war, warning the country that it may have to confront casualties. But he made no effort to seek an authorization to use military force, much less a war declaration, from Congress.

He would certainly not be the first president to initiate a major military action without formal approval from Congress. But in Mr. Trump's case, he has dismissed the thought that he even needs it.

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President Trump's pretaped video recited a list of long-running grievances with Iran.Credit...Donald Trump, via Truth Social

When historians look back at this moment, they are likely to ask two questions: Why did Mr. Trump act now, and why was Iran his target?

The first may not be hard to answer. He sees himself as the only American president since the 1979 Iranian revolution with the courage and determination not to let the problem fester. "For many years, you have asked for America's help, but you never got it," he told the Iranian people in his video early Saturday. "No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let's see how you respond."

Add to that the fact that the Iranian government sought to have Mr. Trump killed during the 2024 campaign, according to an indictment issued during the Biden administration. Presidents tend to take that kind of thing personally.

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The second question is harder. The accusations Mr. Trump made about Iran — especially about its missile and nuclear capabilities — are far easier to prove in the case of another longtime adversary, North Korea. It has 60 or more nuclear weapons, and regularly tests missiles that are designed to reach Los Angeles or Chicago, even if they have not yet been proven to go the distance.

But North Korea is not weak: For 20 years, it has possessed the nuclear weapons that Mr. Trump says he must prevent Iran from ever getting. It can strike back if its leadership seems in mortal danger, in ways the Ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards cannot.

In the end, Mr. Trump's venture — his seventh attack on a foreign nation since he came to office — may be judged by whether it ignores the Churchill rule.

Long before he became Britain's wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill wrote about his youth, as a journalist and sometime participant in wars. "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter," he wrote in "My Early Life."

"The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.

A version of this article appears in print on March 1, 2026 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump's War of Choice, With a Key Question: Why Now?. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe


Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Oil, Power and the Federation: Is Nigeria Strengthening Accountability or Centralising Control?

The geopolitical universe AIN'T bipolar or bio-paradigmatic. The geo-political world has since become multipolar/multi-paradigmatic in its games. Checkers AIN'T working anymore —- ONLY CHESS.  Be aware & beware of Anthropic technology— its anthropomorphic" ideology AIN'T  an answer. Yet the nature of the nature of the HUMAN world keeps changing and keeps unchanging. We dwell in the same world — a paradoxical  world and as such engage it as a series of chess games.

My "brothas" and "sisthas" of the world, especially the daytime-Marxists&and-the-nighttime capitalists —- begin to think "mereotically" (aka mereologically).  In good faith, co-operate with the dominant Arab countries, cooperate with the dominant SUNNI Muslims. Strategize "mereotically." The geopolitical world AIN'T secular or religious. The geo-political world AIN'T divided into NATO & BRICS. Naija, please note the C in BRICS now controls some of your VITAL "earth minerals." C AIN'T Naija's friend. I'm glad that the "I" (i) in BRICS no longer cooperates with BRICS. MODU of India plays the geopolitical game "mereoticslly."

Oohay





On Friday, February 27, 2026, 4:51 PM, John Onyeukwu <john.onyeukwu@gmail.com> wrote:

Oil, Power and the Federation: Is Nigeria Strengthening Accountability or Centralising Control?

A constitutional and political economy analysis of the President's Executive Order mandating full oil revenue remittance into the Federation Account, and what it means for subnational autonomy, productivity, and the future of Nigeria's federal structure.

By John Onyeukwu | Policy & Reform, Business a.m.| Published on Monday February 23, 2026 |

When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently issued the Presidential Executive Order on the Remittance of Oil and Gas Revenues into the Federation Account, 2026, directing that all oil and gas revenues be paid directly into the Federation Account, the announcement was framed as a reform measure, one aimed at transparency, uniformity, and fiscal discipline. On its surface, the directive appears administratively sound. In a country long troubled by revenue opacity and remittance controversies, few would object to clarity.

Yet beneath that tidy administrative logic lays a deeper constitutional and political economy question: is this fiscal reform, or fiscal recentralisation?

Nigeria's constitutional architecture is not unitary. It is federal. And federalism is not merely a descriptive label; it is a structural commitment embedded in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended). Section 162 establishes the Federation Account into which "all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation" shall be paid, except those expressly exempted. It further provides for distribution among the three tiers of government according to a revenue allocation formula approved by the National Assembly.

On its face, the Executive Order aligns with Section 162. But constitutional compliance is not identical to constitutional coherence. The question is not whether the directive can be defended textually; the question is whether it strengthens the spirit of fiscal federalism.

Federalism presupposes shared sovereignty. Sections 4 and 5 of the Constitution distribute legislative and executive powers between the federal and state governments, while the Second Schedule delineates the Exclusive and Concurrent Lists. States are not administrative appendages of Abuja; they are federating units with defined constitutional responsibilities. Local governments, recognised under Section 7, also form part of this architecture.

Fiscal federalism is the financial expression of that arrangement. In theory, revenue authority and expenditure responsibility should be aligned as closely as possible. If states are constitutionally responsible for primary education, healthcare delivery, intra-state infrastructure, agriculture extension, and security support functions, their fiscal framework must provide meaningful autonomy to discharge those duties.

The challenge in Nigeria has never simply been that revenues are pooled in the Federation Account. The deeper challenge has been the political economy of rent distribution.

Nigeria remains a classic rentier state. Oil revenue is externally generated, centrally collected, and politically redistributed. This structure weakens the accountability bond between subnational governments and their citizens. Governors often look upward to the Federation Account Allocation Committee rather than downward to their tax bases. Internally generated revenue becomes supplementary rather than foundational.

Directing all oil and gas revenues into the Federation Account may indeed improve bookkeeping discipline. It may close loopholes in remittance practices, particularly in light of the restructuring under the Petroleum Industry Act, which commercialised NNPC into NNPC Limited and altered revenue reporting structures. It may reduce discretionary opacity in oil-related inflows.

But it does not, by itself, answer the more fundamental question: how do we incentivise subnational productivity? Recentralisation without productivity reform risks reinforcing dependency.

Comparative federations offer perspective. In the United States, the federal government collects income taxes, corporate taxes, and customs duties, but states retain robust taxing authority. Sales taxes, state income taxes in many jurisdictions, and property taxes administered at local levels provide substantial fiscal independence. States do not depend on Washington for monthly survival allocations. Fiscal competition among states creates incentives for economic development and administrative efficiency.

In Canada, a resource-rich federation with provincial diversity, provinces such as Alberta exercise significant control over natural resource revenues within their territories. Equalisation transfers exist to reduce disparities, but they do not erase local initiative. Provinces that grow their economies reap direct fiscal benefits. Equalisation supports balance without extinguishing productivity incentives.

Nigeria's model, by contrast, centralises oil revenue collection and redistributes according to a politically negotiated formula. The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission recommends revenue allocation formulas, yet political bargaining frequently shapes final outcomes. The derivation principle, currently fixed at 13 percent for oil-producing states under Section 162(2), was designed to address agitation over resource control. While it has reduced tensions in the Niger Delta compared to earlier decades, it has not fundamentally altered subnational productivity patterns across the federation.

The risk of sweeping central directives is not merely administrative; it is structural. They may reinforce the perception, and perhaps the reality, that fiscal authority remains overwhelmingly central.

It is important to distinguish between transparency reform and structural reform. Transparency reform asks whether revenues are properly remitted, audited, and publicly accounted for. Structural reform asks whether the fiscal system aligns incentives with responsibility. Does it encourage states to build internal revenue capacity? Does it reward innovation in taxation and economic diversification? Does it deepen accountability between state governments and citizens?

Nigeria has struggled historically with remittance controversies, from disputes over unremitted oil proceeds to opaque subsidy accounting. In that context, requiring comprehensive remittance into the Federation Account is defensible and arguably overdue. However, administrative centralisation should not be mistaken for institutional strengthening.

The Constitution recognises state fiscal autonomy in other provisions. Section 120 establishes the Consolidated Revenue Fund of a State. Section 121 empowers State Houses of Assembly to pass appropriation laws. These provisions presuppose meaningful fiscal capacity. A federation in which subnational units rely overwhelmingly on centrally distributed oil rents risks reducing constitutional autonomy to procedural formality.

If revenue centralisation is not accompanied by reforms that expand state revenue authority, modernised property taxation, land value capture reforms under the Land Use Act framework, clearer delineation of VAT and consumption tax powers following judicial disputes between federal and state governments, then fiscal asymmetry deepens. Federalism is not sustained by allocations alone; it is sustained by capacity and accountability.

There is also a political dimension that cannot be ignored. Trust in institutions remains fragile. Citizens often perceive revenue debates as elite bargaining rather than service-oriented reform. When an Executive Order mandates oil revenue remittance into the Federation Account, the citizen's question is straightforward: will this translate into better roads, reliable electricity, functional schools, and accessible healthcare?

If reform is not visibly linked to improved service delivery, it becomes another technocratic rearrangement of fiscal plumbing.

Centralisation is often politically attractive because it consolidates authority. It simplifies command structures. It reduces negotiation complexity. But federations endure not because power is concentrated, but because responsibility is distributed in a manner that aligns authority with accountability.

If Nigeria is to convert this moment into genuine fiscal reform, the conversation must extend beyond remittance mechanics. Derivation should not merely be a percentage allocation; it should be integrated into a broader framework that rewards resource management efficiency and environmental stewardship. States must be incentivised to diversify beyond oil dependence, especially as global energy transitions accelerate.

State tax autonomy requires clearer constitutional and statutory harmonisation to reduce litigation and uncertainty. The federal-state tensions over VAT illustrate how fiscal ambiguity breeds conflict rather than cooperation. Equalisation mechanisms should be refined so that they do not inadvertently penalise states that expand internally generated revenue.

Transparency must also be institutionalised at every tier. The principles embedded in the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 should apply with equal vigour to federal, state, and local governments. Oil revenue transparency at the centre achieves little if expenditure opacity persists at subnational levels.

Above all, expenditure must be linked to measurable outcomes. Citizens should be able to trace oil revenue flows through budgets to tangible development indicators. Without that link, fiscal federalism remains abstract.

Nigeria stands at a fiscal crossroads. Oil revenues are no longer predictably buoyant. Price volatility, production constraints, energy transition pressures, and domestic security challenges in oil-producing regions have altered the revenue landscape. The era of effortless oil rent is fading.

In that context, centralising remittance into the Federation Account may be a necessary corrective step, and so applauded. But it cannot be the destination. A capable federation requires more than orderly treasury management. It requires a recalibration of incentives, a strengthening of subnational capacity, and a deepening of democratic accountability.

The Executive Order on oil and gas remittance may be constitutionally defensible. It may even be administratively prudent. But its long-term significance will depend on whether it becomes a platform for structural reform or an endpoint of administrative consolidation.

Does it strengthen the federal structure, or subtly weaken it? Does it empower states to compete, innovate, and grow, or entrench a culture of allocation dependence?

Fiscal federalism is not ultimately about who holds the purse. It is about who bears responsibility and who answers to citizens for outcomes. If states remain structurally dependent on centrally redistributed oil rents, Nigeria's federation will remain politically tense and economically shallow. If, however, fiscal reform evolves into genuine structural recalibration, encouraging subnational innovation, expanding revenue independence, clarifying constitutional authority, and strengthening accountability, then this moment could mark a turning point.

Nigeria must move from rent distribution to productivity competition; from allocation politics to institutional capability; from central command reflexes to shared responsibility.

Fiscal reform must not become fiscal recentralisation. It must become fiscal empowerment, grounded in constitutional fidelity, comparative insight, and long-term statecraft. Only then will the promise of federalism move from paper to performance.

 https://businessamlive.com/oil-power-federation-is-nigeria-strengthening-accountability-or-centralising-control/


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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Creative Essence and Creative Expression: The Journey of Toyin Falola: Cultures of Creativity and the Polymathic Intelligence, Part 4, By Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Between Creative Essence and Creative Expression: The Journey of Toyin Falola: Cultures of Creativity and the Polymathic Intelligence, Part 4, By Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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