Victor Davis Hanson: Preventive or Preemptive? The Pros and Cons of a Potential US Strike on Iran

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🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

As President Donald Trump positions “the largest naval and air forces” off Iran’s coast that the U.S. has “seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003,” he has some pros and cons to weigh about striking the Middle Eastern country. The U.S. isn’t in a war with Iran right now, so Trump’s positioning of forces could be for “either a preventive war, long-term threat, or a preemptive war,” explains Victor Davis Hanson on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “It’s very controversial, and we don’t know whether he’s going to pull the trigger or not ... He’ll have to make the decision pretty quickly because you can’t just take those many naval assets and stick them halfway across the world ... The window is probably about another six weeks.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Donald Trump is positioning the largest naval and air forces with some marines off the coast of Iran
0:08.2	in the Persian Gulf, in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea that we've seen since the invasion of
0:15.5	Iraq in 2003. And there are pros and cons about striking Iran, we're not at war with them right now.
0:22.3	So this is what we would call either a preventive war, long-term threat, or a preemptive war,
0:28.7	that there's a short-term threat that has to be precluded by the use of force.
0:33.2	It's very controversial, and we don't know whether he's going to pull the trigger or not.
0:37.5	Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal.
0:51.3	Donald Trump is positioning the largest naval and air forces with some
0:59.0	Marines off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf, in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea that we've
1:07.2	seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
1:13.6	And there are pros and cons about striking Iran.
1:16.6	We're not at war with them right now,
1:18.6	so this is what we would call either a preventive war,
1:21.6	long-term threat, or a preemptive war,
1:24.6	that there's a short-term threat that has to be precluded by the use of force.
1:29.4	It's very controversial, and we don't know whether he's going to pull the trigger or not.
1:35.7	He said help was on the way when the protests were maximized, anywhere from 10 to 30,000 people
1:44.1	estimates say were killed, those protests are now
1:47.6	some. We haven't seen much of them, given the mass death and murder on this awful regime of some.
1:55.7	It's getting near, as you know, a half century of 246 years. So what are the pros and cons of what we're doing?
2:04.8	Does he have to go to Congress to get a declaration of war? No, no more than the Obama administration
2:11.0	had to do when they bombed Libya, for example. But there are pros and cons. And let's go through
	...

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