The War Trump and Putin Want — And the Manufactured Reasons Trump Is Building to Get It
- john raymond
- Jun 20
- 4 min read
Donald Trump is preparing the American public for war with Iran. He is not doing it openly, nor suddenly, but methodically—through the construction of overlapping lies, rhetorical bait, and strategic provocations.
The war itself is not yet declared. But the reasons for it are being prepared, layered, and deployed like brushwood waiting for a match. This is not about national defense. It is not about nuclear nonproliferation. It is about spectacle. It is about distraction. And above all, it is about serving the ambitions of Vladimir Putin.
That last claim, perhaps, demands explanation. Because to understand why Trump is creating a crisis with Iran, one must first understand the geopolitical failure now staring Moscow in the face...
Putin has not won his war in Ukraine. His soldiers are ground down, his economy drained, and his military prestige shattered. What he needs—urgently—is not victory on the battlefield, but strategic distraction.
Putin needs NATO divided, American attention fractured, and a new front in the Middle East to dominate headlines and drain Western resolve.
That is the context in which Trump now acts. Whether you believe it or not, Donald Trump is an more than just a useful idiot. He is a Russian asset. The effect, however, is the same: a U.S. president manufacturing a confrontation not to contain Iran, but to rescue Putin.
We know the pattern. We’ve seen it before. In the lead-up to Iraq, we were told that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. That he was seeking yellowcake uranium. That he had ties to al-Qaeda. That he was a monster who gassed his own people. That the world would never be safe until he was gone. The lies were varied but consistent in one respect: they were cumulative. You didn’t have to believe all of them. You just had to believe one. That’s how consent is manufactured.
And it is happening again. Trump says Iran is racing toward a bomb. He says we know where their leaders are hiding. He says they are behind proxy attacks, that Europe is too weak to negotiate, that only America can resolve this crisis. He gives Tehran two weeks to surrender. He tells us he’s holding back—for now.
These are not isolated statements. They are rehearsals. Trial balloons for justifications that have not yet been needed, but soon will be.
The critical feature of this pattern is not the strength of any single claim, but the sheer volume of them. Because what Trump and his enablers have learned—from Bush, from Putin—is that truth doesn’t matter in a prewar environment. What matters is saturation. Flood the discourse with enough possible reasons for war and people will stop questioning the premise and begin debating the tactics. Once that shift happens—once the conversation becomes about which targets to strike and which weapons to use—the battle to make war is already half-won.
In 2022, Vladimir Putin did the same. He blamed Ukraine’s NATO flirtation, claimed ethnic Russians were being oppressed, declared Kyiv a Nazi state, and even accused Ukraine of building bioweapons. No single rationale stuck—but they didn’t have to. The confusion was the strategy.
This is not diplomacy. This is political theater in a militarized costume. There is no peace process. No backchannel. No envoy. No effort to thread a needle between confrontation and conciliation. Only posture, spectacle, and a heavy dose of manufactured urgency.
Trump’s allies whisper about bunker-busters. They leak “classified” satellite images. They suggest Iran might be plotting attacks on U.S. assets, or fomenting unrest through Hezbollah. It doesn’t matter if the accusations contradict each other. They are not meant to be coherent. They are meant to give everyone a reason to look away from Ukraine—and to look to the Middle East.
And in that way, Putin is already winning. He has been largely abandoned by China, betrayed by time, and humiliated by Ukraine’s resilience. But with Trump back in power, he sees a lifeline: a second front that distracts NATO, divides the West, and reorients American outrage toward Tehran instead of Moscow. Trump doesn’t need to win a war. He just needs to start one. The chaos alone would serve the Kremlin’s aims.
This is why Trump must be taken seriously when he issues ultimatums. When he talks about knowing where Khamenei is. When he praises Israel’s airstrikes but refuses to urge restraint. He is not trying to deescalate. He is trying to provoke. Not just Iran—but a media apparatus, a political opposition, and a weary public trained by two decades of war to respond with fear before skepticism.
The final spark has not yet been lit. But it will be. Whether it’s a drone shootdown, a cyberattack blamed on the IRGC, or the suspicious death of an American abroad, it will arrive. And when it does, Trump will point to it as the final straw. The last proof that “we tried everything.” It will be a lie, and it will not matter.
Because this war is not about Iran. It is not about weapons. It is not even about oil. It is about power. And it is about covering up failure.
Trump is covering up his failure to address Ukraine. Putin is covering up his failure to win it. Together, they seek to set the world on fire—not because they have to, but because it is the only way they know how to govern. Through conflict. Through chaos. Through the illusion of strength where only desperation remains.
This is not peacekeeping. This is war-seeking. And if we do not call it out for what it is now—while the reasons are still being arranged and rehearsed—we will once again find ourselves dragged into a conflict built on lies, waged in our name, and abandoned in silence.
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