When news of Israeli-American joint attacks on Iran began circulating on Saturday, many users of X did not race to the latest headlines. They raced to the archives. Within hours, decade-old posts by Donald Trump — in which he repeatedly warned that then-President Barack Obama would “manufacture” a war with Iran to boost his re-election prospects — resurfaced en masse.
There were thousands of fresh replies, quote-posts, and some pointed comparisons to the current moment of violent irony.
Iran’s foreign affairs minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi also pulled out an old Trump ‘tweet’ that said Obama would start a war to divert from his domestic political performance.
Araghchi wrote: “(Israel PM Benjamin) Netanyahu and Trump’s war on Iran is wholly unprovoked, illegal, and illegitimate.”
Another of Trump’s posts attracting renewed attention is from October 22, 2012, when he, as a realtor-businessman with political ambitions, wrote: “Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected — be careful Republicans!”
The warning was issued during the final stretch of that year’s US presidential campaign in which Obama defeated Mitt Romney.
Also being widely circulated is an earlier post from November 29, 2011, in which Trump declared: “In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.”
Trump has showed a “third term” ambition despite the fact that the US Constitution allows only two.
A third X post, of October 9, 2012, also went viral again: “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in a tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” This is the one Araghchi also shared.
These posts taken together show Trump had a political thesis: that a sitting US President, facing challenges at home, would use war as a tool of political survival. Now this thesis is being directed back at Trump by users of social media, especially when the release of files related to convicted sex offender the Jeffrey Epstein has raised serious questions on Trump directly.
The reply sections under the X posts are flooded with new remarks.
“Don the con man strikes again. He accused Obama of exactly what he wanted to do. This you?” a user posted just hours after news of the strikes broke.
Another said: “There is always a tweet. Literally every single thing he accused the previous admin of, he either did or is cheering for now. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.”
The phrase “Don the con man” — a singsong pejorative often used by Trump’s critics — was used by others too.
Another X user wrote: “Don the con man was projecting his own playbook onto Obama for years. Now look where we are. The ‘Iran Card’ is being played, but the deck was stacked years ago.” A reply from another read: “Accusing others of starting wars for polls while your base cheers for strikes today? Don the con man indeed.”
“The digital footprint here is impossible to ignore,” wrote geopolitical analyst Aaron Blake in The Washington Post back in 2020, as the alleged doublespeak made headlines then too. “By creating such a specific narrative about Obama using Iran for political gain, Trump effectively boxed himself in. Now that actual strikes are occurring, his own words are being used as the primary weapon against his current platform,” he further wrote.
There are new question on Trump’s allegation that Obama “gave” Iran $150 billion as part of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Fact-checkers have consistently noted that the figure refers to frozen Iranian assets that were returned under the nuclear agreement; not a transfer of US government funds.