When Donald Trump was bidding to return to the United States presidency he told followers on the campaign trail that their country would not be involved in any more foreign wars.
Technically, given that there has been no formal declaration of war by the United States - which, lest it be forgotten, is a prerogative granted to Congress by the Constitution, not the President - you could argue that Mr Trump has been as good as his word.
But having ordered an ongoing bombing assault on Iran over the weekend NZT - the second such attack on that country in his second presidency - it would be an incredibly dubious claim to make today that Mr Trump had kept his promise.
Iran 2.0 can be added to a lengthy list of countries where US muscle has been flexed in recent months - Venezuela, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia , Syria and Iraq have all endured some sort of Trump-ordered military action.
So much for Trump being the inaugural recipient of Fifa’s Peace Prize. Or for the seriousness of his recently established and questionably named ‘‘Board of Peace’’ for that matter.
What makes the President’s latest escapade so galling is that following the June airstrikes on Iran - which Mr Trump justified due to an imminent threat being posed by the Middle East nation’s desire to build a nuclear weapon - he claimed that US military power had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme.
That claim rings hollow given its repetition on Sunday as the reason for the new attack on Iran - an attack which Mr Trump says will continue “until all of our objectives are achieved”.
We will agree with Mr Trump that Iran’s regime is an unsavoury one by Western standards. Few would be upset if a government which sponsors international terrorism and oppresses its own citizens was overthrown.
There is also no debate that too many nations already possess a nuclear weapon, and that adding Iran to that list would add unwanted peril to the already fraught geopolitical political landscape.
We will also concede that President Trump is likely possessed of greater intelligence of Iran’s nuclear machinations than most.
All that said, this latest assault by the US - with the full-throated support and military assistance of Israel - smacks of wanton recklessness and blatant snubbing of US domestic, let alone international, law.
The initial strikes appears to have deliberately targetted Iran’s political and military leadership. The country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been confirmed dead: the veracity of Mr Trump’s grandiose and somewhat grotesque claim that ‘‘48 leaders are gone in one shot’’ is yet to be confirmed.
That smacks of calculated assassination, something which it is problematic to sanction in one breath while condemning terrorism with the next.
A leadership void will have been created in Iran, to be filled by goodness knows whom. Should Iranian extremism be further inflamed by this attack, the little mourned Khamenei regime might end up looking like a force of moderation by comparison.
Mr Trump has ambitiously, and perhaps naively, encouraged Iran’s citizens to rise up and reclaim their government. Thousands died just weeks ago when they attempted exactly that, and a well-armed and change-averse military remains the most powerful factor in Iranian politics.
That Iranian military has, not unnaturally, retaliated against the US and Israeli attacks. It has fired missiles into several other countries, sparking justifiable concern that this conflict could spiral out of control.
These tit-for-tat missile strikes have, among others, killed three US armed forces personnel: President Trump’s pledge that they would be avenged smacks of the flavour of ‘‘death to’’ rhetoric of his Iranian opponents. And how many innocent civilians have died so far, and will continue to die, as this plays out?
Meanwhile, global commerce is in turmoil. Sharemarkets have tumbled downwards, global oil supplies are endangered, and international shipping and air travel is on hold as uncertainty grips a part of the world which is a vital commercial and transportation hub.
Such chaos may be the cost of doing ‘‘business’’ and ensuring than Iran remains a non-nuclear weapons-possessing state, but its impact will reverberate for months to come.
