David Rothkopf argues that Donald Trump’s military confrontations with Venezuela and Iran were not primarily driven by national-security concerns, but by a political need to divert attention from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The opinion column portrays the operations as “wars of distraction,” claiming the administration repeatedly shifted its stated justifications because neither country presented the imminent threat the White House alleged. Rothkopf contends that the Venezuela intervention amounted to an unlawful resource-driven shakedown, while the Iran war produced heavy casualties, economic disruption and weakened alliances without eliminating Tehran’s nuclear, missile or proxy capabilities. In his telling, Trump began looking for an exit once the Iran conflict became a political liability rather than a useful distraction.


The central argument is that Trump’s foreign-policy decisions cannot be separated from his administration’s handling of Epstein-related disclosures. Rothkopf accuses the White House and Justice Department of trying to suppress damaging information, points to the government’s dealings with Ghislaine Maxwell and Todd Blanche, and argues that Trump’s resistance to transparency has only intensified public suspicion. The column suggests that military deployments in American cities, the Venezuela operation and the Iran war formed a succession of “Epstein Wars,” with each crisis serving as an attempted escape from questions about Trump’s past relationship with Epstein. It concludes by warning that additional confrontations involving Cuba, Greenland or Panama could follow if Trump again seeks a dramatic foreign-policy spectacle to change the political subject.



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Donald Trump’s ‘Forever Wars’ All Come Back to Jeffrey Epstein