President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the 25th anniversary ceremony at the Pentagon to weld the grief of 9/11 to their unpopular war on Iran — manufacturing consent for an open-ended Middle East conflict that has already dragged past six months with no exit in sight and no defined American interest beyond regime rhetoric.

This is the neocon playbook, repackaged. George W. Bush stood before the same institution and named Iran part of an "axis of evil" in 2002, paving the way for the Iraq catastrophe on the pretext of weapons of mass destruction that never existed. Now Trump, launching Operation Epic Fury on February 28, is echoing that exact formula: invoke the dead, claim an existential threat, and demand unconditional victory against a nation that had no operational role in 9/11.

"Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago," Trump said at the Pentagon, where 184 people died on 9/11. "That's why we fight today. We don't have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win."

Hegseth went further, delivering what The Guardian described as a "bellicose speech" at the somber memorial. "We're still sending terrorists where they belong — to hell — and tankers to the bottom of the ocean where they belong," he declared. He claimed Iran's defenses "are gone" — though The Guardian notes evidence contradicts this — and warned the threat extends inside U.S. borders, invoking "Islamic terrorists abroad and at home." He closed by calling for a new generation of "strong, brave warriors who will say when it matters most, 'send me.'"

That's not memorial language. That's recruitment language for escalation.

The war is "vastly unpopular in the US, according to opinion polls," The Guardian reported. Fox News, for its part, buried the Iran connection entirely — running Trump's anodyne tributes to the "American spirit" and the country being "stronger than it has ever been before" while omitting any mention of the war he used the ceremony to justify. The New York Post reported the Iran link more directly but softened the context, noting Bush's "axis of evil" framing without dwelling on the WMD fabrication that followed.

Meanwhile, the people who actually lost family on 9/11 are asking a different question. Terry Strada, a widow of a victim, pleaded at the New York ceremony for the Trump administration to hold Saudi Arabia — not Iran — accountable. "It has been one betrayal after another," she said. "President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying."

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. The U.S. government has never held Riyadh to account. Instead, successive administrations — Bush, Obama, Biden — protected the relationship. Now Trump is redirecting 9/11 outrage toward Tehran while the Saudis get another pass.

Follow the money. Defense contractors don't profit from accountability; they profit from war. The think-tank ecosystem that pushed the Iraq WMD line — AEI, FDD, Hudson Institute — has spent years building the case for confrontation with Iran. Operation Epic Fury is the payout. Every day it continues, American taxpayers fund ordnance and deployments while the Strait of Hormuz becomes a U.S.-controlled chokepoint, as Hegseth boasted.

The question isn't whether Iran's regime is hostile. It is. The question is whether another forever war in the Middle East — sold through the same sleight-of-hand that gave us Iraq — serves the American people or the permanent Washington class that cashes in on every new front. The 9/11 dead deserve honesty. What they got was a sales pitch.