Years before President Donald Trump ever stepped into the Oval Office, he was already telling the world that Barack Obama would eventually attack Iran.
He did not just say it once. He said it again and again on Twitter, now known as X.
The first time came on November 14, 2011. It was about seven months after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner where Obama openly mocked Trump and joked about the birther controversy. That moment is often seen as the spark that pushed the reality TV star toward politics.
Trump posted, “@BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election,”
Nearly eight months later in July 2012, Trump pointed to a New York Times report about the US expanding its military presence in the Persian Gulf.
He wrote, “Just as I predicted, @BarackObama is preparing a possible attack on Iran right before November,”
And he did not stop there.
A month later, he repeated the warning.
A year after that, Trump again said, “I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!”
Then just a week later he added, “Remember what I previously said–Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is.”
By November 2013, Trump told followers he had been making this prediction “a long time ago” and blamed what he called Obama’s “inability to negotiate properly.”
Despite all of that, Obama never carried out an attack on Iran.
Years later, the situation unfolded differently under Trump’s own presidency. On Saturday morning, Trump authorized strikes on targets across Tehran in coordination with Israel.
The move has revived attention around those earlier social media posts where he repeatedly warned about an attack that never happened under Obama but ultimately took place during his own time in office.