Fact Check: Did Trump predict in 2011 that Barack Obama would start a war with Iran just to get elected?

WASHINGTON, DC: Donald Trump’s old Twitter feed appears to have come back to haunt him.

It’s all about a prediction he made more than a decade ago. "In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran," Trump posted in 2011.

The tweet resurfaced recently amid Trump's airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, with critics on social media sharing screenshots of it and many wondering if it was actually real or just another AI-generated fever dream.

Fact Check: True

Fact-checker Snopes stepped in and confirmed that yes, Trump did post that tweet, and it’s still live on his account. It was reportedly posted on November 29, 2011, at 12:48 pm EDT, making it the very first in a series of doomsday-style predictions about then-President Barack Obama and Iran.

Between 2011 and 2013, Trump repeatedly warned that Obama would “start a war with Iran” for all sorts of political reasons — to “get elected,” to “boost his poll numbers,” to “save face,” and to “show how tough he is.”

But none of that happened. Obama, contrary to Trump’s prophecies, finished out both of his presidential terms without launching a military attack on Iran. Instead, he put his signature on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. That deal placed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.

Donald Trump orders strikes on Iran

Fast forward to June 2025, and it was Trump himself who pulled the trigger. The president announced that he’s ordered US bomber strikes on Iranian nuclear sites — a surprise military move that came without congressional approval.

Trump faced quite a backlash for the move, but his defenders were quick to point out that Obama did it too.

Conservative podcaster Alec Lace chimed in with an eyebrow-raising comparison.

“2016 - Barack Obama dropped 26,171 bombs on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan without Congress Approval. 2025 - Donald Trump dropped 36 bombs on Iran nuclear sites without Congress Approval. Guess which one libs are mad about?” Lace posted on X.

Snopes rated this claim as true as well.

Barack Obama's bombing legacy

It's worth noting that Barack Obama also did not go to Congress for an official declaration before authorizing many of his military strikes, just like many presidents before him.

Snopes dug into this and found that the 26,171 bomb count for 2016 checks out. According to US Air Force Central Command, that year saw the launch of 30,743 weapons in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led campaign against ISIS.

America was responsible for nearly 80% of those strikes — that’s 24,287 bombs dropped by US forces alone in just two countries.

But that’s not even the most haunting part of Obama’s drone war legacy.

In 2011, the US conducted a drone strike in Yemen that killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen. Abdulrahman was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric with alleged ties to al-Qaeda who had been killed in a separate drone strike just two weeks earlier.

Abdulrahman’s death was brutal and tragic. On October 14, 2011, a drone strike targeted the vehicle he was sitting in with others, killing him, his 17-year-old cousin, and another man. There was no evidence that the teenager was a terrorist or involved in combat.