Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Wednesday noted an “important” question now facing President Donald Trump and his administration after launching a war against Iran: “What now?”

“I can tell you the ‘what now’ is the biggest problem of all,” McCaskill said in an appearance on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.”

“We have no idea if someone even more extremist is going to take control of Iran. And if he does, what now?”

McCaskill, who spent 12 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that it is also unclear whether such an Iranian government would have even a “part of democracy involved.”

“And if not, what now?” she continued.

“We have no idea whether the plans will be to immediately reconstitute whatever is necessary to obtain nuclear power. What now? So the lack of planning here, in terms of the day after, is surprising.”

McCaskill’s comments tie into the administration’s adoption of a hands-off approach to any regime change in the country following the deadly attacks that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The administration, which has offered various reasons behind the deadly attack, has also been notably vague in pointing out the next figure it hopes to lead Iran in the future.

On Tuesday, the president told reporters that “someone inside” the Iranian regime could be the top choice to become leader after the conflict, but added that “most of the people we had in mind are dead.”

He also described the “worst case scenario”: that “someone takes over and is just as bad as the previous person.”

“That would probably be the worst thing: You go through this and then in five years you realize you put someone in who was no better,” Trump said. “So we’d like to see someone there to give it back to the people.”

President Donald Trump answers questions during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump answers questions during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/News via Getty Images

McCaskill said the administration has crafted a very confusing “why and when” for the war.

“I don’t care what the administration does now; it has been incompetent at one of the most important things a government must do when it goes to war, and that is to have a clear justification for an attack, a clear justification for the lives lost, a clear justification for why it happened when it happened,” he added.

“And they can’t fix this now,” he continued. “This is an unrecognizable confusion.”

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“Now I am more convinced that this will be indefinite and forever,”” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said after a briefing on Iran on Tuesday.

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The president has offered a number of justifications for the air war, including some that contradict each other.

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Four days into a war that has already left six U.S. service members dead, Republican members of Congress offered starkly different justifications for the attacks, ranging from regime change to nuclear disarmament.

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The move saw friction over the handling of Epstein’s files. The Iran war threatens a deeper fracture.

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The administration’s latest escalation is driving the global view of the United States as a rogue actor, fueling instability, acting illogically and illegally, and putting innocent lives at risk.

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