Donald Trump’s decision to launch military action against Iran may soon start to taper off after he signed a ceasefire arrangement with what remains of Tehran’s leadership — a move that has puzzled many conservatives.
Among those most perplexed is Joe Rogan, whose hugely popular podcast has regularly criticized the recent US-Israeli military campaign.
The 58-year-old host has long argued against America’s “forever wars,” and he previously reacted positively to Trump during the election cycle after the then-candidate told him: “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars.”
Yet in his second term, Trump has ordered strikes involving Venezuela and Iran, while also widening US military activity across Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria. On Wednesday, Rogan shared his own explanation for why the president now appears to be acting contrary to that earlier pledge.
On this week’s podcast episode — featuring Arsenio Hall — Rogan laid out his broader theory for why Trump entered another deadly Middle East conflict, only to seemingly step back roughly a month later while Iran’s ruling structure remained intact.
Hall told Rogan that “misdirection” has shaped American politics for decades, arguing that presidents often leverage foreign policy to shift attention away from problems at home.
Rogan agreed, suggesting Bill Clinton did something similar in 1999 with Yugoslavia — claiming he started “bombing some other countries” to pull focus from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which later fueled an impeachment effort that ultimately failed.
Rogan then highlighted what he said had dominated public conversation before the US and Israel carried out a strike that decapitated Iranian leadership on February 28 — but which was then displaced by the spiraling conflict in the region.
As Rogan put it: “Look, the Epstein files comes out — we go to war with Iran. It’s a good way to get people to stop talking about certain things.
“You give them a new problem to think about.”
The host’s comments point to the timing: the campaign against Iran began less than a month after Congress’ Epstein Files Transparency Act triggered the release of millions of pages linked to the late, convicted sex offender — documents that reportedly referenced Trump thousands of times.
In the weeks that followed, the scandal surrounding one of the most notorious cases involving America’s wealthy and powerful quickly became a major burden for the administration. Press events and policy announcements were repeatedly overshadowed by questions about Epstein and whether anyone named in the material would face consequences.
But as the US moved forward with its decades-long objective of dismantling Iran’s clerical leadership — raising fears of a broader regional spiral and jolting global markets — public attention on the Epstein files largely drifted out of the spotlight.
Rogan has floated similar suspicions before. In January, he argued the president supported an escalation of ICE raids in Minnesota “on purpose,” alleging it was meant to steer the national conversation away from the Epstein-related disclosures.