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With the war with Iran spiraling and public opinion about the military excursion at an all-time low, a leading scholar on tyranny warned on Tuesday that Donald Trump’s people may do the unthinkable.

Late Monday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham warned the president that “the clock is ticking” as supporters lose patience with the war that has been unpopular since the U.S. attacked in late February.

According to historian Timothy Snyder, whose book "On Tyranny" is often cited when discussing the Trump administration, a false flag terror attack in the U.S. that can be blamed on Iran is not beyond the realm of possibilities as the president's approval numbers slide.

On X he wrote, “Trump is pursuing this war in the HOPE that Iran carries out an act of terror in the US. And even if it doesn’t, which I doubt it will, consider the possibility that Trump's people would fake one. Please consider this essay, written back in March, as well as the last few lessons of ‘On Tyranny.’”

In the March essay he linked to, he predicted, "A purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States. This would provide Donald Trump with a pretext to try to cancel or 'federalize' the coming Congressional elections.“

"Self-terrorism might not have been the initial aim; but as time goes by, and failures and atrocities mount, its appeal will grow. Trump could think that he has much to gain; the war itself makes terrorism more likely; there are plausible vectors of terror; and the United States has let down its defenses," he added.

As for the timing, he elaborated, “We know that he is obsessed with the fall elections, which his party will almost certainly lose by spectacular margins, and that he fears the accordant loss of power. This is clear from his own statements and actions.”

Joe Kent, the former senior intelligence official who resigned from the Trump administration in protest of the Iran war, made a stunning claim Monday that “something” happened to President Donald Trump that “changed” him from that point forward.

“Something in the late spring, early summer time frame happened – I don’t know what happened,” Kent said during an appearance on the “Julian Dorey Podcast” published on Monday.

“I can’t tell you why his mentality changed, but it went from, ‘we’re gonna create the most space we can for [Iran] negotiations and we’re not interested in the war,’ to, ‘okay, we’re gonna support the Israelis, do Midnight Hammer and we’re gonna continue to entertain this.’”

A key pledge of Trump during his 2024 campaign was that he would not send Americans “to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never end,” reiterating that promise during his victory speech: “I’m not going to start a war,” he said.

And yet, in late February, Trump launched Operation Epic Fury with a large-scale attack on Iran that months later now risks sparking a broader war.

Kent, who's long championed Trump's anti-interventionist rhetoric, said he was confused by the president's apparent shift, and while he could narrow down roughly when it happened, he still couldn't say what caused it.

“I don’t know what happened. And so for me, when something like that happens, from an intelligence background, you do have to step back and look at what else could be influencing the president,” Kent said.

“Did he just change his mind? For him to go through with [launching the Iran war], ultimately, I do think there’s potentially other factors there: so what could those other factors be? Why would a president make decisions that he doesn’t agree with?”

Other conservative figures have speculated as to why Trump launched a war against Iran despite his frequent anti-war rhetoric, including prominent conservative figure Tucker Carlson, who in April floated a disturbing theory that a “blackmail” operation perpetrated by the Israeli government could potentially have forced the president’s hand.