Good morning. The Trump administration keeps shifting the goals and timeline for its war in Iran – more on that below, along with Mark Carney’s billion-dollar India deal and B.C.’s final time change. But first:

• India dismisses allegation of a link between the Indian consulate and Nijjar’s assassination
• The stepfather of the missing Nova Scotia children appears in court on unrelated criminal charges
• Ottawa weighs splitting a submarine contract between Europe and South Korea, sources say

In the three days since the U.S. and Israel launched their initial attacks on Tehran, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his downtown compound, the conflict has escalated dramatically across the Middle East. Hezbollah and Israel are trading fire over Lebanon’s southern border. Iran’s retaliatory strikes have caused casualties and destruction in 10 countries. Scores of flights to the region were cancelled, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers; oil and gas prices jumped after the Strait of Hormuz shut down. The Iranian Red Crescent Society said 787 people have been killed in Iran so far. Six U.S. service members also lost their lives.

Operation Epic Fury is the largest American military campaign in two decades. Yet it remains unclear exactly why the U.S. had to go to war with Iran.

Yesterday, in his first public appearance since the bombing began on Saturday morning, Donald Trump offered up a list of explanations. The operation is necessary to destroy Iran’s missiles and navy, the U.S. President said at a Medal of Honor ceremony, and to stop it from developing nuclear weapons or funding regional militant groups. This is, he added, America’s “last and best chance to strike and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by a sick and sinister regime.”

But the White House hasn’t provided any evidence that those threats were actually imminent. Despite Trump’s claim that Iran “would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America,” his administration’s own intelligence put the possibility at least a decade away. Pentagon officials also told congressional staff there were no indications Iran planned to strike U.S. bases in the Middle East unless it was attacked first. And the Islamic Republic’s network of regional allies has collapsed comprehensively: The Assad regime is finished in Syria, while Israel badly weakened two of Iran’s most useful partners, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Perhaps that’s why U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth took a different approach yesterday morning, arguing the war had to happen because Iran was laying the groundwork to pose a major risk to the States. “They were stalling, buying time to reload their missile stockpiles and restart their nuclear ambitions,” he told Pentagon reporters. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio picked up on Hegseth’s rationale, giving it a broader spin. “We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage,” he said.

And what about regime change in Iran? After all, that seemed to be Trump’s express purpose in launching the attacks. “All I want is freedom for the people,” he told the Washington Post on Saturday morning, shortly after posting a video on Truth Social encouraging Iranians to rise up. “Take over your government,” he urged them from Mar-a-Lago. “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.” The next day, in another pretaped video, he implored Iran’s citizens to “take back your country,” vowing that the U.S. “will be there to help.”

Those sorts of full-throated calls were conspicuously absent yesterday. Trump did not mention regime change once in his list of U.S. war objectives. Hegseth was even more explicit, insisting “this is not a so-called regime change war,” though he couldn’t help pointing out that “the regime sure did change.”

And it isn’t just Trump’s goals in Iran that have shifted: His timeframe for the military campaign keeps changing, too. On Saturday, he told Axios he could end Operation Epic Fury in “two or three days.” That same day, Trump posted on social media that the assault would last a week or more. Speaking to the Daily Mail on Sunday, he maintained the fighting has “always been a four-week process.” At the medal ceremony yesterday, he said he expected the war to last “four to five weeks” – which he quickly revised to “far longer,” before landing on “as long as it takes.”

Of course, Trump said, he knows that people out there believe he doesn’t have the attention span to conduct a lengthy battle in Iran. “Somebody actually said, from the media, ‘I think he’ll get bored after about a week or two.’” But those people are mistaken: “I never get bored. If I got bored, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.” Then Trump immediately pivoted to his White House renovations, rhapsodizing about the curtains he chose for his massive new ballroom. “I picked those drapes in my first term,” he boasted. “I always liked gold.”

After Sunday, nearly all of B.C. will be done springing forward: Premier David Eby announced the province is switching to permanent, year-round daylight saving time. (Communities on Mountain Time are out of luck.) Read more about the move here.