President Donald Trump could unleash a new wave of violence in the war against Iran after the midterms, and he appears to lack the "mental capacity" to understand what he might soon set in motion, according to a warning from a leading forensic psychiatrist.

Bandy X. Lee, who specializes in violence and violence prevention, has written and spoken extensively about the dangers she believes Trump has posed since he entered politics. She previously edited a bestselling collection of essays about Trump's mental state, a book that was reportedly consulted by members of his own first-term staff, and she consulted with members of Congress at the start of his first term about the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, includes a provision allowing the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office. Her public interventions have also placed her within a long-running debate inside her own profession: the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater rule, an ethics guideline dating to 1973, generally discourages psychiatrists from offering professional opinions on public figures they have not personally examined.

Speaking in a recent interview with the Five Minute News podcast, Lee said she was gravely concerned about Trump's next steps on Iran, arguing that he can grasp war only as one escalation after another. She also explained why, in her view, the president's impending "downfall" makes this one of the most dangerous periods in American history. The timeline she describes places the stretch immediately after the midterm elections at the center of her concern.

"This perhaps is the most dangerous period in American history because dangerous individuals become the most dangerous before their downfall," Lee said. "And that is why allowing fascist regimes to continue and to harness more and more power to themselves is so dangerous, and we cannot underestimate the level of danger."

She continued: "Donald Trump himself said that he's going to hold back until the midterms, and after the midterms may be ready to unleash his anger on Iran, and we've already lost the war on Iran, but he cannot accept that, and his thinking simply goes to bigger and bigger bombs."

Lee also warned of the "very dire" circumstances the world faces as Trump weighs the possibility of a nuclear strike on Iran, a scenario she framed as a serious concern given his long-documented obsession with nuclear weapons and his own authority to deploy one. Under longstanding U.S. procedures, the president has unilateral authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, a power that has repeatedly drawn scrutiny in debates over checks on nuclear decision-making.

"[Trump] doesn't quite understand the ramifications and doesn't have the capacity to understand the ramifications of a nuclear war and he's incredibly attracted to the prospect of using them," Lee added. "So we're in a very dire situation."

In her assessment, the danger is compounded by turmoil within the U.S. military's senior ranks. "We have a military gone rogue where the best minds have been eliminated either through firing or resignations," she said. "And we have Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who has said that the world may have to undergo lots of destruction to be renewed, in his view, in his Armageddon-attracted mindset, and so we're in perhaps the most dire and dangerous situation we have ever been in."

Based on reporting published by Alternet on November 2, 2026: Trump lacks 'mental capacity' to grasp the danger he risks: psychiatrist.