Why Netanyahu Duped Trump Into the Illegal War With Iran
Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy on how Trump's incoherence has allowed a small settler-colonial state to pursue a far-reaching mission of domination in the region.
This has not been subtle. Across multiple decades, Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu in particular (he has been Israel’s premier for almost 20 of the last 30 years), have tried to pull America into a war against Iran.
Netanyahu briefly succeeded last June when Trump launched the one-and-done Operation Midnight Hammer strikes. That appeared to only whet appetites.
Israel’s campaign to induce a full-scale American assault on Iran became relentless. Netanyahu visited Trump twice in the roughly eight weeks preceding the launch of this illegal war of aggression (and that’s a total of seven Netanyahu meetings with the president in the second term so far).
This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio let slip that America’s supposed case for pre-emptive use of force in the face of a threat was, in fact, necessitated by Israeli (rather than Iranian) imminent military aggression. But the collective gasp in response was not one of surprise at the content of his remarks, but rather at the fact that the quiet part had been said out loud.
Attempts by leadership on both sides of the Zionist-American axis to walk the comment back failed the credibility test. Netanyahu frequently embraces Donald J. Trump as the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. Perhaps what Israel’s premier is really telling us is that while all previous US presidents have been easy for Israel to manage and manipulate, none has been so easy to dupe into launching this long-attempted war.
The idea that this is a war to serve American rather than Israeli interests resonates primarily in three spaces: the gullible, the true believers (especially of end times religious eschatology), or those who are paid-up members of Israel’s echo chamber.
There is also a geopolitical case that is guiding a cohort of DC policymakers – after all, one should not dismiss the agency of deceitful and delusional US officials across multiple administrations – Democrat and Republican. In this iteration, the US addiction to primacy and preponderance is embedded in a paradigm of imperial resurgence, the promise of resurrected colonial glory offered to Europeans by Secretary Rubio at this year’s Munich Security Conference. It is a notion driven by decline-anxiety, which is leading to the metastasization of global instability and insecurity. In this context, the Iran war is a geo-economic and geo-political move to assert hegemony in this strategic hinge area of Eurasia, with China an undeclared target.
Even combined, those echo chambers are not convincing the American public. The transparent “Israel First” impetus has never been so visible. And it is unprecedented for the US to launch a war that is so unpopular on Day 1 – not the nearly 90% support when the US attacked Afghanistan or the over 70% support when it attacked Iraq. Barely a quarter of Americans back this operation, according to polls. There is growing dissent inside the MAGA base and almost zero traction on the Democrat side.
What is more, a war widely considered to be for the benefit of a foreign state is being launched at a time when support for Israel among the American public has hit a historic low point, now expanding deep into core areas of Republican support and with significant signs even of a shift in Evangelical opinion and theology. It is unquestionably the case that this war will serve to accelerate and intensify that trend.
Surely that is a high-risk strategy for Israel given its dependence on the US. One has to assume Netanyahu would be aware of this. Which begs the question – why was Israel so willing to go out on a limb in pushing for this war?