We did attack Iran last year at Netanyahu's behest with targetted strikes on their nuclear production. In 2017-2020, there were still adults in charge of the military and around Trump. This time is a very very different situation. Netanyahu through AIPAC has also captured Congress. I don't get it, but they all seem to be fucking beholden to Israel. It makes zero sense, and America suffers at the whims of Israel.
I think AIPAC's influence is diminishing, in that they certainly seem to have lost
many of the Democrats, and I would suspect that the Republicans are considerably more scared of Trump than they are of either AIPAC or Netanyahu. Furthermore, Trump is perfectly capable of putting Netanyahu in his box when he needs to. Remember last year when
Trump made him apologise to Qatar for bombing Dohar and killing a Hamas leader?
More generally, I don't think this is a question of America suffering at the whims of Israel at all. The US has long considered both the Middle East and the Persian Gulf as areas of major geostrategic interest (which of course they are) and has, consequently, long meddled in the affairs of countries in the area, at various times promoting loyal allies and proxies, including, at various times, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Saudi, in order to promote what the US sees as its interests.
Similarly, the regional players attempt to promote their own interests by using their relationship with the US -- Qatar didn't give Trump his very own flying palace out of the goodness of their hearts, after all. They wanted something out of him. I don't blame anyone, including Netanyahu, for doing that.
Meanwhile, Iran and Israel are, and have been since the 1979 Iranian revolution overthrew the Shah, until then a close ally of the US and Israel, deadly enemies. Whatever we may think of Netanyahu or the State of Israel in general, Israel has every reason to want to see an end to the current Iranian regime, who are every bit as bad as the current government of Israel, and the proxies it sponsors like Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis, and every reason to encourage the US to support, both politically and militarily, its efforts against Iran.
I don't blame Israel for trying to manipulate the US to its own advantage, any more than I blame any other government in the area for for doing the same.
The US does what it does in the Middle East and elsewhere because of what it sees as its own interests, and always has done. It often takes deeply misguided decisions that serve only to make a bad situation worse, whether in the Middle East, the Americas or elsewhere, and Trump is clearly more predisposed to take, and easily manipulated into taking, bad decisions than most other presidents. But there's absolutely no reason to believe that Trump, or any other president, would take better decisions, or be a better man, if it wasn't for foreigners manipulating him.
Personally, for once I'm prepared to take Trump at his word:
When asked why he made the decision to go to war with Iran, the President of the United States gave us this: “The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return and the United States found it intolerable, in my opinion, based on what Steve, and Jared and Pete and others were telling me.”
Based on what Steve, and Jared and Pete were telling him. He didn’t say based on intelligence briefings he had reviewed. He didn’t say based on threat assessments from the Pentagon or consultations with military leadership or authorization from Congress. He said Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Pete Hegseth told him it was time. And so America went to war.
That sentence should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country tomorrow. The President just admitted, on camera, that the decision to launch a military operation that has now killed eight Americans, over a thousand Iranians, and 168 people at a girls’ school was made because his son-in-law, his personal envoy, and a former Fox News host told him it was necessary. These are not military strategists. These are not intelligence officials. These are loyalists. And they are the ones deciding who lives and who dies.
At 5:30 this evening, the President of the United States stood at a podium inside his own golf resort in Doral, Florida, and delivered what may be remembered as one of the most disoriented and disturbing press conferences of his presidency. During it, he told a room full of reporters that dead...
heatherdelaneyreese.substack.com
www.hindustantimes.com
abcnews.com
