Don’t blame Israel for America defending itself against Iran

When it comes to the reason why Washington has taken action against Iran’s terrorist regime, who are you going to believe? President Donald Trump—the man who ordered the strikes—or California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the writers at The New York Times, and media personalities Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly?

Liberal and leftist publications, pundits and politicians have joined with far-right podcasters to oppose Trump on military strikes on Iran, which the president hopes will lead to the collapse of the regime’s Islamist government. In fact, they disagree on a lot. What they do seem to agree on is that the effort to put an end to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, and its sponsorship of international terrorism, is a bad idea. More than that, they agree that the primary culprit for these actions is the State of Israel, which they say dragged Trump into starting a war for its own interests and not those of the United States.

Trump declares his motivation

Trump is having none of it. He’s been explicit in declaring that it wasn’t the Israelis who pushed him into making his decision. At the White House, the president explained this week that the attempt to portray him as the catspaw of the Israelis was simply wrong.

“We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” Trump said. “They were going to attack if we didn’t do it. They were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand, but Israel was ready, and we were ready.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth agree. The Islamic government and its mullahs have been quite explicit about the fact that they are waging a religious war against both the “great Satan” of the United States and the “little Satan” of Israel for 47 years.

Nevertheless, opponents of various stripes insist that Trump is being pushed around by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

By accusing Israel of strong-arming Trump into doing something that costs American lives and doesn’t make the United States safer, critics of Washington and Jerusalem have initiated charges going far beyond those of ordinary debate about foreign policy.

Of course, like any decision a president makes, the current military action is fair game for debate. So, too, are Israeli policy choices.

Scapegoating Israel

But scapegoating Israel, and by extension, its Jewish supporters, in this particular way is redolent of traditional antisemitic tropes about Jews of dual loyalty, buying political power in the halls of Washington, D.C., and exercising other nefarious behind-the-scenes influence. Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate such wild distortions about the truth of the U.S.-Israel alliance and threat to both countries from Iran, and the equally inflammatory blood libels hurled at the Jewish state since Oct. 7, 2023. Those include accusations that Israel is committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip or is an “apartheid” state, which have fueled a surge of antisemitism around the globe.

The particular motivations of those beating the drum for blaming Israel may differ, though all seem motivated by a mix of ideology and personal ambition.

The base of the Democratic Party has embraced toxic left-wing ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that label Israel and Jews as “white” oppressors over people of color, who are the oppressed. They want to use opposition to the war to defeat Republicans in the midterm elections this November. Newsom, who understands that he is viewed as too centrist by many of his party’s primary voters, is aiming for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 by tilting to the left and smearing Israel with the “apartheid” libel.

On the right, Carlson wants to seize control of the GOP from Trump as part of an isolationist and antisemitic paleo-conservative movement that may not have very much support among party activists and officeholders, but has a broad audience on social media and the internet.

By framing the debate about Trump’s decision as one of Jerusalem pushing Washington into fighting a war adverse to America’s interests, liberal politicians like Newsom and far-right hatemongers such as Carlson aren’t just critiquing Trump. By choosing this particular angle to oppose administration policy, they are seeking to exploit the surge of anti-Zionism and openly antisemitic invective spreading throughout U.S. public discourse since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.

It is entirely true that Netanyahu has long advocated for the West to take action against Tehran, repeatedly warning of the threat that its nuclear ambitions pose to the world. Indeed, there is a cross-party consensus on the issue within the State of Israel, as the overwhelming majority of its citizens understand that the Islamist regime is bent on the destruction of their country as a first step toward the imposition of Islam on the West. A poll conducted by the left-leaning Israel Democracy Institute published this week showed that fully 93% of Jewish Israelis support the airstrikes taking place right now.

Yet the notion that the United States had to be manipulated by its small ally into taking this step is a pernicious myth. While Americans may debate the timing of the military campaign—with polls showing that Republicans support the president’s decision, and most Democrats and independents opposing it—the need to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and opposing its exporting of violence has been a position held by every American president in the 21st century.

Taking Rubio out of context

Trump’s opponents jumped on a statement lifted out of remarks uttered by Rubio that made it seem as if joining the attacks happened because the Israelis had decided to go in anyway, and Washington feared Iranian retaliation and chose not to wait to be hit.

Taken out of context, that bolstered the claim that the joint effort was primarily Israel’s doing. In the same statement, however, Rubio had made it clear that the primary reason for the initiation of the strikes on Iran was that its nuclear program and missile production is a threat to “the safety and security of the world,” and not only to Israel. What’s more, the timing of the decision was as much a sober evaluation of the futility of trying to expect a rational self-interested policy from a clerical regime that refuses to “make geopolitical decisions; they make decisions on the basis of theology—their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one.”

What those harping on Israel’s role in this drama also forget is that Iran has become a key ally of America’s chief geostrategic foe: China. Beijing has kept the Iranian regime afloat when Western sanctions threatened to bring Tehran to its knees by cutting it off from the global economy. China buys up to 90% of Iran’s oil, which consists of as much as 13% of its oil imports, playing a crucial role in its ability to compete with the West while also undermining efforts to force the Islamist regime to give up its nuclear ambitions and terrorism.

The Iranians are also a strategic partner of Russia, another ally of China. The drones they supply to Moscow have been a key factor in allowing it to continue its war against Ukraine, which Trump has tried in vain to end via negotiations.

Still, nothing Trump or Rubio can say is stopping the groundswell of incitement coming from the left and the right that pins the responsibility for the conflict on the Jewish state.

Antisemitic conspiracy-mongering

The Times constructed a narrative in an article published two days after the latest chapter in the long struggle between the United States and Iran’s government, in which Netanyahu plays the featured role of instigator of the conflict. That dovetails with the claims aired by former Fox News personalities Carlson and Kelly on their popular programs, not to mention what was being said by even more extreme figures like podcaster Candace Owens and neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes.

In an effort to make the current fighting sound like a rerun of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq ordered by President George W. Bush, Carlson said the decision to strike Iran was based on “lies,” and that “this happened because Israel wanted it to happen. This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war.” Going further—and doubling down on antisemitic tropes about Jewish manipulation of America—he falsely claimed that the Islamic Republic’s attacks on Arab countries in the region were actually the nefarious work of Mossad agents.

Kelly, who has abandoned her stance as a mainstream figure to appeal to a more extreme audience that clicks on content related to attacks on Jews and Israel, agreed. She said that any U.S. servicemen who were killed in the conflict were “dying for Israel,” not America.

They were, of course, outdone by the increasingly unhinged Owens, who said the war was enabled by a mythical Israeli assassination of Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk last September. Fuentes said Trump’s decision was further evidence that “organized Jewry” runs the country. “The United States is Israel’s bitch,” he said. “We all know that Israel is the boss, that Israel controls our country. Now you know it for a fact.” He concluded his rant by advising his audience to vote for the Democrats in the midterm elections.

While most Democrats weren’t echoing their antisemitic talking points, they, too, were declaring that the war was not merely illegal or wrong, but also linked to Israel. Newsom wasn’t the only one blaming it on Netanyahu. And it isn’t an accident that this comes at a time when growing numbers of members of the Democratic congressional caucus are refusing to accept donations from pro-Israel sources and attacking the AIPAC lobby. Indeed, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) denounced AIPAC this week at the left-wing J Street conference as “anti-American” for advocating for the U.S.-Israel alliance and pushing for action on Iran.

American national interests

All of the incitement against Israel and its supporters ignores the basic fact that every American president, including both Democrats and Republicans, for the past quarter-century has made it clear that preventing a nuclear Iran was a key national security goal. The only differences between them have been about how to stop them. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden thought appeasement would work. But rather than preventing Iran from getting a weapon, with its sunset clauses, the 2015 nuclear pact would have guaranteed that they would eventually get one.

Trump has tried negotiating with Tehran, but rather than seeing an agreement, however weak and ineffectual, as a goal in and of itself, he believed that if a deal didn’t end its nuclear program (the objective that Obama promised in his 2012 foreign-policy debate with presidential opponent Mitt Romney), it was worthless. And instead of allowing the mullahs to prevaricate and delay until they got their way, he was prepared to act to stop them before it was too late.

Though his decision to strike now brings risks, the cost of continuing to wait would be far higher. Stripping the regime of its ability to inflict mayhem in the region via its own military might and its terrorist auxiliaries isn’t just in America’s interests. Doing so now to prevent the mullahs and their minions from using more time to build up their missile program and/or potentially race to a nuclear weapon with whatever material was left after last summer’s 12-day Israeli-American bombing campaign was an imperative.

That doing so helps Israel is not in question. Iran’s leaders have explicitly said they consider a genocidal effort to destroy the Jewish state—calling it a “one-bomb country”—would be worth it, even if it meant catastrophic retaliation from Jerusalem or other parts of the world.

Preventing such a catastrophe (and understanding that Israel is far from the only intended target of Iranian nuclear weapons and missiles) isn’t solely in the interest of the Jewish state. If Iran can achieve its objective of mass murder in Israel, it can do the same with allied Arab countries and those in the West.

At best, that would mean nuclear blackmail being conducted by religious fanatics, furthering the efforts of China and Russia to undermine the West.

At worst, it would present the possibility of nuclear war involving the entire world.

This goes beyond the fact that the alliance with Israel is not merely consonant with American societal norms rooted in the Western tradition, faith and common democratic values. It is also a function of American national interests. The United States never treated Israel as a strategic ally until after its victory in the Six Day-War in June 1967, when it proved it could be an asset to the West rather than a liability. And it wouldn’t be acting in close cooperation with the Israeli military against a common foe unless doing so was in defense of shared strategic interests.

It doesn’t require pressure from Israel or some sort of nefarious plot straight out of the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to convince Americans to take the Iranian threat seriously. Only an American leader who cared nothing about defending his nation’s security interests or preventing a jihadist regime from dominating the Middle East and threatening Europe and Asia would ignore such a threat.

But for leftists and right-wing antisemites who hate Israel, as well as those like Carlson, who clearly seem to be under the influence of the Islamist regime in Qatar, the fact that Iran seeks the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet seems to be an argument in favor of either appeasing or actively aiding them.

You don’t have to be an antisemite to embrace the notion that presidents ought to wait for congressional approval for the use of military force. But no president—and that includes Democrats like Bill Clinton, Obama or Biden—has hesitated to act without a Declaration of War or a direct authorization from Capitol Hill when they believed it to be in America’s best interest, as Trump has done now. Advocates for appeasement of Iran can also cling to the belief in that approach even though doing so has only enriched and empowered a dangerous regime to launch wars, spread terror and move closer to its nuclear goal.

But those who embrace a narrative that efforts to stop Iran can only be the result of an underhanded Israeli plot or Jewish efforts to bribe Congress and the executive branch to ignore American interests and fight an unnecessary “war of choice” are doing something else. They aren’t just distorting the truth about the alliance between the two countries, which is both close and mutually beneficial. They are crossing the line between a rational debate about a crucial policy choice and one that is inextricably linked to traditional tropes of Jew-hatred.

© JNS