THREAD: Various reports suggest that the United States is debating direct participation in Israel’s war against Iran. In addition to the massive supply of arms and funds to its Israeli proxy, the mobilization of anti-missile defenses to protect it from Iranian retaliation, and the provision of diplomatic and political support, this would mean that US forces would become directly involved in attacking Iranian territory and assets. How did we get here?
Since Israel launched its war of aggression on Iran, various theories have been floated about the role of the US. One popular interpretation is that the Trump administration’s very different approach to Tehran relative to that during its first term was all a ruse. A joint US-Israeli decision to attack Iran was purportedly made from the very outset, and the negotiations were convened in order to lull Tehran into a false sense of security, and were never meant to be serious. In other words, everything went exactly as planned. This strikes me as excessively simplistic.
When the second Trump administration assumed office, the failure of its previous approach was visibly apparent. Its 2018 renunciation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear agreement, enabled Iran to become a nuclear threshold state, with possession of a nuclear weapon essentially just one political decision away. While the policy of “maximum pressure” that replaced the JCPOA had produced a permanent and growing economic crisis in Iran, and contributed to anti-government sentiment and protests, they affected neither the coherence and political will of the Iranian leadership, nor significantly weakened its grip over the country.
Given Iran’s status as a nuclear threshold state and the significant technological advances it had made in response to the US’s 2018 repudiation of the JCPOA, and Washington’s commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by any means necessary, this left the Trump administration with only two options and little time to choose between them: negotiate an agreement with Tehran to ensure it does not and cannot acquire a nuclear weapon, or go to war to achieve this result before key JCPOA provisions expire in October 2025. The latter date is important, because it presents the final opportunity for the JCPOA’s European signatories (France, Britain, and Germany) to re-impose international sanctions on Iran without the need for Russian or Chinese consent.
Back in Washington, the new administration was internally divided on how to deal with Iran. Key officials, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, CENTCOM commander Michael Kurilla, and Trump acolytes like Senator Lindsey Graham, wanted to attack Iran as soon and hard as possible, preferably immediately after Trump’s 20 January inauguration ceremonies concluded. Others, recognizing that anti-interventionist forces now constituted an important and growing Republican constituency, were keen to avoid yet another economically costly, unpopular, and bloody “forever war” in the Middle East. Specialists who examined the matter additionally concluded that Iran’s nuclear program could no longer be destroyed by air power alone, and that a successful effort would ultimately require regime change in Tehran, something which could well make Iraq look like the cakewalk the neo-cons had confidently predicted about that previous self-inflicted debacle.
As for Trump, who is seen as instinctively well-disposed towards Israel, against Iran, but also said to have an aversion to initiating wars, he clearly lacks the ideological fervor of a Joe Biden. Trump invariably prioritizes his personal, family, and political interests above all else, and these notwithstanding is ultimately loyal to nothing and no one.
Within the Middle East, Israel remained the most vociferous advocate of attacking Iran and putting an end to its Islamic Republic, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had high hopes the second Trump administration would be an eager partner in this endeavor and could be easily persuaded if it proved recalcitrant.
Washington’s Arab client regimes, who during the first Trump administration were at least as eager about Iranian regime change as Israel, had by contrast had a change of heart. Courtesy of Iran and Yemen’s AnsarAllah, better known as the Houthis, the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in particular, concluded not only that war with Iran would expose them to enormous destruction, but also that the US and Israel were incapable and/or unwilling to successfully defend and protect them. By the time Trump returned to the White House, they had not only themselves normalized relations with Tehran, but were using their influence with Washington to counsel against a devastating conflict.
Amid the cacophony of contradictory proclamations emerging from Washington regarding Iran, Trump in March surprised friend and foe by sending a letter, later made public, to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which he expressed a desire for negotiations and threatened military force if Iran refused. Iran responded that it rejected Trump’s bullying tactics and the US policy of “maximum pressure”, and would therefore not engage in direct negotiations, but would be open to indirect talks hosted by Oman.
The following month Trump, with a dejected and confused Netanyahu sitting beside him at the White House, announced that US-Iranian negotiations would commence within several days in the Omani capital, Muscat, and that the US delegation would be led by his envoy and de facto Secretary of State, Steve Witkoff.
Netanyahu, who believed he had been summoned to Washington to negotiate an Israeli exemption from tariffs recently announced by the US president, had an additional reason for worry. Trump had caught wind that Netanyahu was scheming behind his back with Mike Waltz, the US National Security Advisor, and other Iran hawks in the administration, to promote war against Iran. By the end of the month, Waltz was sent to pasture at the United Nations in New York.
The US-Iranian negotiations which commenced in mid-April thus took place amidst fierce competition within the Trump administration about the direction of US policy, but one in which the non-interventionists appeared to have the upper hand. For Trump the big prize was avoiding the prospect of another US war in the Middle East, and the personal satisfaction of succeeding where his nemesis Biden – who rather than rejoining the JCPOA tried to force Iran to accept a fundamentally different agreement – had failed. For Iran the main attraction was a US willingness to lift its primary sanctions placed directly on Iranian entities, as a result of which anyone interested in doing business with the United States avoided doing so with Iran.
During the negotiations, conducted over several encounters in Oman and Italy, Washington’s red line was an ironclad, verifiable guarantee that Iran would not and could not possess a nuclear bomb. Iran’s was to retain its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to have a civilian nuclear program within its own territory, including the ability to enrich uranium at low levels for civilian objectives.
Although the US and Iranian bottom lines were not mutually exclusive, they did leave a key issue unresolved: how to dispose of the several hundred kilograms of highly-enriched uranium Iran had produced after Trump in 2018 abandoned the JCPOA. Witkoff demanded these be removed from Iranian territory as was the case in 2015 pursuant to the JCPOA. Iran for its part insisted the stock remain within the country under international supervision, at least for the foreseeable future, as an insurance policy in case Washington once again reneged on its agreement.
Although the issue remained unresolved, it was not one which couldn’t be settled by further talks. That would emerge with the US demand that Iran cease all uranium enrichment on its territory.
When the US approach to Iran commenced, Israel together with Iran hawks in the Trump administration began promoting what they called the “Libya model”. This referred to Libya’s agreement, in 2003, to comprehensively and fully dismantle and renounce its entire nuclear program, something easily achieved because it was very rudimentary. But Libyan strongman Mu’ammar Qaddafi had done so in order to avoid an invasion of his country at a time when Bush, most of his countrymen, and their lapdog in Downing Street were still smugly exclaiming “Mission Accomplished!”. In the end Qaddafi’s compliance counted for nothing, and NATO gleefully took the lead in deposing him after an uprising in Libya erupted in 2011. A year later, Qaddafi was as dead as Saddam Hussein.
Israel and its Amen corner in Washington deliberately advocated the so-called Libya model precisely because they knew it would be a non-starter in Tehran, whose leaders had no intention of signing their own death warrant. Trump also viewed as saboteurs, and several were silenced or fired.
Their next campaign centered around the objective of prohibiting Iran from pursuing uranium enrichment, including at minimal grades for civilian purposes, on Iranian soil. Iran was determined to continue doing so, not only because this fell within its NPT rights, but also in order not to lose the knowledge and scientific experience it had gained over the years. In order to bridge this new gap Tehran and Washington exchanged drafts on the establishment of a regional consortium, in which uranium for civilian use would be jointly pursued by Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and potentially others under IAEA supervision. The Iranian position would see it conducted in Iran, the US outside it.
The Israelis and US hawks at this point appear to have convinced Trump and Witkoff that compelling Iran to end enrichment within its territory was both a necessary and achievable objective, and they fell for it. Both began issuing belligerent statements, in public that Iran had to accept the US demand or else. The Iranians, needless to say, would have none of it, and accused Witkoff of shifting the goalposts.
One might have expected Witkoff to have learned from the last time Israel convinced him to shift goalposts. In February, it may be recalled, he accepted Netanyahu’s appeals to rewrite the January Israel-Hamas agreement, several weeks after it had been endorsed and come into force, and threatened the Palestinians with severe consequences if they didn’t acquiesce. It was an offer designed for rejection, was promptly refused, and paved the way for intensified genocide and the thousands of additional dead since March.
Having created a crisis in the US-Iran negotiations, Israel and its US partners made their next move. With Trump still seeking to secure an agreement and avoid another US war, he was this time persuaded that an Israeli attack on Iran, akin to its elimination of the Hizballah leadership in Lebanon last year, would make the Iranians more pliable and leave them with no choice but to accept whatever Washington demanded of them. Trump, who is neither particularly smart or knowledgeable about Iran, endorsed the proposal. He may well have also been persuaded that conducting the attack on the day after his meaningless 60-day deadline for negotiations expired, would convince the Iranians he was a tough negotiator who meant business.
In my estimation, this is the background to recent developments, and it successfully bought the White House on board. In other words, there was indisputably US-Israeli collusion to attack Iran, but it is of fairly recent provenance. Washington did not devise Trump’s approach to Khamenei, and multiple rounds of negotiations with Iran, as camouflage for a military strike that was always the objective. But once it was persuaded that Israeli aggression would serve its actual objective of an agreement with Iran, it participated fully.
Thus far, the US has made it a point to characterize this as an Israeli campaign in which Washington is not directly participating, and has warned Iran of serious consequences if it attacks US installations or assets, while not making similar threats regarding Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel.
For their part, the Iranians have vociferously denounced and condemned the US for its perfidy, but thus far refrained from attacking US targets and limited themselves to threats.
Israel and its devotees in Washington are now engaged in a campaign to convince Trump that the direct participation of the US military in the Israeli campaign is required to “finish the job”. Quickly and painlessly. In their telling the Iranian leadership and Iranian armed forces are in disarray and teetering on the edge, and the population eager and desperate for salvation delivered by Israeli and US high explosives.
On the one hand this reflects the reality that Israel lacks the capacity to achieve Iranian denuclearization or regime change on its own. Yet it also indicates Israel’s concern that Iran, in contrast to Hizballah, successfully absorbed and overcame Israel’s devastating opening salvo, is now retaliating with escalating missile and drone barrages that are making their way through the densest missile defenses on the planet, and appears to have the will and capacity to prosecute Israel’s worst nightmare: a prolonged confrontation in which Israel is also targeted on a daily basis.
The fate of Israel’s war to preserve its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East hangs in the balance. It remains unclear if Trump will decide that Netanyahu failed to deliver his end of the bargain and doesn’t want to be associated with this failure, or will turn on Netanyahu and his US minions for having bamboozled him, or will decide that Israel’s war needs to succeed because the survival of the Islamic Republic and particularly its nuclear program will have intolerable geopolitical consequences for Washington, not least with respect to China.
If the US decides to continue with the policy of supporting Israel without joining the attack on Iran, its posture will become increasingly untenable with the passage of time. And as the days potentially turn into weeks, and the death and destruction inflicted on Iran continues to mount, it will also become increasingly difficult for Iran to pretend it is only fighting Israel.
There has already been considerable criticism within Iran that it was on the receiving end of an Israeli war precisely because it showed restraint in responding to Israel’s provocations in April and October of last year. If it now decides that it runs a similar risk vis-à-vis Washington, it could end up forcing Trump’s hand.
The rapidity of developments will require a quick decision in Washington. Even with Biden gone, under circumstances such as these unconditional support for Israel and total impunity for its actions remains the default option of US foreign policy.
With Trump consistently refusing to restrain Israel, he is, ironically given his brand, likely to soon find himself wishing he was instead invading Iraq. END
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