When a nation starts a war for dubious reasons and then suffers the consequences, there is inevitably a search for scapegoats. Conspiracy theories abound. It happened after World War I, when the favorite villains were “merchants of death” and international bankers. It happened again after the Iraq War, which some blamed on “neoconservatives” and Halliburton, the oil-services giant led by Dick Cheney before he became vice president.
It’s now happening with President Donald Trump’s foolhardy war against Iran. Operation Epic Fury may yet produce some positive results, but for now, it has gone spectacularly awry. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and targeted energy infrastructure across the region, causing oil prices to skyrocket and instability to spread. As so often happens, the Jews — or, if you prefer a polite euphemism, “Zionists” or “the Israel lobby” — make a handy fall guy.
What the right-wing fringe once whispered — that this was “a war for Israel” — suddenly burst onto the front pages last week thanks to Joe Kent’s resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. In a blistering public letter, Kent wrote that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation” and that “we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
The first part of his statement is clearly true. As Tulsi Gabbard, one of Trump’s intelligence chiefs, informed Congress last week, the mullahs had made “no efforts … to rebuild their enrichment capability” and were likely years away from having long-range missilescapable of reaching the U.S. homeland. Yet that doesn’t mean Kent’s second claim is accurate, even if came from a former administration insider.
Recall that Kent is the same guy who claimed that the FBI could have been responsible for orchestrating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. He traffics in conspiracies. In his resignation letter, he kept them coming by blaming Israel for the Iran and Iraq wars. He added that the fight against Islamic State, in which his wife was killed while serving in Syria in 2019, was also “manufactured by Israel.” In reality, Israeli officials warned the Bush administration against invading Iraq. And, needless to say, they didn’t concoct the Islamic State threat — which, unlike the current war, led to the mobilization of a massive international coalition.
It’s true the U.S. and Israel are both waging war against Tehran, a campaign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long agitated for. But it wasn’t until Trump came to power that the U.S. finally agreed to attack Iran — first last June and then again on Feb. 28. That’s Trump’s responsibility. He could have said no.
While the president is surrounded by pro-Israel voices and supported by pro-Israel donors, he is also close to Gulf states that generally opposed the attack. Caught in the crossfire, many Gulf Arabs now feel that their investment in Trump — Qatar gave him a $400 million airplane and Emirati investors sank $500 million into his cryptocurrency company — isn’t paying off.
Why did Trump listen to allies in Israel, not in the Gulf? Why does he do anything? It’s always a bit of a mystery. The best explanation I’ve seen comes from Nate Swanson, who was forced out last year as the Iran expert on the National Security Council.
In an essay for Foreign Affairs, published four days before the war began, Swanson wrote: “Trump seems interested, in no particular order, in demonstrating the prowess of the U.S. military, strengthening his negotiating position, showing he was serious when he vowed in a January Truth Social post to protect Iranian protesters, and differentiating his approach from President Barack Obama’s.” Swanson added that the president became overconfident about rejecting the advice of the foreign-policy establishment because he had done so before — e.g., moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — and gotten away with it.
But in trying to manufacture a casus belli with Iran, Trump and his aides inadvertently helped foster conspiracy theories about Israel. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on March 2 that the U.S. had to attack Iran because Israel was going to strike anyway, and, when it did so, Iran would hit U.S. forces. The administration then tried to walk this back — and rightly so. It’s absurd to imagine that Netanyahu would have bombed Iran if Trump had told him not to and threatened to withhold military aid if he did.
Then last week, Trump claimed he had nothing to do with Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field, which led to Iranian retaliation against a major Qatari natural-gas refinery and sent energy prices surging. “The United States knew nothing about this particular attack,” Trump wrote on social media, even though Israeli officials told journalists they had informed their U.S. counterparts beforehand.
Trump never accepts responsibility for any failure; it’s always someone else’s fault. He’s already blaming European allies for the U.S. failure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “Woke generals” could be next. How long before he throws Israel under the bus too?
The more the Iran war is blamed on Israel, the more it will do to turn public opinion against the Jewish state. A recent Gallup poll already found that more Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis. According to a YouGov poll, younger Republicans are turning against the Jewish state — a trend that’s doubtless been driven by Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Now imagine what will happen if American motorists blame Israel — however unfairly — for the high cost of gasoline.
The blowback from Trump’s ill-advised war is just beginning.
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