Iran: The Two Wars

There are two wars taking place in Iran – one being fought by the United States, the other by Israel.

For the U.S., the war against Iran is a war of distraction.

For Israel, the war against Iran – and Gaza and Lebanon – is also a war of distraction as well as a war to destroy an Islamic challenge to its regional hegemony.

Donald Trump’s second presidency is faltering.  A month after taking office, in February 2025, his approval rating was 48 percent (and his disapproval rating was 43 percent). A year later, his approval rating has fallen to 38 percent (and his disapproval rating increased to 59 percent).

Benjamin Netanyahu, not unlike Trump, is suffering politically. According to a March CNN report, “nearly 70% of Israelis in some polls indicate they believe Netanyahu should step down.”  In addition, he still faces a corruption trial.  Orchestrating a war with Iran may indeed postpone a day of reckoning – but for how long?

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Defining features of Trump’s presidency speak for themselves: his anti-immigrant campaign – as exemplified in what took place in Minneapolis, MN — has run aground; his tariff program has been rejected by his Supreme Court loyalists; and then there is the Epstein scandal, which the Trump administration is doing everything it can to suppress.

Making matters worse, Trump’s electoral promises to improve Americans’ standard of living, especially involving issues associated with “affordability,” is failing.  The only winners of Trump’s presidency are the super-rich, who are only getting richer and the oil and gas industry.

Trump’s policies are failing, so what could he do?  Faced with his faltering domestic and foreign policies, Trump has partnered with Israel’s prime minister,

Netanyahu, to attack Iran.  U.S. Sec. of State Marco Rubio made this clear when he insisted:

“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone … they were going to respond and respond against the United States.  We knew there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Israel, together with Saudi Arabia, drew Trump into the war with Iran.  And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had Trump’s ear calling for war.

As NPR reported on March 6^th, “Just 36% approve of how Trump is handling Iran, and a majority (55%) thinks Iran either represents a minor threat or no threat at all to the United States.”

The U.S. has been targeting Iran since 1953 when the CIA – together with Britain’s MI6 – organized a coup against the democratically elected Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.  The Iranian Revolution of 1979 sparked a hostage crisis in which 52 Americans were held for 444 days, which has shadowed U.S.-Iran relations for the last half-century.

Since its creation in 1948, Israel has been the U.S.’s pawn in the Middle East  and the U.S. has,  up until 2026,  invested about $200 billion to facilitate Israel’s dominance.  According to a 2023 Congressional report, “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.”  It adds, since ’48, “the United States has provided Israel $174 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.”

Brown University’s Costs of War Project reports that between the Hamas attacks of October 2023 and September 2025, the U.S. has provided more than $21 billion in military aid to Israel.

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Like Israel’s unending war against Gaza and the Palestinian people, one can expect that even if Trump declares victory and the war over with Iran, Israel will not end its war against Iran.  The same spirit of endless victory that followed Trump’s Gaza peace plan — in which about 500 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military — will likely define Israel’s ongoing “peace” with Iran and Lebanon.

Not unlike Trump’s war effort as an effort to distract from his ongoing political failures, Israel’s Netanyahu is also using the war as a distraction.  In June 22, 2025, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran’s (alleged) nuclear facilities as part of Israel’s Twelve-Day War that began June 13^th.  Sec. of State Rubino echoed Trump’s celebratory spirit about the attacks, declaring the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities.  So, why a follow-up attack on the same facilities in nine months?

As Jamal Kanj recently wrote for CounterPunch:

“This is not America’s war. The decision was made elsewhere, and timed elsewhere, fought on behalf of someone else to serve the strategic objectives of a foreign country. Washington has subordinated the American national interest to the tribal agenda of Israeli-firsters inside the Beltway. Simply put: Tel Aviv chooses the war, and Washington pays the bill.”

Sadly, two wars but just one victim – and for what?

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