Don’t Pin Trump’s Iran War on Netanyahu (Or Israel. Or the Jews.) 

“We started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” asserted Joe Kent in his open letter, addressed to President Donald Trump, resigning as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.  

Kent explained that his opposition to the war with Iran compelled him to leave the administration, but he had no criticism of the commander-in-chief. Instead, Kent told Trump he is a victim of a “misinformation campaign” that was “used to deceive you,” perpetrated by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media.” Kent claimed this was “the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.” 

He ended his letter by telling Trump he could still “reverse course” because “you hold the cards.” 

Kent didn’t try to square how Trump held the cards yet succumbed to Israeli pressure. Not only does Trump have the cards to trump (so to speak) the Israeli government, but he has also played them.  

In his first term, Trump pressured Netanyahu—using the threat of a mean tweet—to shelve a plan to annex the Jordan Valley and all West Bank settlements, allowing the president to move ahead on the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and several small Arab nations. And last April, Trump pushed Netanyahu to hold off on attacking Iran, although Trump got on board in June for Operation Midnight Hammer.  

What Kent is trying to accomplish in his letter is classic anti-Semitism, portraying Israel as a singular malevolent and manipulative force in the world, and—by baselessly asserting “the Israelis” drew America into the Iraq War 23 years ago—not just in this moment in time.  

Peter Baker, in the book Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, chronicles how, on his own volition, President George W. Bush was preoccupied with Iraq. As a candidate, Bush reflected on his father’s short war with Iraq and its dictator, Saddam Hussein, concluding, “No one envisioned him still standing. It’s time to finish the task.” In his second week in office, Bush directed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to review military options. Then, two weeks after the September 11 Al Qaeda terrorist attacks, without any evidence of Iraqi involvement, Bush privately told Rumsfeld, “I want you to develop a plan to invade Iraq.” 

Discussion of Israeli involvement in today’s Operation Epic Fury is unavoidable, as it’s an overtly joint U.S.-Israeli operation. To be a critic of the war is to criticize the actions of both governments. And those who want to cast the war as orchestrated by Israel have been given plenty of fodder.  

The New York Times reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied Trump since December and “pushed the president to strike a decisive blow against Iran’s theocratic government,” as well as characterized Trump’s decision as “a victory for Mr. Netanyahu.” 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in remarks to reporters on March 2, went further. Asking himself the question, “Why now?” he answered: “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that 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 and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.”  

Rubio explicitly claimed Israel’s decision to strike forced America’s hand, giving anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists a quote they will dine out on forever. Yet in his attempt to give the veneer of an imminent threat justifying Trump’s itchy trigger finger, Rubio offered circular logic that does not loop in Netanyahu’s lobbying campaign. The Times reported that in December, Netanyahu traveled to Mar-a-Lago and “asked for the president’s approval for Israel to hit Iran’s missile sites in the coming months,” not that Netanyahu was determined to strike without Trump’s agreement. And in January, as Trump was issuing threats to Iran on social media, it was Netanyahu asking Trump to wait until his military was better positioned. Trump agreed and moved American military assets into place.  

Trump did agree to diplomatic talks with Iran that began on February 6. Five days later, according to the Times, Netanyahu went to the Oval Office because he “wanted to make sure that the new diplomatic effort did not undermine the plans.” But we have little reason to believe he had much to worry about.  

On February 13, Trump expressed deep skepticism that the talks would bear fruit because “For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking.” Asked by a reporter if he wanted “regime change,” Trump replied, “It seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” Asked what in Iran’s nuclear program a military strike would “go after,” considering Trump deemed it “obliterated” after Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump ominously hinted, “If we do it, that would be the least of the mission.” 

If diplomacy were to get in the way, the breakthrough announced by Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, who was mediating the talks, would have done the trick. On February 27, Al Busaidi told CBS News that “a peace deal is within our reach” in part because Iran agreed to “zero accumulation, zero stockpiling” of enriched uranium. If Trump was bargaining in good faith—if Netanyahu had reason to worry—he would have at least continued talks and further explored the offer.  

Yet on that very same day, according to Reuters, Trump gave the green light for Operation Epic Fury. In fact, by that point, “Trump already had approved the idea of the United States carrying out a military operation against Iran,” even though he “had not yet decided when or under what circumstances.” It might have begun sooner, but an earlier planned date was “scuttled because of bad weather.” The final timing was prompted by a call to Trump from Netanyahu, “less than 48 hours” before the attack began, discussing an intelligence determination that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, having made a deliberately fatalistic decision not to hide in bunkers, would be hosting at his Tehran compound in broad daylight on the morning of February 28. (Tehran time is seven-and-a-half hours ahead of Washington, D.C.) Still, Reuters reported that the evidence “does not suggest that Netanyahu forced Trump to go to war,” only “that the Israeli leader was an effective advocate.”  

Does Netanyahu deserve harsh criticism for militant expansionism, collective punishment, and destruction of the Israel-Palestine peace process? Absolutely. Does he own his share of responsibility for the war of choice on Iran and its consequences? Absolutely. But Netanyahu holds no leverage over Trump and did not rob Trump of agency. He needs Trump, not the other way around.  

Talking cavalierly about the Israeli government secretly manipulating the United States puts the Jewish diaspora at risk, similar to how Trump’s references to the “China Virus” during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes, and Islamophobic sentiment fanned by leading conservatives after 9/11 did the same regarding anti-Muslim hate crimes. Just this month, we have witnessed anti-Semitic attacks in London, Toronto, and suburban Detroit. The need for precision in our political rhetoric is urgent.  

Kent, who has longstanding ties to white nationalists and neo-Nazis, is not interested in precision. After resigning, he ran to far-right figures Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly to spread a ludicrous conspiracy theory that the Israeli government may have assassinated Charlie Kirk, and he wasn’t able to thoroughly investigate it. This is someone trying to spread anti-Semitic tropes in his resignation letter and his subsequent remarks. The rest of us need not extol his letter as a noble protest or echo his libel that the Israeli tail is wagging the Trump dog.  

I believe the Trump-Netanyahu war on Iran is egregious, and I fear the horrible precedents it could set. But Trump chose to launch it. As he did before, he could have either stopped Netanyahu from proceeding or, at the very minimum, limited the scope of any Israeli operations simply by not joining forces. To insinuate otherwise is to portray Jews as conniving manipulators with supreme geopolitical influence. As with most conspiracy theories, actions attributed to shadowy forces turn out to be the result of individual acts of hubris, stupidity, or both.  

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