I Hear Frighteningly Familiar Syllables

It is said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. This week brought an acute sense of déjà vu as numerous talking heads and members of Congress eagerly lined up to convince the American people that we have no other choice but to join Israel in its war with Iran. For anyone old enough to remember Sept. 11, 2001, and the disastrous forever wars that followed, it should have felt disturbingly familiar.

After days and then weeks of cable news endlessly replaying planes hitting the towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, the American public was hungry for revenge. The whole thing was murky and convoluted, but despite 15 of the 19 hijackers being from Saudi Arabia, we ultimately invaded Afghanistan, where a terrorist group called Al-Qaeda was said to be supporting Osama Bin Laden, son of a wealthy Saudi developer and reported mastermind of the attacks. 

Twenty years later, we left the country no better than we found it. Nearly 2,500 U.S. soldiers lost their lives, while countless more were injured, maimed, and/or afflicted with PTSD. The total cost of the war, including long-term obligations, is estimated at around $6 trillion. Bush neocons who had, just before W’s election, expressed a deep desire to radically expand military operations in the region, seized on the moment to sell the Americans on an urgent necessity to simultaneously attack Iraq and oust its leader, Saddam Hussein, who we were told possessed weapons of mass destruction he was intent to use in an imminent attack on the U.S. 

Although Bush cosplayed as a fighter pilot while declaring “mission accomplished,” just six weeks after the U.S. invasion, the Iraq War lasted eight years, nearly 5,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, and the total costs, including long-term obligations, are estimated to be nearly $2 trillion. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, and well over a million more were displaced. It turns out Saddam Hussein never had WMDs, and the Bush administration officials who were telling us he did knew as much, hence the common protest chants of Bush lied, people died.

While both of these wars raged, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (then leader of the opposition party) pressed the United States to also invade Iran on the same premise. He found many supportive American politicians among both the neoconservatives and neoliberals in Washington who receive gobs of money and free trips from AIPAC and can be reliably counted on to fall in line for whatever military operation Israeli officials have in mind. For his part, Bush had already deemed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an "axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union address. 

Bush is a fundamentalist Christian who, like about one-third of the U.S. Congress, believes in a prophecy that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant will lead to the rapture and a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return to Earth and establish a kingdom for Christians. The Jews all die in that story; however, "stand with Israel" evangelical Christians urge it on so they might meet their maker sooner rather than later. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee are both on record saying they are fully confident the end of times will occur during their lifetime.  Johnson is 53 and Huckabee is 69, so time is running out.  The recent letter from Huckabee to Trump reveals his disturbing perspective. 

While running for president in 2008, Senator John McCain responded to an audience question about potential U.S. military action against Iran by asking if they had heard the new Beach Boys' song, singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," to the tune of the band’s song Barbara Ann. Thankfully, McCain lost, and we were spared further military adventurism, although we would carry on in Afghanistan for three more presidential administrations. 

In 2015, the United States led a nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that limited the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions. The JCPOA was finalized ten years ago next month between Iran, the U.S., China, Russia, the U.K., and the European Union. This enraged Netanyahu, who had appeared before Congress months earlier, again warning that Iran was on the verge of a nuclear weapon, could not be trusted, and represented a danger to the free world. Netanyahu and other Zionists spent a considerable amount of effort convincing Trump that his nemesis, Obama, had made a grave error in entering the JCPOA, which ultimately led to Trump exiting the deal in 2018.

Now, Netanyahu is telling us that Iran is once again on the verge of developing nuclear weapons that its leaders are intent on using not only against Israel but against the U.S., and, just like that, our attempt to secure another nuclear enrichment deal with the country looks off the table. I’m 50 years old. The first time that Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Iran, a signatory of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, I was in high school! There is one Middle Eastern country that is not a member of the treaty and not subject to IAEA inspection, which does have a secret nuclear program. Its name is Israel, and it has become quite clear that it opposes a nuclear deal with Iran simply because it would eliminate its justification for the regime change war its leaders have been after for decades.

The United States has had plenty of experience with regime change wars—all of which have been disastrous. Ironically, today’s Iraq is essentially a Shia-Muslim governed state over which Iran has the most significant influence precisely because the Bush administration did not understand the complexities of the country and cultures it was dealing with, and badly bungled its efforts to install a Western-friendly regime. Our support for regime change in Syria did not go much better, and our obsession with removing Assad because he was allied with Russia saw him replaced by former elements of Al-Qaeda when a similar vacuum was created by his fall.  

What’s more, we would also do well to remember that the current regime in Iran rose up in the decades following a U.K./U.S.-led 1953 coup to overthrow the country’s democratically elected leader and install a Western puppet regime all because Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh wanted to nationalize the country’s oil resources after the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company refused to comply with an audit, an outcome Brittish Petroleum would not abide.

We have traded democracy for the Ayatollah in Iran, Gaddafi for a failed state in Libya, an autocratic Sunni for an autocratic Shia in Iraq, the Taliban for some corrupt warlords, back to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Assad for Al-Qaeda in Syria, at a cost of tens of trillions of dollars and more than a million human lives.  Meanwhile, China has been buying our debt, coaxing American companies to share their tech and train its workforce, and buying goodwill all over the eastern world via money and other forms of soft power. Who is playing the long game more effectively?

The United States has provided Israel with approximately $250 billion in inflation-adjusted military aid since 1959. In just the first year of its war in Gaza, the U.S. provided Israel with just under $18 billion in military aid. This support has continued, even as abusive, illegal and at times utterly depraved tactics Israeli forces are using came to light, including the deliberate execution of little Palenstinian girls and the systemic sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including rape, gang-rape, sexualized torture and genital mutilation against both male and female prisoners.

When IDF reservists were finally arrested and charged with forced sodomy after a video of a male-on-male sexual assault at one of the IDF prison camps was leaked, many Israelis, including elected officials, rioted, with one Israeli newspaper columnist arguing on television that such measures should not only be allowed but systematized. It was later reported that the arrests were not about accountability, but rather that the Military Advocate General had made the decision in an "effort to shield them and the armed forces from international tribunals."

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded "an immediate criminal investigation" into who leaked the video of the assault, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that "any action is permissible if it is undertaken for the security of the state." When asked by another member of the Israeli Knesset, it was legitimate "to insert a stick into a person’s rectum," Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, responded, "If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!"

In March, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that the U.S. "continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003." This week, President Trump brushed off Gabbard’s assessment, saying, “I don’t care what she said, I believe they were very close.” Vice President J.D. Vance added that “a lot has changed since March,” but, like everyone else involved, offered no further details or evidence. Visions of Colin Powell’s shameful testimony on Iraq’s WMD program were immediately called to mind.

Israel’s latest attack on Iran came while President Trump was telling the American people that he was very close to making a deal with the country. In fact, Trump’s unofficial Secretary of State, Steve Witkoff, was scheduled to meet with Iranian leaders just days later in Oman. However, Israel’s attacks successfully targeted the Iranian leaders that the real estate investor turned Middle East envoy was supposed to meet with. Needless to say, the talks did not happen. Just like in 2015, Netanyahu does not want a nuclear deal. He wants a regime change war and started one ahead of those scheduled talks because a deal is the one thing that might keep the U.S. out of his war directly.

Many Americans have taken an “if Israel wants a war, let them fight it” attitude. But let’s be clear. Israel cannot go it alone against a country ten times its size without U.S. involvement. Netanyahu wants the United States to use its bunker buster bombs in an effort to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facility in Fordo. Those munitions are designed to be dropped by our B-2 Stealth Bomber, which would require the use of a U.S. pilot, pulling the United States fully into a conflict that could quickly escalate. Those bombers and other assets have already begun mobilizing in the region. We also have many other military assets in the region, several of which are relatively soft targets and likely to be attacked in retaliation.

It is crucial that Americans understand the enormous risks involved in such a war. For starters, it is highly debatable whether the bunker busters would even be effective in such a mission, which might be why the Trump administration is reportedly considering using tactical nukes to get the job done. While bunker busters are powerful bombs designed to penetrate before detonating, we learned all too well in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan that they definitely have their limits, and Fordo’s terrain, as well as the facility's depth, would certainly put them to the test if the mission was really to destroy the nuclear site. But, again, it is not. The mission is to pull the U.S. into the conflict so that our weaponry and purse strings can be used to deliver regime change for Netanyahu.

We must also consider the economic costs that could arise if a major oil producer is taken offline and/or Iran fulfills its threats to close the highly strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a third of the world’s energy is regularly transported. Coupled with the deleterious effects of Trump’s trade war, the U.S. economy could very easily take a nosedive. We also need to think about our current ability to fund such a war. We were not facing a debt crisis when we launched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early aughts, nor were we paying a premium on bonds. Trump’s massive tax giveaway, his record addition to the debt, and record-breaking military spending mean that the more money we have to print to fight Netanyahu’s war, the greater the eventual cost.

Largely because of sanctions that were put back in place after Trump exited the JCPOA, China buys about 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports. As we learned after Trump attempted to use tariffs as a trade war weapon against China, our Far Eastern competitors have much better cards in terms of retaliation, including a near monopoly on refining rare earth minerals used in many of the products we manufacture—including our military weapons. As we learned from the supply chain issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, everything from semiconductors to aviation parts can also impact the readiness of a military that increasingly relies on sourcing parts and materials from the Far East. 

If China sees chaos in Iran as a major energy threat, it might respond similarly to the U.S. when Saudi Arabia got nervous following Saddam’s foray into Kuwait, either directly or by proxy. If the U.S. becomes bogged down in another prolonged military conflict, and does so while being more vulnerable economically, China might also become more aggressive in other strategic locations, including Taiwan, the South China Sea, and waterways related to the Panama Canal. Then there is always Russia, which would almost certainly be emboldened in its quest to acquire land from Ukraine and might even look to other former Soviet states, while U.S. weapon stockpiles are further drawn down.  It is also worth noting that Russia and Pakistan—both of which have nuclear weapons—pledged support at the United Nations this week, condemning Israel's illegal strike. 

Finally, as we have seen all too often, the outcome is almost inevitable to be worse than our current position. Even if the Mullahs fall, there is no telling who will replace them or which other dominoes may fall as a result. Economically, we could easily find ourselves in a situation similar to the Great Depression, characterized by mass unemployment (further accelerated by AI), and persistently high food and energy prices for years to come, while the U.S. dollar declines and inflation surges. And again, for what? So that the bloodthirsty leader of some country halfway across the globe can have his precious war, stay in power, and out of jail? No thanks.  Trump was supposed to be a "no war" president. It is time for him to stand up to Netanyahu and prove it.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch is also the author of three novels and a short story collection available here.