The Day Israel Lost America [View all]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/the-day-israel-lost-america.html

No paywall link
https://archive.li/LAaZi

Years from now, February 28, 2026, might be remembered as the day Israel finally lost the American public.

The Iran war, launched by the U.S. on that date and executed in direct coordination with Israel, is predictably a catastrophe, unleashing deadly chaos throughout the Middle East. American bombs are slaughtering Iranian civilians. Iranian rockets are terrorizing the Gulf States. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of the world’s oil flows, is functionally closed, and energy prices are spiraling. At least six American troops are dead.

Invoking the quagmire of the Iraq War makes a great deal of sense at the moment, but the more chilling analog might be Vietnam. Iran is vast and has a fraught and byzantine political culture; Tehran lies at the center, far from any border, and the country is home to enormous mountains, deserts, and steppes. If Donald Trump makes the long-term troop commitments that the hawks in his administration desire, many more Americans are going to die. And there will still be no democracy in Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death won’t readily deliver it.

Why are we there? What are we doing? A majority of Americans are horrified or, at minimum, bewildered. It was Marco Rubio, the powerful secretary of State, who spoke the truth to reporters on Monday. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio said. “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.”

The comments made a dark reality plain: It was Israel, not just the U.S., that wanted Khamenei dead and were agitating for the sort of all-out war that past presidents, Republican and Democratic alike, understood carried too many risks to be worthwhile. The Iranian regime is vile and undeniably a state sponsor of terrorism; Israel, a sworn enemy of Iran, has reason to want regime change. But it’s been up to the U.S., as best as it could, to maintain a delicate balance in a volatile region. As dangerous as Iran might be, a nuclear attack was nowhere near imminent. After last year’s bombings, Trump boasted that the U.S. had destroyed whatever nuclear capacity Iran might possess. Barack Obama’s diplomacy — yielding the Iran nuclear accords — had found real success, but Trump tore them up because the Israeli government and its backers in the U.S. hate the idea of negotiating with Iran.

*snip*