The debate about the U.S.’s war in Iran is everywhere. It is threatening to split the conservative movement, dividing it between those who see it as Donald Trump’s breaking of a promise against new wars and those who see it as a necessary confrontation long overdue. Progressives, predictably, frame it as another Middle Eastern adventure dragged out of Washington by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Anti-war libertarians call it regime change in a new dress. And across the world, from Brazil to Beijing, London to Karachi, the argument is the same: America is fighting Israel’s war.
But this isn’t true. And the confusion matters, because if you misread what this war is actually about, you will misread everything that follows.
This is not a war about Israel. This is not a war for Israel’s sake. Israel is a beneficiary, a capable and willing local partner, but it is not the reason America is in this fight. America is playing a much bigger game, about more than what happens in the Middle East. The subtext, that Israel exercises outsize influence or “drags Americans into wars they don’t want,” borders on the conspiratorial.
