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On Monday evening The Washington Post reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prioritized his own geopolitical agenda toward Iran (based on an unprovoked military offensive) to the detriment of President Donald Trump’s geopolitical agenda toward Iran (based in diplomatic negotiations). Despite the fact that attacking Iran would hinder Washington’s ongoing negations with Tehran, Israel launched its unprovoked offensive anyhow. To add insult to injury, Israel even sought to drag the U.S. into war alongside it after ruining its efforts toward peace.
Importantly, President Trump’s agenda in the Middle East specifically entails no war with Iran but included numerous diplomatic meetings between officials from Washington and Tehran in order to get a new Iran nuclear deal – a peaceful method of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed country. Conversely, Netanyahu was seeking war, according to The Washington Post report:
U.S. intelligence agencies beginning late last year picked up on Israeli preparations for an attack and warned Washington policymakers that Israel was likely to strike in the first six months of 2025.
But Netanyahu’s plan was unexpectedly delayed when he was summoned to Washington to meet Trump and told that the United States would enter direct negotiations with Iran to solve the problem diplomatically. The prime minister’s strong inclination to strike, however, remained unchanged, said a person with knowledge of the thinking of top Israeli officials.
Going into the spring, there was also concern among Israeli officials that any potential deal between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran would still allow Iran to eventually possess a bomb, an Israeli official added. And, a former senior Israeli official said, the Israelis had been anticipating the scheduled retirement of Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the U.S. Central Command chief who had helped make war plans with Israel throughout the spring.
Alex Jones reported on June 16 that Netanyahu double crossed The White House and refused the Trump peace plan.
Despite Trump’s efforts to solve the Iran issue peacefully, Netanyahu already had his mind made up.
“In the fall, long before President Donald Trump embarked on an effort to resolve concerns over Iran’s nuclear program through negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already set Israel on the road to war, according to current and former Israeli officials,” The Washington Post said.
The report revealed that many of Israel’s military operations against Lebanon, Syria and Iraq over the last year were likely in preparation for the big Iranian offensive.
“After Israel decimated Iran’s air defenses in a missile skirmish and crippled its main ally, Hezbollah, in October, Netanyahu issued a general order to prepare for a strike, the current and former officials said. Israeli intelligence officials began huddling to compile lists of dozens of Iranian nuclear scientists and military leaders who could be targeted for assassination. Israel’s air force began to systematically take out air defenses in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to clear the skies for future bombing runs against Iran,” The Washington Post said Monday evening.
The Netanyahu regime did not seek to fight Iran and potentially the rest of the Islamic world on its own however. The Washington Post report detailed that plans were underway to drag the U.S. into war alongside Israel.
“Meanwhile, Israeli officials were pursuing another track in their preparations — to sway Washington. Israeli officials have long believed that military action with U.S. participation to target the Iranian nuclear program would be more effective than Israel going alone,” The Washington Post said. “In private conversations, however, senior Israeli government officials said they had already decided by March, weeks before Netanyahu met Trump in the Oval Office on April 7, to strike Iran with or without U.S. participation by June at the latest, said two people with knowledge of the matter.”
The report claimed Israel did not actually base their attack on Iran off of evidence that Tehran was unusually close to possessing a nuclear weapon, but rather a preconceived first strike plan the Israelis had already formulated.
Whether or not Netanyahu had enough evidence of Iranian progress toward a nuclear weapon to justify an attack has been the subject of intense debate globally and raises questions about the strikes’ permissibility under international law.
Many have questioned Netanyahu’s 33 years of warnings that Iran was ‘weeks away’ from possessing nuclear weapons.
“Ultimately, when Netanyahu finally launched his surprise attack on Iran in the early hours of June 13 while Trump’s negotiations were still underway, the decision was not so much driven by new intelligence indicating an Iranian sprint for a nuclear weapon or any imminent threat to Israel. Rather, Israel seized on what it saw as a unique opportunity to execute plans, carefully laid months and years in advance, to heavily damage a weakened Iran that had long waged a bloody proxy conflict with Israel and to set back Iranian nuclear and missile programs, Israeli and U.S. officials and advisers to both governments say,” The Washington Post said.
One Israeli official who spoke with The Washington Post detailed the advantage of launching an unprovoked attack.
“It is true there was no better time: Israelis have never been more well-practiced, and Iran and their proxies have never been weaker,” said the Israeli official. “But that’s not enough for us to operate. The reason we operated is necessity and understanding there is no alternative. What if they break out [toward a nuclear weapon] and there is no way for us to notice? There is no safety zone left.”
It is not that the U.S. and Israel have a different set of beliefs regarding Iran’s lust for a nuclear weapon, nor a different set of intel on Tehran’s progress toward such a weapon. The divide is purely political – between Trump and Netanyahu’s political agendas – between the populous and neocon ideologies.
“Richard Nephew, a lead U.S. negotiator with Iran under the Obama administration, said the real division appears not to have been between U.S. and Israeli intelligence analysts but between the spies and the politicians, who interpreted the intelligence in a more alarming fashion,” the report said.
“It may be that the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services were on the same page, but they weren’t on the same page as their political leadership,” said Nephew, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
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