Don't blame Trump's stupid war on Israel - Max Boot, WaPo

[question everything]

When a nation starts a war for dubious reasons and then suffers the consequences, there is inevitably a search for scapegoats. Conspiracy theories abound. It happened after World War I, when the favorite villains were “merchants of death” and international bankers. It happened again after the Iraq War, which some blamed on “neoconservatives” and Halliburton, the oil-services giant led by Dick Cheney before he became vice president.

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Recall that Kent is the same guy who claimed that the FBI could have been responsible for orchestrating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. He traffics in conspiracies. In his resignation letter, he kept them coming by blaming Israel for the Iran and Iraq wars. He added that the fight against the Islamic State, in which his wife was killed while serving in Syria in 2019, was also “manufactured by Israel.” In reality, Israeli officials warned the Bush administration against invading Iraq. And, needless to say, they didn’t concoct the Islamic State threat — which, unlike the current war, led to the mobilization of a massive international coalition.

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It’s true the U.S. and Israel are both waging war against Tehran, a campaign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long agitated for. But it wasn’t until Trump came to power that the U.S. finally agreed to attack Iran — first last June and then again on Feb. 28. That’s Trump’s responsibility. He could have said no.

While the president is surrounded by pro-Israel voices and supported by pro-Israel donors, he is also close to Gulf states that generally opposed the attack. Caught in the crossfire, many Gulf Arabs now feel that their investment in Trump — Qatar gave him a $400 million airplane, and Emirati investors sank $500 million into his cryptocurrency company — isn’t paying off. Why did Trump listen to allies in Israel, not in the Gulf? Why does he do anything? It’s always a bit of a mystery.

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But in trying to manufacture a casus belli with Iran, Trump and his aides inadvertently helped foster conspiracy theories about Israel. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on March 2 that the U.S. had to attack Iran because Israel was going to strike anyway, and, when it did so, Iran would hit U.S. forces. The administration then tried to walk this back — and rightly so. It’s absurd to imagine that Netanyahu would have bombed Iran if Trump had told him not to and threatened to withhold military aid if he did.


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