For the second time in less than a year, the US again finds itself on the brink of war with Iran.
Trump has consistently used tough language throughout his second term as he’s sought to pressure the Iranian regime into abandoning its military and civilian nuclear programs. But in recent weeks, that rhetoric has been backed by a substantial buildup of military assets at bases in neighboring allied countries and in the waters around Iran.
And while negotiations are ongoing and both sides have hinted that there is potential for an agreement, there are several reasons to be concerned that another round of violence could break out at any moment.
First is the fact that the core demands of both sides remain completely incompatible. A final deal would require one side to make drastic concessions, and there’s no reason to think either is close to doing so.
The second is the sheer size and cost of this military buildup. Two aircraft carrier strike groups are now in the region—one in the eastern Mediterranean, the other just outside the Gulf of Oman. Dozens of American fighter planes, refueling tankers, and—most notably of all—E-3 Sentry command and control planes have also been transferred to nearby airbases. All in all, there are more than 40,000 American troops in the region. The US has never built up a military force like this and not used it.
Indeed, there have been leaks suggesting that Trump plans to at least launch “limited” strikes targeting Iranian military or government sites. And even if this is all just a very big threat display or Trump has a change of heart, the Israeli government could again force a conflict by attacking Iran themselves, as they did last June.
So, after a costly buildup and the escalating risk of a much costlier direct military engagement with Iran, it’s important for us Americans to again ask why this is all necessary in the first place?
The answer, according to President Trump and his ideological allies, is that the Iranian regime simply cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
What’s interesting about this talking point is that it is almost never elaborated on. It’s presented as an obvious truth that requires no further explanation. But this is worth digging into. Why, specifically, would it be a problem if the Iranian government had a nuclear arsenal?
In the absence of a clear answer, anti-Iran hawks have heavily implied that the Iranian regime’s sole aim is to develop nuclear weapons as fast as possible so it can immediately launch them at Israel, even though that would assuredly result in Israel launching most or all of its hundreds of nuclear warheads back at Iran.
In other words, that the political leaders of Iran are not just willing but are actively trying to sacrifice their own lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of most Iranians, along with the thousands of years worth of historically and culturally significant sites in their country, in order to bring Israel down with them.
This is rarely said outright, because it is clearly not true.
If the Iranian mullahs and their IRGC counterparts were actually attempting to commit nation-level nuclear murder-suicide, they would be acting differently.
They would certainly not have held back from developing a nuclear weapon despite being a few months or even weeks away, as Israeli and American officials have been claiming for decades.
And they wouldn’t have agreed to—or been trying to again agree to—stringent, internationally-enforced inspections and restrictions on their civilian nuclear programs just to get some sanctions relief if their sole aim is to sprint their way into a nuclear war with Israel.
It is not even clear that the Iranian regime wants a nuclear arsenal at all. Iran’s Supreme Leader issued a religious edict almost thirty years ago that the use of any weapon of mass destruction is forbidden by Islam—a position the current Iranian regime claims to abide by.
Governments, of course, lie all the time and should never be taken at their word. But if the Iranian regime is really faking its theocratic status and lying about this official religious position, that would manifest in behavior that contradicts this claim—and, so far, it hasn’t.
Even the regime’s post-JCPOA choice to enrich uranium beyond levels needed for a civilian nuclear energy program but then pause enrichment below the level needed to make weapons makes a lot more sense as an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations than as a genuine attempt to produce a nuclear weapon—at least so far (it is somewhat surprising the Iranian regime hasn’t developed a nuclear bomb yet considering the fate of similar regimes that either abandoned or gave up their nuclear programs at American behest).
But behavior is always a far better metric for understanding a government’s true intentions because political leaders always use language to mislead their peers and subjects about their intentions when it’s in their interest to do so.
And, make no mistake, that is precisely what American and Israeli officials are doing with this absurd narrative about an imminent Iranian nuclear murder-suicide. They are not pushing it out because it’s true, they’re pushing it out because it’s useful.
The same goes for the narrative that both sides like to play up that this conflict is only the latest chapter in some kind of thousand-year-old religious and civilizational blood feud. This is another convenient lie.
It allows each government to portray its enemy as an almost demonic entity that can never be reasoned with and that will not stop until “our” entire way of life has been violently eradicated.
But, as Trita Parsi laid out in his book Treacherous Alliance, both the US and Israeli governments have allied with and worked with the post-1979 revolutionary Iranian regime several times when the geopolitical dynamic made it advantageous to both—not to mention the fact that all three governments have shown a robust willingness to either excuse or themselves commit the exact kind of foreign aggression or domestic atrocities they accuse the other side of committing to justify their own escalations.
What the US/Israeli-Iranian rivalry really is is a classic geopolitical struggle for regional dominance dressed up by both sides as some kind of inescapable religious war. To get more specific, Washington’s post-Iraq War Middle East policy makes the most sense if viewed as an attempt, not to stop Iran from becoming a regional hegemon, but to help Israel become the regional hegemon by, ideally overthrowing, but at least greatly weakening, Israel’s last serious geopolitical rival.
That isn’t and hasn’t been easy. But it would be impossible if Iran had nuclear weapons. It would heavily constrain what Washington and Tel Aviv could do to the Iranians and freeze the conflict into one that more closely resembles those between nuclear powers like Pakistan and India, North and South Korea, or China and India.
That is why this latest escalation is taking place—ideally to overthrow the Iranian government but, at least, to preserve the US and Israeli governments’ room to maneuver against it.
If the Trump administration and its allies at home and abroad want Americans to be willing to die in this effort, they should at least have the decency to be honest about what they’ll be dying for.
