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THE U.S. MUST FORCE ISRAEL TO END ITS WAR ON IRAN  
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Phyllis Bennis and Khury Petersen-Smith
June 16, 2025
In These Times
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_ Israel is the main destabilizing force in the Middle East, and its
attacks on Iran are being made possible by U.S. support. We bear
special responsibility to work to end the bombing. _

Smoke rises from the rubble of an Iranian state media building in
Tehran after an Israeli airstrike on June 16, 2025., Mina / Middle
East Images via AFP

 

Israel’s attack on Iran last week has opened a stark
danger — a predictable pattern of escalation ushering in a new
phase of the long-standing crises roiling the Middle East region.
Certainly Israel [[link removed]] has a long
history of attacking Iran — including bombing raids;
assassinations of political and military leaders as well as nuclear
scientists; cyberattacks; assaults on Iranian allies in Syria, Iraq,
Lebanon, Yemen, and beyond — and Iran has on occasion struck
back. But while it is too soon to know exactly how this latest assault
will fully play out, it now holds the prospect of full-scale war
between the two strongest military forces in the region, one of them
backed by the strongest military power in the world.

The specific role of the United States in the first hours and days of
Israel’s war against Iran remains uncertain; we don’t yet know if
U.S. forces were directly involved, and whether or how much the
Israelis relied on U.S. intelligence or other immediate assistance in
carrying out the assaults on Tehran and other cities across Iran. What
we do know is that Israel has always been able to count on continuing
U.S. backing — economic, political, diplomatic as well as
military — whether or not any particular White House
administration supported or disagreed with any particular military
attack, and whether or not that support involved direct U.S.
military participation.

Beyond that, we can examine what we know about Israel’s
(still-underway) attack on Iran, what we know about U.S.-Israeli
relations and what may lie ahead.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL’S ATTACK ON IRAN

On Thursday night, June 12, Israel attacked nuclear facilities and
other targets across Iran. It attacked Iran’s nuclear facility at
Natanz, but did not go after the deeply-buried and well-protected
Fordow fuel enrichment plant until the next day. The United Nations’
nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency,
confirmed that conditions at Natanz were safe, with no evidence of
radiation leakage. The impact of the attack on Fordow is not
yet clear.

While a full report of casualties — military, civilian,
scientific, children and more — is not yet available, we know
there were explosions across Tehran and in other Iranian cities. The
Israeli strikes killed at least six nuclear scientists, unknown
numbers of ordinary civilians including children, and important
military leaders, including the chief of staff of Iran’s army and
Ali Shakhani, who served as the main liaison between Iran’s top
leader, Ali Khamenei, and the diplomatic team meeting with U.S.
negotiators. Israeli officials bragged of having had agents of the
Mossad, Israel’s international intelligence force, on the ground
setting drone targets long before the attack began. While Iran’s
initial response involved 100 drones that were all reportedly
destroyed by Israel’s anti-aircraft systems, subsequent Iranian
attacks have caused damage
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and injuries
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in Israeli cities, including Tel-Aviv.

We know that there is only one state that has nuclear weapons in the
Middle East region. Israel maintains an arsenal that reportedly
includes at least 90 nuclear weapons, and while it is widely known as
one of the nine nuclear weapons states in the world, it is the only
one that refuses to confirm or deny its arsenal. Iran has no nuclear
weapons, and does not have a program to create such a weapon.

We also know that while President Donald Trump
[[link removed]] abandoned the 2015
Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, in 2018, he has shown an
eagerness to return to some version of a deal based on the same
principles — the U.S. ending sanctions in exchange for Iran not
getting a nuclear bomb. The long-standing obstacle to such an
agreement was always Israel — which insisted that Iran be denied
not just a nuclear weapon but any nuclear enrichment capacity,
including civilian uses. Until just a few weeks ago, Trump had
maintained the demand that Iran be denied a nuclear weapon in return
for lifting sanctions, which Israel continued to reject as
insufficient. In the last two weeks, Trump and others in the White
House began to switch back and forth between the long-standing U.S.
position and the Israeli demand, something they knew would be
impossible for Iran to accept.

Before the June 12 attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
was near the nadir of his popularity. He was close to facing the
collapse of his government — and we know that citing Iran as an
ostensibly ​“existential threat” to Israel, and claiming to be
the only one capable of dealing with it, has always been at the core
of his political career. On the morning of the Israeli assault, just
hours before the missiles took off toward Iran, the Knesset rejected
a no-confidence resolution brought by the opposition. That gives
Netanyahu six months before another such resolution can be put
forward. Whether it’s his political survival (he faces several
trials and a likely jail term once he is out of office) or his
long-standing commitment to challenging Iran at the top of his list,
both were almost certainly part of the decision to launch this war.

We know that the U.S. government knew about the Israeli plans ahead of
time — that was evident in Washington’s highly publicized
decision to withdraw nonessential embassy staff, military families,
and others from the region, citing the expectation of danger. The
first acknowledgement of the Israeli assault came not from the White
House but from the State Department, just a couple of hours into
Israel’s bombing. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement
essentially amounted to the claim that ​“we didn’t do it,” and
that Washington’s only interest was in keeping U.S. personnel safe.
His statement urged Iran not to attack U.S. citizens or facilities
because, again, ​“we didn’t do it.” Significantly, it did not
express the usual — however pro forma — expression of
​“we support Israel.” Trump, some hours later, wrote on Truth
Social that he had told Netanyahu not to launch the attack, and added
that of course we support Israel. He did not, however, specify support
for Israel’s actions against Iran.

And finally we know that this war stands to create new disasters
across the region — most especially for Gaza
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attention pivoting to Israel’s war against Iran, the need to end the
ongoing genocide in Gaza is likely to slip far from the center of
attention where it needs to be.

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE ISRAEL-IRAN-U.S. RELATIONSHIP

Washington has for decades provided Israel with enormous levels of
military support, including the most powerful munitions short of
nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. For decades Congress and multiple
administrations have guaranteed billions of dollars in military aid to
Israel every year. In the last 20 months of Israel’s genocide in
Gaza, that aid has skyrocketed. In 2024 alone, the United States
provided Israel with almost $18 billion to purchase warplanes, tank
ammunition, and thousands of bombs, including the massive
bunker-buster bombs that Israel has used in Gaza, and could
potentially use against the hardened Fordow nuclear site just a few
miles from Qom, Iran’s religious center. U.S. taxpayers paid 40% of
Israel’s entire military spending that year — so regardless of
whether or when U.S. officials knew of, or approved of Israel’s
attack on Iran, there is no question that U.S. support still made
it possible.

We also know that despite its recent attacks against countries and
forces linked in some way to Iran — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria
since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, Iran-backed militias in Iraq,
the Houthis in Yemen, and of course Hamas in Gaza (whose earlier ties
to Iran were largely eroded) — which left these forces
significantly weakened militarily, Israel remains very isolated in the
region. For example, Trump launched the Abraham Accords in his first
term — agreements for Arab states to gain increased access to
U.S. weapons sales in return for normalizing relations with Israel.
Now Trump still favors the Gulf States, but he’s abandoned the
condition that they be friendly with Israel — convenient for
Arab governments given the public outrage toward Israel because of its
genocide in Gaza. Trump’s willingness to leave Israel off the table
as a condition for privileged access meant he did not even visit
Israel on his recent trip to the Middle East — stopping in Saudi
Arabia [[link removed]], Qatar and
the UAE.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

We don’t know for sure whether Rubio’s ​“we didn’t do it”
and non-mention of Israel, or Trump’s ​“I told them not to”
and ​“of course we support Israel…” statement most accurately
reflects U.S. policy. We don’t know if Trump even saw Rubio’s
statement, issued hours before the president’s own. Neither even
hinted at any serious pressure to prevent an Israeli assault on
Iran — and we know that U.S. military aid remains intact
regardless of Israeli actions U.S. presidents may not like.

We know Netanyahu strengthens his domestic political position by
attacking Iran, and that some Israeli officials believe a provocative
attack leading to Iranian retaliation might bring the U.S. into the
war. Those are likely both part of Netanyahu’s calculus — but
we don’t know which is more important.

There are thousands of U.S. troops stationed in the region — a
small number in Israel but thousands in surrounding countries. The
U.S. ordered two additional destroyers to the coast of Israel and is
sending in
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two aircraft carriers. While a military response from Iran is already
underway, we don’t know if Iranian leaders will make good on their
threat to attack U.S. targets as well as Israeli. And if they do, will
the U.S. move from behind-the-scenes to direct military involvement,
potentially including airstrikes or troops on the ground?

What we do know is that Israel remains the main destabilizing force in
the Middle East. Just in the last 20 months it has attacked and
occupied new swathes of territory in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank,
and is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. It has bombed Iraq and Yemen.
And now it is raising the level of instability to a qualitatively new
level, directly confronting the other most powerful military and
political force in the region.

As is true with the assault on Gaza, we in the United States bear
a particular responsibility to work to stop it — because,
whatever the president or the secretary of state or any other official
says or refuses to say, Washington is supplying the weapons and
preventing accountability for Israel’s wars. To advance peace, we
have a lot of work to do.

_A version of this story was also posted at_ Common Dreams
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Phyllis Bennis [[link removed]] is
a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves as
international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace. She is the author of
the new book _UNDERSTANDING PALESTINE & ISRAEL_
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_forthcoming from Interlink.

Khury Petersen-Smith
[[link removed]] is the Michael
Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS),
researching U.S. empire, borders and migration.

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Reprinted with permission from _In These Times_
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All rights reserved. 

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* Israel's War on Iran; US Foreign Policy; Netanyahu;
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