How the Israeli Tail Wags the American Dog
This feels like a quiet policy shift.
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March 12, 2026
How the Israeli Tail Wags the American Dog
The US attack on Iran may be less about American security than about the priorities of Israel’s government.
Eli Clifton and Ian S. Lustick
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich listen to a speech by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Knesset in Jerusalem on February 25, 2026.(Ilia Yefimovich / AFP via Getty Images)
One prominent rationale for the Israeli-American attack on Iran is to bomb the country into friendliness to the US and Israel. Very few believe this will succeed. Iran, a country as big as Germany, Britain, and France combined, has a population of 93 million, more than triple that of Iraq when the United States tried, even with a massive army, to transform it into a US ally. We all remember how that worked out.
President Trump ran two successful presidential campaigns with a populist foreign policy platform of promising “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars” and denouncing the “endless wars” pursued by his predecessors in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now appears to have jettisoned his “America First” foreign policy with no strategic rationale. But understanding this war as rational means believing it was launched as a means to achieve some particular end for Americans. Yet, despite President Trump’s claims to the contrary, Iran’s long-range missile program posed no foreseeable threat to the US according to US intelligence assessments. This forces our attention to its real origins and beneficiaries, in Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that the primary answer to the question of “Why [attack Iran] now?” was that US war-making decisions were effectively being driven by Israel. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act,” he said on March 2.
Current Issue
April 2026 Issue
The first part of Rubio’s answer, that Israel was planning to attack Iran and that Iran would retaliate against US targets, is a statement of a real problem: Israel’s behavior imposes security and economic costs on the United States. Successive US presidents supplied Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, political cover in international forums and tirelessly worked to shield Israel from accountability for its war on Gaza and long-running …
This feels like a quiet policy shift.
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Current Issue
March 12, 2026
How the Israeli Tail Wags the American Dog
The US attack on Iran may be less about American security than about the priorities of Israel’s government.
Eli Clifton and Ian S. Lustick
Share
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Bluesky Pocket
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich listen to a speech by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Knesset in Jerusalem on February 25, 2026.(Ilia Yefimovich / AFP via Getty Images)
One prominent rationale for the Israeli-American attack on Iran is to bomb the country into friendliness to the US and Israel. Very few believe this will succeed. Iran, a country as big as Germany, Britain, and France combined, has a population of 93 million, more than triple that of Iraq when the United States tried, even with a massive army, to transform it into a US ally. We all remember how that worked out.
President Trump ran two successful presidential campaigns with a populist foreign policy platform of promising “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars” and denouncing the “endless wars” pursued by his predecessors in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now appears to have jettisoned his “America First” foreign policy with no strategic rationale. But understanding this war as rational means believing it was launched as a means to achieve some particular end for Americans. Yet, despite President Trump’s claims to the contrary, Iran’s long-range missile program posed no foreseeable threat to the US according to US intelligence assessments. This forces our attention to its real origins and beneficiaries, in Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that the primary answer to the question of “Why [attack Iran] now?” was that US war-making decisions were effectively being driven by Israel. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act,” he said on March 2.
Current Issue
April 2026 Issue
The first part of Rubio’s answer, that Israel was planning to attack Iran and that Iran would retaliate against US targets, is a statement of a real problem: Israel’s behavior imposes security and economic costs on the United States. Successive US presidents supplied Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, political cover in international forums and tirelessly worked to shield Israel from accountability for its war on Gaza and long-running …
How the Israeli Tail Wags the American Dog
This feels like a quiet policy shift.
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Current Issue
March 12, 2026
How the Israeli Tail Wags the American Dog
The US attack on Iran may be less about American security than about the priorities of Israel’s government.
Eli Clifton and Ian S. Lustick
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
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Ad Policy
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich listen to a speech by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Knesset in Jerusalem on February 25, 2026.(Ilia Yefimovich / AFP via Getty Images)
One prominent rationale for the Israeli-American attack on Iran is to bomb the country into friendliness to the US and Israel. Very few believe this will succeed. Iran, a country as big as Germany, Britain, and France combined, has a population of 93 million, more than triple that of Iraq when the United States tried, even with a massive army, to transform it into a US ally. We all remember how that worked out.
President Trump ran two successful presidential campaigns with a populist foreign policy platform of promising “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars” and denouncing the “endless wars” pursued by his predecessors in Iraq and Afghanistan. He now appears to have jettisoned his “America First” foreign policy with no strategic rationale. But understanding this war as rational means believing it was launched as a means to achieve some particular end for Americans. Yet, despite President Trump’s claims to the contrary, Iran’s long-range missile program posed no foreseeable threat to the US according to US intelligence assessments. This forces our attention to its real origins and beneficiaries, in Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that the primary answer to the question of “Why [attack Iran] now?” was that US war-making decisions were effectively being driven by Israel. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act,” he said on March 2.
Current Issue
April 2026 Issue
The first part of Rubio’s answer, that Israel was planning to attack Iran and that Iran would retaliate against US targets, is a statement of a real problem: Israel’s behavior imposes security and economic costs on the United States. Successive US presidents supplied Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, political cover in international forums and tirelessly worked to shield Israel from accountability for its war on Gaza and long-running …
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