Commentary: The war against Iran is not a war for Israel

By Michael Wood and Andrew Josefchak

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has confused people across the political spectrum. The Trump administration’s apparent unpreparedness for the war, the severe (and predictable) economic consequences of Iran closing off the Strait of Hormuz, and the total lack of any attempt to build support for the war among the U.S. population have made the war appear irrational to many people. So irrational, in fact, that some feel there must be another explanation — that Israel has somehow tricked, persuaded, or forced the U.S. into launching a war on Iran on Israel’s behalf. But this gets things backwards. When you look at Israel’s role in the Middle East, it becomes clear that the U.S. calls the shots.

Iran has been in the U.S. gunsights for a very long time, for a few reasons. Iran has a tremendous amount of oil. Iran’s geographic location gives it the ability to impact world oil trade, as people in the U.S. are quickly learning as they watch gas prices climb. And Iran has also stood up for Palestinian liberation in a major way, launching attacks on Israel in response to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and supporting pro-Palestinian military organizations in Lebanon and Yemen. For all these reasons, the U.S. not only wants to overthrow Iran’s government, it wants to control it.

Since October 7, 2023, millions of people in the U.S. have rallied to the Palestinian cause for national liberation. They’ve seen Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Many people are still stunned by the U.S.’s unyielding support for Israel, from both Biden and Trump, as the Palestinian death toll continues to rise. People have also seen the arrogance of Israeli officials as they’ve dictated how U.S. students protesting the war should be punished. It makes sense that many people see this latest war and think it must be at the behest of Israel, because most people in the U.S. aren’t taught the truth about U.S. imperialism in the Middle East.

But the U.S. doesn’t send Israel billions of dollars a year in financial and military support out of the kindness of its heart. Israel’s non-stop attempts at expansion, and its attacks on Palestine, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq over the decades have had a continual destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. Israel’s endless wars create constant refugee crises, destroy infrastructure, weaken or collapse governments, and create opportunities for the U.S. to pit countries in the Middle East against each other. This is all very good news for big U.S. businesses who want to control Middle Eastern oil, natural resources and labor.

Israel simply would not be able to carry out its crimes without U.S. funding. The U.S could stop Israel any time it wants to by just cutting the financial support. And the U.S. doesn’t stop Israel because it supports Israel’s actions — they’re a good thing for the capitalist rulers of the U.S.

Controlling Iran has been a stated goal of U.S. foreign policy since Iran’s parliament and Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized Iran’s oil in 1951, just three years after the Nakba — the forced expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland — and the birth of the state of Israel. British intelligence and the CIA launched a coup, taking Mosaddegh out of power and turning power back over to the notorious monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah had no qualms about U.S. companies taking 40% of Iran’s oil shares — shares that belonged to the Iranian people. The shah ruled with U.S. support despite mounting unpopularity among Iranians.

In 1978 Iranians led a revolution that got rid of the shah and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. This meant no more oil profits for U.S. companies and a new, major force resisting U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Iran’s support for anti-imperialist movements, opposition to Israel, and steadfast support for Palestinian liberation in particular, have cemented Iran as a target of U.S. aggression. To whatever extent the war on Iran is about protecting Israel, it’s about protecting it as a tool of U.S. aggression in the Middle East.

When right-winger Joe Kent resigned as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center last month, he said in a resignation letter that Israel and the U.S. media “deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined [Trump’s] America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.” Kent also criticized U.S. involvement in the Syrian Civil War, claiming it was fought for Israel too. Make no mistake, Kent is not anti-war — he served 11 combat tours himself. People have made a lot of hay out of Kent’s remarks, perhaps out of the hope that if even a far-right figure like Kent could see that the war on Iran is a bad thing, other politicians would too, and would intervene to stop the war.

But Kent is missing the big picture. Joe Biden put it pretty well all the way back in 1986 when he was on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, when he said, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” But there’s a difference between the interests of Biden or Trump or all the other politicians who have supported endless violence against Iran, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Palestine, and the interests of the vast majority of the people of the U.S. It’s ordinary working people that will have to deal with the economic consequences of war on Iran. Meanwhile, the big capitalists hope to make billions. And they’re using Israel as a tool to do it.

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