Trump’s pretend diplomacy enabled Israel’s war on Iran

With Trump's blessing, Israel launches a devastating attack on Iran.

(Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

Shortly after Israel began a devastating attack on Iran -- which has so far killed top Iranian military leaders, nuclear scientists, scores of civilians, destroyed vital military assets, and damaged nuclear energy sites -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech filled with lies and distortions. Yet there was one notable acknowledgement of reality. “I want to thank President Trump for his leadership in confronting Iran's nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said.

Both Netanyahu and Trump are aware that there is no such program. As a US intelligence report noted in March, “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program suspended in 2003.” At most, Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so,” a previous intelligence assessment found.

While deceptively omitting the US government’s official stance, Netanyahu was correct to credit Trump’s “leadership” in confronting the non-existent Iranian threat. Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims that the Israeli strikes were a “unilateral action” in which the US was “not involved,” Israel could not have carried out these pulverizing strikes without the backing of its chief sponsor in Washington. This would be true under any circumstance but particularly on the eve of a new round of US-Iranian talks over a revised nuclear deal that Trump claimed he was committed to.

Israel wanted to sabotage that diplomatic track, and Trump was in on it. According to Israeli officials, “Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public — and didn't express opposition in private.” Earlier this week, Israeli officials told reporters that “Trump had tried to put the brakes on an Israeli strike in a call” with Netanyahu, when “in reality the call dealt with coordination ahead of the attack.” As one Israeli official put it: “We had a clear U.S. green light.” Said another: “There was full and complete coordination with the Americans.”

The goal of the US-Israeli deception, Israeli media reports, was to “lull Iran into thinking an attack was not going to happen immediately.” A series of media reports about “rifts between Israel and Washington were false, but had not been denied as part of a media ruse to confuse Iran.” The Trump administration fed leaks to the media to make it falsely appear as if it was insisting on diplomacy over war. On April 16^th, for example, the New York Times published a story, sourced to administration officials, that Trump had “waved off” an Israeli plan to bomb Iran “in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran.”

In interviews and social media posts, Trump has made no secret of the fact that he participated in Israel’s campaign, and has warned of even “more brutal” attacks to come. Toward that end, he has ordered the deployment of US warships in the Middle East to shore up Israel’s assault and shield it from potential Iranian retaliation.

“I always knew the date,” Trump told the New York Post. “Because I know everything.” Trump claimed that he had gave Iran “chance after chance” to reach an agreement, but “they just couldn’t get it done.” He added: “Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” Trump also stressed that he gave Iran a 60-day deadline to make an agreement or face military action. “I gave them 60 days and they didn’t meet it,” Trump went on. “Today’s 61, you know. Today’s day 61.” This deadline, issued back in April, received little attention, but Trump and Israel both made good on it.

Iran failed to take Trump’s threats seriously and, by all appearances, was lulled into complacency. According to Israeli media reports, Israel built a secret drone base inside Iranian territory and smuggled in advanced weaponry to take out Iranian defenses. If this account is accurate, and I believe it is, it represents one of the most successful covert operations, and security breaches, in modern history. With today’s launch of hypersonic missiles at Tel Aviv, Iran has begun its promised “severe” and “powerful response”, but it is possible that its military capabilities have been inflated by all sides. Another possibility is that Iran decides it has no choice but to pursue the nuclear weapons program that it has long sworn off.

The US and Israel make they no secret that they seek a humiliating Iranian surrender. After initially showing flexibility, Trump’s top envoy for the Iran talks, Steven Witkoff, embraced Israeli demands that he knew Iran would reject, including zero uranium enrichment and restrictions on Iranian ballistic missiles. The former is a foundational issue for Iran, which developed its enrichment program in accordance with the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT), and sees it as essential to its sovereignty. For Israel and the US, enrichment is a non-starter not because of the nuclear weapons but because of regime change: if Iran cannot meet domestic energy needs, then the government will be even more vulnerable.

Israel and the US will now use the assault to press Iran into submission. On the eve of Israel’s assault, Witkoff appeared at a pro-Israel gala to tout Trump’s popularity in Israel, so much so that he “could be the first sitting president who could be prime minister of Israel at the same time.” Witkoff also declared that Iran “must never be permitted to enrich uranium,” and that even letting Iran retain “a large amount of missiles,” represents “as big an existential threat as the nuclear threat.” The US and its allies, he concluded to wide applause, “must stand resolute and united against this danger and ensure that Iran never obtains the means to achieve its deadly ambitions no matter what the cost.”

What is Iran’s “existential threat”? Iran, unlike Israel, does not possess nuclear weapons. Iran, unlike the US, abided by the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump withdrew from and then reimposed sanctions that crippled Iran’s economy and paved the way for Israel’s attack. The US has rebuffed repeated Iranian overtures. To illustrate, in May 2003, just weeks into the second Iraq war, Iran sent the Bush administration a two-page letter offering to address all outstanding matters, including Tehran’s support for Hezbollah. The Bush team initially pretended that it never received the message, and never bothered to respond.

Perhaps most pivotally, Iran, unlike the US and Israel, has accepted the global consensus on how to resolve the core issue at the heart of all Middle East strife: Israel’s denial of Palestinian self-determination. In 2017, Iran endorsed an offer from the Arab League to Israel that would offer regional peace in exchange for a “two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.”

Israel, with US support, rejects this compromise solution, in which Palestinians would accept just 22% of their stolen homeland, because it insists on denying Palestinians their freedom and stealing more of their territory. The US is committed to protecting this supremacist regime, no matter what the cost. In recent decades, that cost has included backing Israel’s West Bank settlement expansion spree under the guise of a “peace process”; heeding Netanyahu’s advice to invade Iraq; supporting Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon; launching a dirty war to overthrow a key Iranian-Hezbollah ally in Syria (which Netanyahu has taken credit for, including in last night’s speech); and fueling Israel’s ongoing mass murder campaign in Gaza.

In 2025, the Trump team can claim credit for a new cost of being Israel’s chief patron: war with Iran.

---

Note: this article was updated after publication to reflect the fact that Iran has launched hypersonic missiles at Tel Aviv in retaliation for the Israeli attack.