Iran is both Trump’s war and Netanyahu’s war

As we enter Week Three of the War in Iran, let’s first establish as fact: This is, above all, Donald Trump’s war.

He started it on Feb. 28. Unfortunately, he still has not told the American people exactly why. Having not yet addressed the American people from the Oval Office about the war, his reason for starting it depends on the last reporter he spoke to. It’s either regime change, or destroying Iran’s missile capacity, or preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

And Trump alone can end it. Unfortunately, we still don’t know when that will be, either. Because, again, it depends on the last reporter who called his cell phone. In the last week, his answer has gone from “We won the, in the first hour, it was over” to “When I feel it in my bones” to it will continue for “four to five weeks if necessary.”

Clearly, this war will be over when President Trump says it’s over. We simply have no idea what will trigger that decision: the price of gas, number of American casualties, lack of popular support, or disastrous Republican numbers in the midterms. And, apparently, neither does Donald Trump.

But if the war in Iran is mainly Donald Trump’s war, it’s also Benjamin Netanyahu’s war. Indeed, this is a war Netanyahu’s been dreaming of and warning about for a long time. For 33 years, in fact.

In 1992, as a young Israeli member of Parliament, Netanyahu addressed the Knesset and said Iran was three to five years from building a nuclear bomb. By 2009, he warned Iran was only one to two years away. In an address to the UN General Assembly in 2012, he said Iran was now only a “few months, maybe a few weeks” away from having a nuclear weapon. Last month, just before the United States and Israel launched war on Iran, Netanyahu warned that, left alone, Iran was “within a few months” of nuclear weaponry.

Netanyahu’s waited a long time for this war against Iran, but he finally found an American president who would do it for him. It’s now the Don and Bibi Show. Rahm Emanuel, former American ambassador to Japan and former White House chief of staff, summed up the current war best when he told J Street’s “Word on the Street” podcast: “In Iran, Bibi knows what he wants, but does not have the means to accomplish it. Trump doesn’t know what he wants, but does have the means to accomplish it.”

But there’s one other disastrous consequence. Netanyahu’s beating the war drums in Iran has not only brought us war in Iran, it’s also contributed big time to a growing political problem in the United States: declining popular support for the state of Israel.

True, that erosion of support didn’t start with Iran, but it did start with Netanyahu. For over 70 years, support for Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East,” was a given for both Democrats and Republicans. Leaders of both parties sought to give Israel all the military and economic assistance it needed. And leaders of Israel carefully cultivated the support of both parties.

All that changed with Netanyahu. He publicly lectured Bill Clinton, rejected George W. Bush’s plan for a two-state solution, opposed Barack Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran, addressed a Joint Session of Congress without Obama’s approval, and snubbed Joe Biden even after Biden flew to Tel Aviv to show support for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. Meanwhile, his alliance with extreme religious zealots, attempts to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court, non-stop building of settlements in the West Bank, relentless bombing of civilian targets in Gaza, and now war in Iran have further eroded public opinion. 

The result is disastrous. A Gallup poll released last Friday found that, for the first time, more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than with Israel, 41 to 36 percent — a big downshift from historic double-digit leads for Israel. Perhaps most troubling, among Americans 35 and younger, support for Israel is only 23 percent. As Emanuel told the J Street podcast: “Bibi has lost America!” And he’s hurt Israel at home, too. For the last two years, more people moved out of Israel than moved in.

So Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu have not only launched a costly, unnecessary, and perhaps endless war, they have succeeded in dragging down the once-proud reputations of both countries. That will never be repaired until both men are out of office.

Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”

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