According to isolationists on the Left and Right, Israel’s recent attack on Iran is an escalation or the opening salvo in a “new” war between the nations.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) posted on June 16, “Netanyahu started this war by attacking Iran.” President Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon said the same thing, claiming on his podcast that “[Netanyahu] pulled the trigger first.”
Both men and other isolationists disingenuously ignore the fact that Iran started the latest war through its Hamas proxy on Oct. 7, 2023, and Iranian leaders have made Israel’s destruction the cornerstone of their foreign policy for half a century.
Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran adopted a hard-line anti-Israel stance. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, revolutionary leader and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, declared Israel an “enemy of Islam” and “Little Satan” — the “Great Satan” was America — upon taking power. He immediately funded Islamist-Shiite Lebanese parties, unified them into Hezbollah, and supplied training and weapons to attack Israel.
They’ve been waging war against the Jewish state ever since. The 1982 suicide bombing at an Israeli military headquarters in Tyre killed 75 Israeli soldiers. Guerilla attacks on the Israel Defense Forces killed dozens more by 1985. That year, Hezbollah’s manifesto listed among its four main goals “Israel’s final departure from Lebanon as a prelude to its final obliteration.”
Iran reportedly gave Hezbollah $400 million in funding, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.
Over the decades, Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets into northern Israel, killing hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians and displacing tens of thousands of residents. During the 2006 Lebanon War, Iran directly assisted Hezbollah fighters in attacks on Israel, participating in firing rockets into Israel and supplying arms. By 2018, the U.S. State Department estimated Iran’s funding of Hezbollah had reached $700 million annually.
Iran’s support of Hamas has also been robust since the 1990s, giving the terrorist organization tens of millions per year and assisting it in suicide bombings. This support continued through the Second Intifada, with Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite Quds Force, overseeing the smuggling of weapons to Hamas. Hamas fired missiles engineered by Iran in the 2008-2009 Gaza war, and Soleimani personally trained many of its commanders in Iran.
The Guard actively helped Hamas plan its surprise terrorist attack on Oct. 7, which killed over 1,200 Israelis. Iran provided military training, logistical help, and tens of millions of dollars for weapons to carry out the attack that sparked the broader war in Gaza.
Iran’s perpetual war-waging against Israel, coupled with its genocidal rhetoric, means Israel has every right to ensure that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons.
The United States has nearly as great an interest in ensuring this outcome. A nuclear Iran would threaten regional stability, sparking an arms race and further wars into which the U.S. would be drawn. It would raise the risk of nuclear weapons coming into the hands of non-state actors, endangering the U.S. at home and abroad. It would also diminish the U.S.’s credibility as an enforcer of nonproliferation worldwide, encouraging other rogue regimes to follow suit.
Crucially, the U.S. must finally make its long-awaited pivot to Asia. A nuclear Iran would complicate and delay this.
Should Iran fail to surrender its nuclear program in short order, the U.S. must act to ensure that the program is destroyed. Dismantling underground Iranian nuclear facilities, especially at Fordow, where they are buried 300 feet under a mountain, requires the kind of bunker-busters that only the U.S. possesses, specifically the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The U.S. should act swiftly to destroy these facilities while Israel controls Iranian airspace, and it should continue helping Israel in its defense from incoming missile attacks. It is in the U.S.’s best interest to help end the war Iran has waged against Israel for decades.
Destroying Iran’s nuclear program is not the same thing as insisting on regime change, much though the isolationists try to make the case that it is.
Americans are justifiably wary of entering into any military conflicts following the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But the stakes with Iran’s nuclear program are distinct and urgent. Unlike those prolonged ground wars, action against Iran’s nuclear facilities would only involve targeted airstrikes.
Disabling a regime driven by fanaticism and a deranged obsession with Israel’s destruction is in the best interest of America. The time to act is now.