Donald Trump is 'all in' with Benjamin Netanyahu's illegal war on Iran
The unfolding conflict between Israel and Iran is both far more complex and far simpler to understand than much of the reporting to date suggests.
Far from a defensive necessity for Israel against an alleged nuclear threat, this escalation appears to be a calculated gamble born of Benjamin Netanyahu's long-held strategic ambitions and the alarming absence of a coherent strategy from the Trump administration, with Iran's nuclear program serving merely as a convenient — and increasingly threadbare — pretext for regime change in Tehran.
For years, the international community, including the United States, painstakingly constructed a robust diplomatic framework to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme.
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement between Iran and the P5+1 nations, established an unprecedentedly stringent surveillance and inspection regime, significantly curtailing Iran's nuclear activities. In return, some of the UN-backed sanctions against Iran were lifted or suspended.
An Israeli strike hits an oil storage facility in Tehran on Saturday. The assault on Iran is just the latest episode in an alarming pattern of escalating criminal behaviour on the part of Tel Aviv. File photo: AP/Vahid Salemi
In 2018, however, bowing to intense pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu, then-president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the JCPOA. Netanyahu had always been the most vocal critic of the agreement, advocating for military action even as US officials acknowledged that Iran's compliance, as well as a limit to uranium enrichment of just 3%, made the delivery of a nuclear weapon virtually impossible for decades.
Notably, Tulsi Gabbard, US director of national intelligence testified in March 2025 that the intelligence community found no evidence of Iran building a nuclear weapon. More definitively, the director general of the IAEA on 18 June 18, 2025, clearly stated "we did not have any proof of a systematic effort [on Iran's part] to move into a nuclear weapon".
Thus the "threat" seems, in large part, to be a manufactured crisis.
Regime change
Israel's surprise attack on Iran occurred just two days before scheduled Iran-US talks that Iran viewed positively and were progressing smoothly (according to officials on both sides). This strongly suggests that these talks were a mere smokescreen, a deceptive cover for an attack that, according to Trump, the US had been aware of for months.
While Iran's nuclear programme serves as Israel's public justification for pursuing the war, the true objective appears to be the destabilization of Iran, a clear intention to topple the government and turn the country into a failed state, akin to the tragedies witnessed in Libya and Syria, where central governments can no longer maintain territorial integrity.
The echoes of 2003 when the United States and its allies attacked Iraq are eerie: the insistence that Iran is developing alleged 'weapons of mass destruction', disguising the real goal of the operation which is regime change in Tehran.
The campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein created utter chaos in Iraq and resulted in the deaths of probably a million Iraqis, the displacement of millions, and 4,800 American and coalition deaths,
As was the case in Iraq, it seems abundantly clear that Netanyahu and Trump have no plan for what happens if/after the Iranian regime is defenestrated.
This intervention, if successful in toppling the Iranian government, carries the terrifying prospect of a prolonged civil war. Iran's diverse regional groups, including militias from Azerbaijan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, could exploit the power vacuum, leading to a scramble for territory and an even wider regional conflagration.
Consequences
Furthermore, two other dangerous consequences are likely to emerge.
Firstly, Iran may conclude that a nuclear weapon is its only true deterrent against such aggression, leading it to abandon all diplomatic efforts to restrict its nuclear program.
Secondly, Iran will almost certainly target US allies and interests in the region. This could involve strikes on oil production and refinery infrastructure in the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia and could block the Strait of Hormuz.
Given that roughly 20-25% of global oil exports pass through the strait daily, this will have significant implications for global energy security.
The erratic behaviour of the US president is evident in Trump's fluctuating positions throughout this war — from urgent calls for peace, to presenting a final offer to Iran that never materialized, to urging Tehran residents to evacuate, denying involvement in attacks, threatening to assassinate Iran's supreme leader, and finally demanding 'unconditional surrender'.
Rogue state
Forget these lurching statements about Iran: there is a good case for arguing that they are performative and that Trump is all in as Netanyahu's partner in crime. Trump's American version of authoritarianism neatly dovetails with Benjamin Netanyahu's model: lawlessness and loutishness define them.
Violence is their operational creed. Israel is a rogue state now completely out of control.
The assault on Iran is just the latest episode in an alarming pattern of escalating criminal behaviour on the part of Tel Aviv, from the repeated and decades-long flouting of UN resolutions, to the ramped up building of illegal settlements and outrageous settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the murder of large numbers of UN officials and journalists, and cross-border attacks on Lebanon and Syria.
Already it is evident that, far from protecting civilians via 'precision strikes' against Iranian regime figures, the casualty list includes at least 250 civilians, including more than 20 children, echoing the approach the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has taken in Gaza.
Gaza has become not just an Israeli concentration camp but a death camp, where Palestinians are corralled, starved and murdered by Israeli forces every day of the week. Leaders of the collective 'West' who piously pontificate about 'never again' stand by and do nothing; many such governments give the impression that they implicitly approve of what Israel is doing.
The collective West thus bears enormous responsibility for its complicity in Israel's genocidal violence, and Tel Aviv's repeated infringements of international law. The Trump-Netanyahu escalation points to a disturbing calcification of the international system of states and institutions, and a complete unwillingness on the part of those who designed it, to defend the rules-based international order which emerged after the catastrophes of two world wars in the 20th century.
Palestinian Samia al-Atrash holds the corpse of one of her sister's children killed in an Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip in October 2023. The protracted silence of the European Union as Israel carried out the mass slaughter of more than 50,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza has provided Tel Aviv with confidence that there would be minimal pushback if it went ahead with its large-scale attack on Iran. Photo: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images
An outstanding example of this phenomenon can be seen in the protracted silence of the European Union, as Israel carried out the mass slaughter of more than 50,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This provided Tel Aviv with confidence that there would be minimal pushback if it went ahead with its large-scale attack on Iran.
The attack on Iran is a dangerous manifestation of Netanyahu's expansive regional ambitions, supported by a US administration seemingly devoid of a cohesive strategy. The consequences, both for Iran and the wider world, could be devastating, far outweighing any purported security gains for Israel and the United States.
Shamsoddin Shariati is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University.
John O'Brennan is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University and Director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies.
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