The American Government Did Not Need Any Pressure from Israel to Strike Iran

It is important to refute the charge that Israel is responsible for the American attack on Iran. Find out why here: “Why world media blaming Israel for US striking Iran is scary – opinion,” by Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, June 29, 2025:

BBC’s Middle East bureau chief Jo Floto wrote: “If Netanyahu’s tone was triumphant, and the smile barely suppressed, it is hardly surprising. He has spent most of his political career obsessed with the threat he believes Iran poses to Israel.” But it is not only Netanyahu who cares about stopping Iran’s race to the bomb. Continuing the Jewish state’s existence is a consensus issue in Israel, not a personal or irrational “obsession.”

Netanyahu does not have an “obsession” with the Iranian threat. He has expressed for years his alarm over Iran’s nuclear programs, an alarm that is widely shared by others in Israel’s military echelon, and by many in the American government, including its military, as well. Painting Israel’s worry as simply the result of one man’s “obsession” is meant to cast doubt on the wisdom of Israel’s attack on Iran, and on the subsequent American attack, which is being painted as prompted by Israeli persuasion.

The antisemites are already out in force on social media, blaming Israel for “dragging America into war.” Trump did not need persuasion from Israel to bomb Iran’s three nuclear facilities. He knew that Iran had over the past 45 years done much to harm America: Iran had held 66 American diplomats hostage for 444 days, had used its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah to kill 283 Marines sleeping in their barracks in Beirut in 1983, had blown up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 American Air Force servicemen, and three separate Beirut bombings in 1983, killing 19 US Air Force servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 603 service members in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, used its Iraqi proxy Katai’ib Hezbollah to fire missiles in 2024 at an American base in Jordan, killing three soldiers, attempted to assassinate US President Donald Trump last year, and damaged with a missile the US embassy branch in Tel Aviv last week. Almost 900 Americans have been killed over more than 40 years by Iran and its proxies. Trump, who knew all this, and could see on television an endless series of mass demonstrations in Iran calling for “death to America,” clearly needed no persuasion from Israel to strike at Iran’s nuclear program.

Think of the two attacks in Buenos Aires, carried out by Iran-backed Hezbollah. In 1992, the Israeli Embassy was bombed, resulting in 29 civilian deaths, and 242 additional civilians were injured. In 1994 the Jewish community center known as AMIA was bombed, resulting in 85 deaths and over 300 injuries. Argentine authorities have formally accused Iran, through Hezbollah, of orchestrating these attacks. How many Iranian-backed sleeper cells are now ready to be activated inside the United States, ready to carry out similar attacks in our country?

After the ceasefire started, Iran promptly broke it by launching a missile at a civilian population center, killing five people who had taken refuge in a bomb shelter. Only then did the IDF respond, striking an outpost of the Basij militia — a purely military target. But NPR put the two attacks on the same footing. Its reporters could have noted that Israel hit a military target while Iran hit a civilian one, but they could not be bothered to do so.

The BBC reporters should have said that “after the Iranians struck a civilian building in Beersheba, Israel responded with an attack on a military outpost of the Basiji.” Why didn’t they?

But the most disturbing account of the ceasefire came from The Telegraph’s global health security editor Paul Nuki, who had the audacity to write that Beersheba has a “heavy military presence.” When the media watchdog HonestReporting wrote on X/Twitter that Nuki had tacitly justified the targeting of a civilian city of 210,000 people, he responded, “You ought to pop down there, mate.”

Nuki’s nasty little retort to HonestReporting provides insight into his anti-Israel animus. What does it matter if Beersheva has a “heavy military presence” — in fact, it does not — if the missile launched by Iran was directed at a civilian target?

The American government did not need any pressure from Israel to strike Iran. Since 1979, the Iranians, or their proxies, have killed 900 American soldiers. Iranian protesters routinely call for “Death to America.” Iran has built thousands of long-range ballistic missiles that will allow it to strike our NATO allies, and our military bases, in Europe. America was not making just Israel, or itself, more secure by doing “extreme damage” to those three nuclear facilities, but making the entire Western world more secure. This is what the media ought to be writing about.