Why Did the US Attack Iran?

Iran Had Already Agreed to US Terms

This essay is cross-posted on Nakedcapitalism.com.

Following a choreographed response by Iran to the US – Israeli attacks on what are alleged to have been Iranian nuclear facilities, the Trump administration announced a cease fire between Iran and Israel. That the US is the lead belligerent in the attacks on Iran recalls similar posturing by it as a helpful neighbor in Russia – Ukraine talks. As of this moment, Israel is bombing Iran after accusing it of breaking the cease-fire.

Yesterday’s attack by Iran on Al Udeid airbase in Qatar was a pre-announced volley of six missiles, three of which were reportedly intercepted by Qatar, that appeared intended to harm no one. Under international law, Iran was entitled to a retaliatory strike as response to the illegal and unprovoked attack by the US on Iran. With this dance completed, Mr. Trump announced the cease-fire.

Regarding the cease fire, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov offered that “This is what Russia has been calling for from the very beginning of this conflict. So yes, this can and should be welcomed,” Russia will presumably be looking for evidence that the US is moving its large gathering of ships, planes, missiles and personnel assembled for the attack on Iran out of West Asia. The best guess here is that the US will not be removing the offending items anytime soon.

What makes this roundabout particularly insane is that Iran had already agreed to US terms before the hostilities were undertaken. The theory from American commenters that the only reason that Iran (legally) possessed 60% enhanced uranium was to gain bargaining leverage with the Americans is plausible. It was Donald Trump himself who tore up the agreement that Iran had signed saying that it couldn’t.

With the Iranian show of deference through its restrained and politically necessary response in Qatar to the US – Israeli attacks on it, claims in the present by the Israelis that it was Iran that breached the cease fire seem unlikely to be true. But with scant details, this is a logical claim, not an empirical one. Given that it is Iran that appears to be behaving itself—as seen through Western eyes, Iran is currently still under attack from the same coalition that it agreed to peace with.

From Donald Trump’s perspective, possibly he feels that he has fulfilled his obligation to Miriam Adelson with respect to her $100 million purchase of his services, and can now restart work on his Nobel Peace Prize. But with Iran having agreed to US terms before the hostilities began, things aren’t adding up here. The fog of war is one possible explanation, hidden motives and plans by the US are another.

Channeling retired CIA, and national treasure, Ray McGovern, the following scenario unfolds: Donald Trump responded to the initial Israeli assault on Iran by stepping in with US resolve and fire power to solve the proximate problem of Iran’s alleged nuclear program. Now that that has been accomplished, the US can depart and Mr. Trump can contact the Nobel committee.

One problem with this version of events is that as of yesterday afternoon, the US and Israel were still bombing the Fordow site under the highly probable theory that the facility had not been destroyed. The premise of Western pundits that the US and Israel knew that the charges of an Iranian nuclear weapons program were bogus, and that the attacks were therefore political theater, are challenged by the ongoing bombing campaign against the Fordow facility.

Further, the deployment of ships, planes, and missiles to West Asia began quite a bit before Israel launched its illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran two weeks ago. What the US has assembled in West Asia doesn’t look to be impromptu, as a rapid response to an unfortunate incident. Moreover, the initial Israeli attack specifically targeted senior Iranian military and political leadership. The point: the attack was highly planned, not an impromptu affair.

Commenters in the US are again claiming that ‘all roads lead to (Joe) Biden,’ that this attack against Iran was planned eighteen months ago by the Biden administration. With a similar claim made regarding MI-6’s recent attack on Russian nuclear assets, the Biden administration is apparently still in charge of US foreign policy. But Mr. Biden was never in charge of US foreign policy. So, who’s running this show?

Further, the last two US calls for peace with Iran were pretexts for unprovoked assaults by the US and Israel on it. Mr. Trump imagines that his emperor’s boot on Iran’s neck can force an unjust peace and that the payment of tribute will once again flow upwards. On a longer trajectory, that is not how this will unfold. No predictive power is claimed here. The premise is that repressive power is costly to maintain, and the West is running low on resources.

That the US and Israel were still bombing the Fordow facility on Monday afternoon suggests that the Americans and the Israelis really do believe their own b.s. regarding an Iranian nuclear weapons program--- a point that I made that wasn’t very well received last week. Anyone listening to official pronouncements from Washington regarding foreign affairs will have noted a departure of what is said from the determinable facts.

On Saturday night, the 21^st of June, the US launched an attack on three Iranian sites alleged to contain the remnants of Iran’s nuclear program. Initial reports from the Trump administration claimed that all three sites were ‘completely destroyed.’ Commenters on military affairs contend that this is unlikely. The bunkers, particularly Fordow, are buried deeper than conventional US missiles are likely able to penetrate.

The assault was carried out using multiple 30.000 lb. bunker buster bombs. These are conventional weapons, not nuclear weapons. Here is retired MIT professor Ted Postol explaining to Dan Davis why the bunker busters are unlikely to destroy well-buried facilities. As illustrated in the video, there are physical barriers that can be used to deflect bunker buster missiles. This means that most don’t burrow as deeply as is needed to destroy deeply buried bunkers.

Iran had previously stated that it had removed whatever fissile material may have been in the facilities in anticipation of US strikes. This suggests that the strikes were performative--- to demonstrate resolve, rather than strategic in nature. However, that the US and Israelis are re-bombing the Fordow facility suggests otherwise. Implied is that they 1) believe that what is in the Iranian bunkers represents a problem that is worth addressing militarily and 2) the weapons used to date have failed to end this problem.

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Headline: Report: Pentagon Agency Believes US Needs To Drop A Nuke To Destroy Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Plant, June 19, 2025, antiwar.com. _____________________________________________________

Reports last week had it that Iran no longer trusted the CIA assets alleged to be working for the IAEA, (International Atomic Energy Agency), and therefore wouldn’t allow IAEA inspectors back into the sites until the CIA is removed from the process. For present purposes, there are many steps to be taken before the ‘nuclear problem’ will be resolved in the eyes of the West.

Prior to Saturday night’s attack, Russia had reportedly offered Iran military assistance, including an air defense system, which Iran initially refused for fear of provoking the US. With the attack now in the rear-view mirror, this logic no longer applies. The Russians are claimed to have delivered conventional missiles to Iran last week, with a more general and substantial promise of support implied.

In a call from V. Putin to Donald Trump following the initial attack, Mr. Putin is reported to have told Mr. Trump that Iran is a strategic partner of Russia, and to tread carefully. Mr. Trump’s subsequent decision to go ‘Jeffrey Dahmer’ on Iran, inviting it back to his place for some nuclear negotiations and then trying to club it to death in a surprise attack, could not have made the Russians happy.

What was made abundantly clear with Saturday night’s attack is that the effort to destroy Iran is an American affair. Early press accounts had the Israelis being informed of the attacks as they were happening. While the news itself is a big yawn, the royal ‘we’ that Donald Trump uses to describe the relationship places the US on top every time.

Flying under the radar is that, with the West now otherwise occupied in Iran, the Russians are rolling through Ukraine. For current purposes, the quantum of Western resources now redeployed to West Asia from Ukraine suggests that the US is planning to stay there (West Asia) for a while. If the US wants peace, why does it have the military resources in place for war?

This last point isn’t intended as a logical gotcha. Donald Trump’s slogan is peace through strength, and over-arming could represent the strength part. But the current American effort took a lot of planning. And it is therefore unlikely to end quickly. Unless the purpose was a few seconds of Trumpian chest-thumping, nothing was resolved. Iran had already agreed to US terms before the hostilities were launched. And the Fordow facility is still standing.

On the misplaced priorities front, the alleged reason for launching the strikes on a Saturday night, rather than a Monday morning, was to ‘save the stock market.’ Donald Trump, who has been acting to manage oil prices since he entered office, likely to offset the volatility caused by his policies, is now targeting stock prices as well. Why would he do this? Because much of his own wealth, as well as that of his fellow oligarchs, is tied to stock market gains.

The Western press is again lying about Iran’s remaining military capacity following last Saturday’s attack. In Western press reports, it was three alleged nuclear facilities that were attacked, and not missiles and missile batteries. As the Iranians regain their footing, they retain the same capacity to inflict damage on Israel as they did before the attacks.

As the quote from Dmitry Peskov (above) put it regarding the cease fire, ‘this can and should be welcomed.’ Whether the result will be peace is another matter. With little accomplished other than retail-level death, destruction, and dismemberment, the question of the Western goal with the attacks remains open. Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah remains in power. And Iran had already agreed to give up its 60% enhanced uranium before Israel attacked it two weeks ago.

The idea that Mr. Trump launched an unprovoked war on the basis of a solved political problem--- Iran had agreed to US terms and the Western intelligence agencies supported its assertion that it had no nuclear weapons program, leaves far more questions than answers. Conversely, why isn’t Mr. Trump at risk of going to prison for this? What was the point? Great death and destruction have taken place. Why was this assault undertaken?

To the Western dispute over who is controlling this situation, the argument remains open as to whether the US is acting of its own volition, or at the behest of Israel? Question: who is funding the current venture in Iran? The US is. Who is providing the military resources for Israel’s actions? The US is. Who is providing Israel with political cover across West Asia? The US is. In fact, the US has the power to withdraw this support. Ergo, the US is controlling the situation.

For those who missed it, Miriam Adelson, the Zionist who gave Donald Trump $100 million in campaign contributions in 2024, is what is called an ‘oligarch.’ Readers may recall that oligarchs are a regular feature of discussions of economic class in the West. Some people, including yours truly, have argued for the last decade-and-one-half that oligarchs control the economies, and with them, the politics, of the West.

So, the argument has two elements, Zionism and economic class. What is revealed through the power of AIPAC is that the controlling economic interests of the West are Zionists. If they were poor Zionists, this point would be easier to communicate because few would ever have heard of Zionism. America has been controlled by oligarchs for most of its history. The types of wealth generated in recent decades have benefitted some groups and not others.

Supporting this contention is that Israel was viewed as a minor US asset in West Asia until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Readers will recall that the US and the Brits overthrew the government of Iran in 1953 and replaced it with Reza Pahlavi, the fake Shah that the West inflicted until the Iranians booted him out in 1979. Since then, the US has declared non-stop war against Iran. Death and its best friend, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld--- who sold Iran its first nuclear reactor under Eisenhower’s ‘atoms for peace’ initiative, set the US military establishment after Iran, and have been punishing it for its impudence ever since.

So, the question arises of when Zionism took control of US foreign policy, and more importantly, why? I personally observed during the time that Israel was making its long right-wing turn that the move was coincident with the US MIC (military-industrial-complex) integrating with the Israeli military. I’ve met and had long conversations with very senior Israeli military contractors who worked for the Pentagon. They had higher security clearances than made any sense as representatives of a foreign government.

It was the US that chose to integrate Israel into US plans for West Asia. As best I could determine over the years, Israel didn’t control the relationship. And the longer the association with the US lasted, the harder-right-wing Israel turned. Younger readers may never have heard of the Israeli Socialists of the 1970s. Israel was sold as a progressive outpost with Socialist tendencies. This is the same Israel today that has spent its recent years committing an ethno-nationalist genocide that would have made the Nazis squirm.

As I’ve argued multiple times since John Mearsheimer’s book was written, my problem with the ‘Israel Lobby’ thesis is the conflation of cause with effect. Mearsheimer is a hero for his public antiwar stances in my eyes. And the differences here go to economic premises, not an interest in winning an internet squabble. The dominant feature of Western political economy since the 1970s has been the concentration of incomes and wealth at the very top.

I didn’t realize that this was either unknown or still controversial amongst the economists on the other side of this debate. As I’ve demonstrated with graphs and evidence since 2011, this concentration of wealth didn’t come from God bestowing money on some people, but not others. The industries that have done well in recent decades all did so with significant and ongoing public funding.

Academics Gilens and Page, as well as Thomas Ferguson, have written books and papers making the point that money, meaning the rich, controls American politics. The pharmaceutical industry was a large contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, and the US now has private insurance system that doesn’t pay claims. But industry profits are way up. This kind of self-dealing by corporations and the rich is the way that America works in 2025.

The last I looked, neither Russia nor China has bought American politicians because they are precluded from doing so. Recall the reaction to the fantasy that Russia was interfering in Western elections around 2016. Were they allowed to simply purchase politicians, as the Israel lobby is alleged to do, the Russians could have saved billions, possibly trillions, by purchasing Joe Biden rather than going to war in Ukraine. However, the war in Ukraine was already underway when Biden entered office.

So, who decides which nations get to purchase US foreign policy and which don’t? Question: why don’t the Russians and the Chinese simply outbid Israel to control of US foreign policy? Doing so would certainly be less costly than going to war. The answer: because it isn’t for sale. The monopoly that Israel holds on US foreign policy comes before the Israel Lobby, not after it.

To the question of why Donald Trump is answering to Benjamin Netanyahu, I’ll go way out on a limb here and suggest that possibly the $100 million that Miriam Adelson paid him for doing so has something to do with it. This is in no way to discount Ray McGovern’s thesis that Donald Trump ultimately wants peace. But he took $100 million from Miriam Adelson to do the opposite.

Last: the US / Israeli genocide in Gaza has entered its mass extermination phase. This is amongst the more grotesque episodes in human history. Americans are paying for it, supplying the weapons, planes and providing political support for Israel while it carries out the genocide. For those who haven’t studied the Holocaust, this is it. This is a Holocaust being carried out by Israel with full US backing.