Israel’s War on Iran Was Made in USA: Trump Supported Attacks, While Faking Peace Talks
Israel has launched a major attack on Iran, which could escalate into a larger war.
The United States is not just sitting on the sidelines, watching what is happening; the Donald Trump administration is directly involved.
The US government oversaw the attack. Washington provided Tel Aviv with crucial intelligence, to help it kill top Iranian officials, with US weapons.
Trump provided Israel with cover, by overseeing fake peace talks with Iran, which in reality were a cynical ruse.
As US officials met with their Iranian counterparts to discuss a new nuclear deal (after Trump unilaterally tore up the previous one), Washington and Tel Aviv were secretly planning the operation.
Trump personally gave Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to launch the strikes.
Trump: “I always knew the date” of Israel’s attack on Iran; “we knew everything”
Mere hours after Israel struck Iran, Trump told the New York Post that he had approved the attack beforehand.
“I always knew the date”, Trump said. “Because I know everything”.
“I gave [Iran] 60 days and they didn’t meet it. Today is day 61”, he added, referring to 13 June.
Trump repeated these comments in an interview with Reuters: “We knew everything”, he stated, revealing that the US government was in constant communication with Israel.
“I think it’s been excellent”, Trump said of the Israeli attack on Iran, in an interview with ABC News.
“We gave [Iran] a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit”, Trump boasted. “And there’s more to come. A lot more”.
Just three days before the attack, the Trump administration sent Israel 300 Hellfire missiles, US officials admitted to Middle East Eye. These US missiles were used to kill Iranian officials.
Trump’s fake “peace talks” with Iran were cover for surprise attack
The Wall Street Journal summarized the Trump administration’s cynical strategy: “U.S. Diplomacy Served as Cover for Israeli Surprise Attack”.
Trump falsely claimed that he wanted peace with Iran, and US officials participated in five rounds of negotiations with Tehran. The sixth was supposed to be held in Oman on 15 June.
These talks aimed to broker a new Iran nuclear deal. Back in 2018, during his first term as US president, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had been signed into international law in 2015 and endorsed by a UN Security Council Resolution.
However, the Wall Street Journal noted that Trump’s bad-faith negotiations over a new agreement “ended up being the perfect cover for a surprise Israeli attack”.
This is how the Israeli media described Trump’s duplicitous scheme: “The US participated in a massive campaign to lull Iran into thinking an attack was not going to happen immediately”.
While publicly participating in these negotiations, the US government was privately helping Israel prepare for war on Iran.
A US official told ABC News that, before the attack, the Trump administration provided Israel with “exquisite” intelligence needed to target Iranian officials.
The media outlet Axios, which is very close to the Israeli government, reported the following (emphasis added):
Two Israeli officials claimed to Axios that Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public — and didn’t express opposition in private. “We had a clear U.S. green light,” one claimed.
The goal, they say, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent and make sure Iranians on Israel’s target list wouldn’t move to new locations.
Netanyahu’s aides even briefed Israeli reporters that Trump had tried to put the brakes on an Israeli strike in a call on [9 June], when in reality the call dealt with coordination ahead of the attack, Israeli officials now say.
Trump boasts of US-backed “slaughter” and “brutal” attacks on Iran
Donald Trump is proud of his role in the attack on Iran.
Hours after Israel hit Tehran with US missiles, on 13 June, Trump took to his website Truth Social, where he boasted that “the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it”.
Trump wrote that some Iranian officials “spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!”
The US president referred to these Israeli strikes that he was sponsoring as a form of “slaughter”, threatening that “the next already planned attacks [will be] even more brutal”.
One and a half hours later, Trump published another post on Truth Social.
The US president wrote, “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60 day ultimatum to ‘make a deal’. They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there”.
Trump’s message was clear: if Tehran didn’t give in to Washington’s demands and surrender its sovereignty, the US would keep using Israel to bomb Iran.
Marco Rubio lied; USA was deeply involved
All of this context demonstrates that US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio was blatantly lying when he claimed, “Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran”.
This is simply false. The Trump administration was involved in overseeing the operation. The US government provided Israel with intelligence and logistical support, not to mention the missiles, planes, and other military technology used to attack Iran.
Donald Trump personally gave Netanyahu and the Israeli regime the green light.
Moreover, when Tehran responded to Israel’s unilateral attack and hit back in self-defense, the US military was directly involved in intercepting and shooting down some of the Iranian missiles that were heading toward Tel Aviv.
What is clear is that everything that happened was a joint US-Israeli operation. Israel was not acting alone, and it certainly was not “dragging” the US into war. The Trump administration approved and oversaw this act of war.
Israel: an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the US empire
Israel is an extension of the US empire in one of the most strategic regions of the world.
Tel Aviv does not make significant military and foreign-policy decisions without first getting the approval of Washington.
Top Israeli military officials have admitted that, without US support, the IDF would not be able to wage war on Gaza (not to mention Iran, Lebanon, and Syria).
This is why former US President Joe Biden repeatedly declared that, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel”.
As former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig explained, “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security”.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said the same. He proudly referred to Israel as a “mighty aircraft carrier” of the US empire.
It is the United States that arms and protects Israel. Washington gives it billions of dollars of military aid every year, including the weapons, ammunition, planes, and missiles that Israel uses to kill Palestinians and attack Iran, Lebanon, and Syria.
The United States also protects Israel in international fora, ensuring that it does not face any consequences for constantly violating international law and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Trump administration vetoed a resolution in the UN Security Council on 4 June that had called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The US was the only country in the Council to oppose the peace measure.
In 2023 and 2024, the Biden administration vetoed four UN Security Council resolutions that demanded peace in Gaza.
Israel’s US-backed brazen violations of Iranian sovereignty mark a dangerous escalation in Washington’s long war on independent states, exposing the impotence of international law and the necessity of armed resistance.
By Nina Farnia
Photo Credit: The Cradle
On the early morning of 13 June, Israel launched an aerial assault on Iran, killing over 224 people to date. This is the gravest breach of Iranian sovereignty since the US-backed Iran–Iraq War of the 1980s, widely understood as a proxy effort to dismantle the nascent Islamic Republic.
In its opening salvo, Tel Aviv assassinated top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, scientists, and academics, striking residential blocks and faculty housing. The war continues into its fifth day, with Israel and Washington openly seeking to collapse the Islamic Republic and crush the region’s anti-imperialist resistance.
News reports indicate that Israel has bombed two hospitals in Tehran, Iranian airports, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iran’s state broadcaster during a live broadcast, and some critical infrastructure. Iran has quickly and decisively responded in self-defense, proving that its military capabilities have not been diminished, and posing a far greater threat to Israel’s military, intelligence, and economic interests than Tel Aviv had forseen.
A war of aggression, by the book
Iran claims it has taken down four F-35 bombers, the US’s most highly prized fighter jet. Although Tehran has not yet offered visual evidence of this, US military contractor Lockheed Martin saw its stock price take a tumble after the reports aired. Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear energy and ballistic missile facilities remain operational, and the nation’s air defenses are back online after Friday’s shock events.
Under international law, Israel’s actions constitute a flagrant act of aggression. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter categorically states:
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
These attacks also meet the threshold of a “crime of aggression” as defined in Article 8bis of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which defines such a crime as:
“The planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.”
What about Tehran’s retaliatory attacks against Tel Aviv then? Iran’s military response is protected under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which affirms the inherent right of self-defense against armed attack:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
Tel Aviv and its supporters in western capitals have tried to frame Israel’s aggression as an act of “self-defense” against a potential Iranian attack ”someday,” but like the Bush Doctrine that sought to normalize pre-emptive aggressions against US adversary states, there is no international law that allows this.
Iran has now, on the basis of Israel’s illegal and unprovoked act of aggression, formally called for the UN Security Council to convene and address Israel’s unlawful assaults.
The UN’s silence, the Axis of Resistance speaks
Legal scholars recognize that international law is structurally compromised – even impotent and complicit – when it comes to the sovereignty of states targeted by western powers.
Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its repeated violations of US-brokered ceasefire agreements in the strip and Lebanon starkly illustrate the paralysis of international institutions. It is only through determined initiatives of Global South states, such as South Africa, that Israel’s Gaza violations have endured any international legal scrutiny – as in the cases lodged at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to adjudicate on Israel’s genocidal actions, and at the ICC to punish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
Predictably, the UN has only called for “maximum restraint” rather than issuing any condemnation of Israel’s unlawful aggression. Iran, like other resistance movements and governments across the Global South, understands these limitations. It nonetheless engages international law strategically to assert its legitimacy, fortify regional alliances, and frame its resistance as both lawful and necessary – to build a popular global support system for the regional resistance, and quite literally contain West Asia’s ongoing liberation struggle against the US and its proxies.
As Mohsen Baharvand, former deputy minister at Iran’s Foreign Ministry, explains to The Cradle:
“Although the legal and political foundations of the existing international order have become weak and shaky and international law has been marginalized, the foundations of international law have not completely lost their validity and its rules remain the rules governing the international order.”
Many governments share this reading of the law’s asymmetries and have publicly backed Iran’s sovereign right to self-defense. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi:
“China explicitly condemns Israel’s violation of Iran’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity … [and] supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty, defending its legitimate rights and interests.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning Tel Aviv’s actions as a “clear violation of the UN Charter and established principles of international law.” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attacks “unprovoked” and “deeply alarming,” warning of wider destabilization. Venezuela, Cuba, and other allied states have issued similar denunciations.
Encircling China, attacking its partners
With the “rules-based international order” exposed as a western tool of coercion, the multipolar vision led by China, Russia, Iran, and others now faces a critical test. The US-Israeli orchestrated assault on Iran is not isolated – it seeks to send shockwaves across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Iran plays a strategic role in this emerging bloc, maintaining robust security, military, and economic ties with Russia, China, Venezuela, Sudan, Yemen, and resistance forces in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq. These are the frontlines of opposition to US global hegemony.
This attack must also be understood in a broader strategic context. China is now encircled by US-led wars – Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan – all sustained by US arms and proxies. Recent US efforts to trigger instability along the India–Pakistan border were thwarted by Pakistani forces equipped with Chinese air defenses.
Since the Obama administration, Washington has explicitly identified China as its primary adversary. Under US President Donald Trump, the hybrid war has intensified. Today, the US targets Chinese allies to fracture regional ties and delay Asia’s political and economic rise.
But history cannot be paused. Iran, Russia, and above all China have not only endured but also emerged stronger. The hybrid wars on each of these nations began decades ago, and each has proven extremely resilient and savvy not only at remaining firm at the national scale, but also at aligning their continental and geopolitical interests as they rise.
Diplomacy is dead, profit lives on
On the battlefield, the rising Eurasian powers have proven their capabilities. But diplomacy remains their weakest front. The Iran nuclear deal was a bait-and-switch. So were the ceasefire talks in Gaza and Lebanon. This negotiating tactic – familiar in US corporate culture – serves to extract concessions while advancing aggression.
The US remains the most formidable empire in history. It disregards treaties, tramples international law, and rewrites rules to secure profit through warfare. Clausewitz’s maxim no longer applies; for the US, war is not politics by other means – it is profit by other means.
Diplomacy alone cannot halt the imperial machinery. The outcome of this and other enduring US-backed conflicts will be determined on the battlefield. The sooner the Eurasian bloc embraces this hard truth, the sooner that balance can shift.
Nina Farnia is a legal historian and expert on U.S. foreign policy. Her forthcoming book, Imperialism and Resistance, is due out in 2026 with Stanford University Press.
By Joe Coleman
Screenshot from Al Jazeera
Since June 13th, hundreds of missiles have streaked across Middle Eastern skies while diplomatic phones ring unanswered. Israel’s unprecedented assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities killed 78 people and eliminated senior military commanders. Iran retaliated with hundreds of ballistic missiles targeting Israeli cities and killing at least two dozen, thus far.
This escalation represents the inevitable conclusion of a 46-year cold war that began not with ancient hatreds, but with a revolution that fundamentally challenged the regional order. What we’re witnessing is the collision of two incompatible forces: the Iranian resistance to American hegemony and Israel’s dependence on it.
To understand why Iran and Israel are finally exchanging direct strikes, you must know how they became enemies. Most analyses start with 1979 and treat their hostility as inevitable—ancient religious antagonisms finally erupting. That interpretation misses the crucial point entirely.
They weren’t always enemies.
When Allies Become Enemies
Before 1979, Iran and Israel maintained a strategic partnership that extended far beyond diplomatic courtesy. Under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the relationship encompassed shared intelligence operations, joint military projects, and billions in bilateral trade.
The alliance formed part of Israel’s “Alliance of the Periphery,” a strategy devised by David Ben-Gurion to establish partnerships with non-Arab powers along the region’s periphery. Turkey, Ethiopia, and especially Iran served as counterweights to hostile Arab nationalism.
Iran became Israel’s most valuable regional ally. The Iranian monarchy supplied Israel with oil through a joint pipeline. El Al operated direct flights between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Israeli construction firms built infrastructure across Iran. Mossad trained SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police. When Arab nations imposed economic boycotts, Iran filled the gaps.
The collaboration extended beyond commerce. Declassified documents reveal extensive military cooperation, including joint development projects for weapons. During the Iran-Iraq War, Israel covertly supplied Iran with weapons and spare parts while maintaining official neutrality.
This partnership reflected cold strategic calculation. Both countries faced common threats: Soviet-backed Arab nationalism, particularly Nasser’s Egypt, and the growing influence of leftist movements across the Middle East. The alliance served concrete material interests on both sides.
Iran’s revolutionary upheaval changed everything.
Revolution as Imperial Threat
Khomeini’s revolution terrified ruling classes throughout the Middle East because it proved that seemingly invincible, American-backed autocrats could be overthrown by popular movements. More significantly, the revolution explicitly challenged the entire imperial order that had dominated the region since the end of World War II.
Iran’s new Islamic Republic opposed not just Israel, but the entire system of Western domination that Israel represented. When Khomeini branded America the “Great Satan” and Israel the “Little Satan,” this constituted a materialist analysis expressed in religious language. Both nations embodied imperialist control over the region’s resources and peoples.
The revolution’s anti-imperial character explains why opposition to Israel became central to Iran’s new identity. Supporting Palestinian liberation wasn’t merely solidarity with fellow Muslims—it represented a challenge to the geopolitical architecture that had subordinated Iran to Western interests for decades.
When the new regime severed relations with Israel in February 1979, transferred the former Israeli embassy to the PLO, and began supporting Palestinian resistance movements, it declared its intention to reshape the regional order entirely. This wasn’t a religious war between Jews and Muslims. It was a revolutionary challenge to imperial hegemony.
Israel understood the implications immediately.
The Shadow War Doctrine
What followed were decades of proxy warfare. Unable to confront each other directly without triggering superpower intervention, Iran and Israel fought through intermediaries across the region.
Iran armed and trained Hezbollah in Lebanon, transforming a militia into one of the world’s most sophisticated non-state armies. It provided weapons and funding to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The “Axis of Resistance” emerged—a network spanning from Yemen to Lebanon, united in opposition to Israeli and American domination.
Israel responded with its own shadow campaign, establishing a doctrine of preemptive strikes that began with Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. That surprise air raid destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program and established a clear message: Israel would not tolerate any Middle Eastern power developing atomic capabilities, regardless of international law.
Iran took note of this lesson and spread its nuclear infrastructure across multiple sites, buried key facilities underground, and surrounded them with sophisticated air defenses.
The Nuclear Chess Game
Iran’s nuclear program became the central battleground in this shadow war. For two decades, Israel has waged systematic warfare against Iranian nuclear development through sabotage, assassination, and cyberattacks:
Natanz, Iran’s primary enrichment facility, has suffered repeated attacks. Explosions in 2020 and 2021 damaged thousands of centrifuges, resulting in a delay of several months in uranium enrichment. Power systems failed mysteriously—equipment malfunctioned in ways suggesting sophisticated sabotage.
Fordow, heavily fortified and buried underground, has proven more resistant but remains vulnerable. Israeli intelligence has repeatedly attempted to compromise its underground facilities.
Isfahan’s Uranium Conversion Facility has endured multiple attacks that damaged both conversion infrastructure and facilities producing uranium metal, materials essential for weapons development.
This campaign represented methodical degradation of Iranian nuclear capabilities, conducted with military precision but covert deniability. Each attack forced Iran to rebuild and re-secure facilities while advancing no closer to weapons capability.
Simultaneously, Mossad assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists in operations of remarkable sophistication. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, considered the father of Iran’s nuclear program, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun in 2020. Majid Shahriari died when a bomb attached to his car exploded in 2010. Masoud Alimohammadi was killed by a booby-trapped motorcycle in 2010.
Each assassination conveyed the same message: working on Iran’s nuclear program carried a death sentence, executable anywhere, anytime, regardless of security measures.
This proxy phase served the interests of both sides for decades. Iran could challenge Israeli power without risking total war. Israel could degrade Iranian capabilities without triggering a regional conflagration. But proxy wars have their own logic. Each escalation demands a response. Each response raises the stakes.
Gaza Changes Everything
Israel’s response to Hamas’s October 7 attack changed everything. The campaign that followed—now over a year and a half old—has killed over 40,000 Palestinians. By systematically destroying Gaza and launching attacks into Lebanon, Israel demonstrated both its willingness to use overwhelming force and its utter disregard for international law.
For Iran, Israel’s Gaza campaign represented both a threat and an opportunity. The danger was obvious: if Israel could conduct unlimited warfare against Palestinians with American support, Iranian allies faced similar vulnerability. The opportunity was equally clear: Israel’s actions had alienated much of the international community and exposed contradictions in American rhetoric about international law.
Iran’s strategic calculation shifted. For decades, the strategy had been building capabilities while avoiding confrontation. But Israel’s escalating attacks on Iranian positions in Syria, assassinations on Iranian soil, and threats against Iran’s nuclear program suggested that conflict was inevitable regardless of Iranian restraint.
Imperial Logic and Regional War
Understanding this conflict requires looking beyond Tehran and Jerusalem to Washington. The Iran-Israel confrontation is fundamentally about American hegemony in the Middle East and Iran’s challenge to it.
The United States has spent decades building Israel into a regional superpower, specifically to prevent challenges like Iran from emerging. American aid—$3.8 billion annually, plus additional military support—doesn’t just protect Israel. It maintains American control over the region’s most strategic location.
Iran represents the one significant Middle Eastern power that refuses integration into the American-dominated order. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Gulf monarchies, Iran won’t subordinate its foreign policy to American interests. This makes it an existential threat not to Israel’s survival, but to the regional architecture guaranteeing Israeli supremacy.
From Iran’s perspective, this architecture explains why accommodation with Israel remains impossible. As long as Israel serves as America’s regional enforcer, any Iranian weakness will be exploited to restore something resembling the Shah’s regime—perhaps not monarchical, but indeed subordinated to Western interests.
This dynamic traps both sides in an escalation spiral neither can escape through diplomacy alone. Israel cannot accept Iranian power because it threatens American guarantees. Iran cannot accept Israeli supremacy because it represents imperial domination.
Breaking the Cycle
The current missile exchanges are the logical endpoint of this contradiction. Both sides have concluded that their core interests require either the other’s destruction or submission. Neither can retreat without risking everything built since 1979.
The tragedy is that this conflict serves the interests of the elite on all sides. Iranian hardliners can rally support against foreign enemies. Israeli leaders can justify unlimited military spending and authoritarian measures. American defense contractors profit while Pentagon strategists justify an expanded military presence.
Meanwhile, ordinary people—Iranian scientists, Israeli civilians, Palestinian families—bear the costs of a conflict none chose but all must endure.
The current escalation will eventually exhaust itself temporarily. Neither Iran nor Israel can sustain unlimited warfare indefinitely. But without addressing the underlying imperial dynamics that created this conflict, any ceasefire simply resets the countdown.
As long as the Middle East remains organized around American hegemony and Israeli supremacy, Iran will challenge that order. As long as Iran builds capabilities to resist regional domination, Israel will seek to destroy those capabilities.
The missiles illuminating Middle Eastern skies aren’t just weapons—they’re symptoms of a more profound crisis. A regional order built on imperial control and sustained through overwhelming violence has produced enemies it cannot defeat and conflicts it cannot resolve.
The ghosts of 1979 still haunt this conflict because the revolution’s core challenge remains unanswered: whether Middle Eastern peoples can determine their own fate, or whether that fate belongs permanently to powers beyond their borders.
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Joe Coleman is a public high school history teacher, socialist educator, and writer in Florida. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in History, and his work focuses on the intersection of historical memory and contemporary political struggles, connecting current issues to their historical roots.
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