Israeli Saboteurs and Iranian Peacemakers

When will MAGA recognize that the United States needs to restrain Israel?

In February, we wrote a piece on Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and commended him for his efforts as President of Iran to be a peacemaker who has gone above and beyond to put diplomacy at the forefront of his foreign policy, even to the point of turning the other cheek in Christlike fashion to the Israelis after their strike on Iran in October 2024, which killed four members of the Iranian military and one civilian. Iran still has not responded to this attack and blatant violation of their sovereignty, and there have been no signs showing that they will, so long as the United States is willing to agree to fair nuclear agreement between the two nations as well as restrain the Israelis from further attacks. Iran is taking great efforts to prevent a mass regional war from erupting in the Middle East, which would almost certainly result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, and they deserve recognition for that from anyone who opposes war in the Middle East.

Yesterday, May 28th, the New York Times released an an article citing Israeli officials which revealed that the Israelis desire to sabotage US-Iran negotiations by carrying out a military strike on Iran without warning the United States. The Times reported:

“Israeli officials close to Mr. Netanyahu believe the U.S. would have no choice but to assist Israel militarily if Iran counterattacked. Israeli officials have told their American counterparts that Mr. Netanyahu could order a strike on Iran even if a successful diplomatic agreement is reached.”

The article goes on to detail:

“After his White House meeting with Mr. Trump in April, Mr. Netanyahu ordered Israeli national security officials to continue planning for a strike on Iran, including a smaller operation that would not require U.S. assistance, according to multiple people briefed on the matter. Israel already has many different plans on the shelf, ranging from the surgical to days and days of bombing Iranian facilities, including some in crowded cities.”

There is no other way to explain what the Israelis are planning besides sabotage, and far too few Americans have been outspoken about this. The American left still holds the view that Israel is nothing but a proxy for the United States which holds no influence over America and is fully aligned with America when it comes to foreign policy, rather than a nation that poses a grave threat to American sovereignty. The American right views Israel as an ally and partner at worst, or believes that what Israel does and what happens in the Middle East is irrelevant to America at best. Since the American left holds no sway over the Trump administration or the MAGA movement, we will be focusing on the American right’s response to Israel’s efforts to drag the United States into a regional war with Iran.

Indeed, many MAGA influencers on the American right have been complicit in Israel’s efforts to sabotage negotiations between the US and Iran. Tim Pool, Matt Walsh, and many other right-wing commentators have come out recently with the same talking point that they are the true "America First” patriots because they only care about America and Americans and could care less about Israel, even though Tim Pool met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month and Walsh is employed by Israeli propagandist Ben Shapiro’s media outlet The Daily Wire. Pool went so far as to attack America First Movement leader Nick Fuentes and his followers as being “Israel First” for being outspoken on Israel being a threat to American sovereignty, claiming that it is an “obsession.”

Yet Ben Shapiro, on his show this week, was openly encouraging Israeli sabotage of the US-Iran negotiation process, arguing, “If we are going to take the full-scale, JD Vance, isolationist-realist position, shouldn’t the United States just sort of wash it’s hands and walk away and say ‘whatever happens, happens?’ So why is the restrainer camp inside the Trump administration trying to stop Israel from [bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities]?” Shapiro is being deceitful, because he knows, just as Israeli officials have stated, that if Israel bombs Iran, the United States will have “no choice” but to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation. Additionally, Shapiro for some reason is trying to paint JD Vance as an isolationist, when Vance has publicly pushed for strong military action against Iran. While Vance, who is a protege of Palantir’s Peter Thiel, tends to be more in line with Thiel and the rest of Silicon Valley which is far more hawkish towards China than Iran, he is a firm Zionist and hardly an isolationist as Shapiro claims. Shapiro is simply pushing for the Trump administration to be as extremely hawkish as he is towards Iran, rather than just being modestly hawkish.

Of course, there are outliers on the American right. Nick Fuentes, who has perhaps been the most outspoken right-wing political commentator on Israeli influence over the United States, came out against these political commentators for their lack of coverage on Israel’s goal of dragging the United into a regional war with Iran on his show America First last night. Discussing the Israeli efforts to sabotage the nuclear negotiations, Fuentes affirmed the validity of the reports: “This is not coming from the fantasies of a raging antisemite banging his head against the wall obsessed with Israel. This not a conspiracy theory from an obscure forum. This is the paper of record of the United States of America citing a number of officials interviewed over months from Israel, from Europe, and from the United States. This is from our own intelligence community, this is from Israeli journalists close to Netanyahu, this is from Iran, this is from Europe. They all say this has been the play for well over a year.”

It is important to discuss the Middle East angle to the negotiation process between the US and Iran as well. Barak Ravid reported for Axios today that the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all have encouraged Trump to pursue a nuclear deal with the Iranians and to not engage militarily with Iran. This is a positive development for the Middle East which has been riddled with Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict for decades. Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni Islamic world, and Iran, the leader of the Shia Islamic world, seem to be more interested in working together rather than continuing their sectarian rivalry. They held joint naval exercises in October 2024, and now the Sunni Arab nations on the Persian Gulf are pressuring Trump to cut a deal with Iran to prevent a regional war from erupting. Everyone in the Middle East wants regional stability besides one country, Israel.

Dr. Sam Torabi, the Iranian director of the Risalat Strategic Studies Institute and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics, has predicted, “If the Israelis decide to strike Iran alone, without US offensive assistance, that will result in the collapse of the state Israel. If the United States engages Iran militarily alongside Israel or without Israel, that will result in the collapse of the global economy,” demonstrating that there still exists a strong confidence in Iran’s military capabilities among Iranian foreign policy experts.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has been leading the nuclear negotiation process for Iran, has made the Iranian position surrounding nuclear negotiations very clear. Iran is more than willing to make a deal where they would not allowed to develop nuclear weapons, but if the US wants to prevent the Iranians from having any nuclear enrichment capabilities, even for civilian use, there will not be a deal.

Of course, none of this matters unless the United States restrains Israel. If the Israelis do succeed in sabotaging the United States’ diplomatic efforts by carrying out a military strike on Iran, there actually would be “no choice” but for America to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation given how captured this Trump administration is by the Israel lobby. In his 1991 book The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Seymour Hersh tells the story of how, "on the fourth day of the war, Oct. 9, Israel's ambassador, Simcha Dinitz, came to see Kissinger with a message that was tantamount to blackmail. Either the United States would immediately mount an arms resupply effort, or Israel might have to resort to nuclear weapons.” If Israel carried out a military strike against Iran and the United States was hesitant to defend them due to it being a blatant act of sabotage, there is no reason to believe that the Israelis would not threaten the United States with nuclear blackmail just as they did in 1973.

Americans understand the difference between having humility and being humiliated. Israelis do not. During his first term in office, Donald Trump ripped up the original JCPOA nuclear deal between the United States and Iran. Indeed, it would take humility for Trump to return to this deal, which prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons but still would allow them to maintain their nuclear facilities, but that humility would be heroic, not humiliating.