Peace Through Strength: The Real Constituency for War with Iran
Why the Push for War with Iran Has Nothing to do with American Safety
Last night at the State of the Union, the President falsely claimed to have ended eight wars. Last night, the United States was actively preparing for its next one—with Iran.
The pundits are cranking up the rhetoric. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest aircraft carrier, is steaming toward the Middle East to join the USS Abraham Lincoln, already on station. We can pretend war with Iran isn't a foregone conclusion, but it is. Donald Trump doesn't care that the Constitution vests war powers in Congress. And Congress? It handed those powers away years ago.
With war feeling inevitable, we need to ask a simple question: Why?
Because the push for war with Iran has nothing to do with American safety.
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In 2015, the United States and its allies achieved something rare in the Middle East: a genuine diplomatic breakthrough. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the Iran Nuclear Deal—was hailed as a historic check on proliferation.
For decades, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu had been a regular fixture at the UN podium, warning year after year that Iran was a mere 3-5 years away from a nuclear bomb.
Then, Iran agreed to open its facilities to international inspectors, cap its enrichment at a level suitable only for civilian energy, and effectively walk back its nuclear program. It was, by any reasonable measure, a triumph for non-proliferation.
So why did it feel like a defeat?
In Tel Aviv, the reaction was not relief. It was fury. To understand that fury, we have to abandon the comforting fiction that this was ever about the bomb. It was about something far older, far deeper, and far more dangerous: the unfinished business of 1950s.
So grab your Dr. Pepper and let’s hop in the TARDIS to journey back in time.
The year is 1953 and Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, made the fatal error of nationalizing his country’s oil, which was then controlled by a British company later known as British Petroleum.
The response from the West was swift and brutal.
The CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup, overthrowing Mosaddegh and reinstalling the Shah—an autocratic monarch who would serve as a loyal, and brutal, proxy for U.S. and Israeli interests. The Shah’s repressive rule, propped up by Washington, directly fueled the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which brought the current, deeply antagonistic theocracy to power.
This history is the unspoken context of today’s conflict. The U.S. and Israel broke their own creation, and now they seek to finish the job, reportedly even backing the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi, for a restoration. The nuclear program is merely the cudgel to achieve it.
Fast forward to 2018.
The Trump administration, buoyed by the immense financial backing of the pro-Israel lobby—specifically casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam—unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA.
Miriam Adelson has since become one of Donald Trump's largest donors. Her $100 million investment wasn't a donation; it was a down payment on policy. It successfully secured the move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. After Netanyahu lobbied for withdrawal, the U.S. tore up the very deal it had helped broker just three years prior.
The international community has come to know this destabilizing whiplash as “American foreign policy.”
The result of this withdrawal has been predictable and catastrophic.
For years without a deal, Iran has advanced its program. It is now enriching uranium to 60% purity which is well past the 3.67% limit and is a short technical step from weapons-grade.
Today, Iran is offering to re-enter the JCPOA, return to the 3.67% cap, allow full IAEA inspections, and even sell off or grind down its stockpile of enriched uranium.
The U.S. and Israel, however, are demanding 0% enrichment.
Zero.
This is not a negotiating position; it is an ultimatum designed to be rejected. It is a page torn from the "Libya model"—demand complete capitulation, and when it is (quite reasonably) refused, use the rejection as a pretext for war.
Let’s be clear on the numbers: 3.67% is for civilian power. 90% is for a bomb. Zero percent is for a nation that has surrendered its sovereignty.
If the goal was to prevent a nuclear Iran, the JCPOA was the proven answer. If the goal is regime change, then offering your opponent nothing is the perfect way to manufacture consent for another disastrous forever war.
Peace Just Isn’t Profitable
We have been here before. The Iraq War was built on a foundation of lies. It cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. It shattered the trust between the American people and the institutions that led us into that forever war.
And now they're asking us to do it again.
This time, it's for Iran. This time, the beneficiaries are donors like Miriam Adelson, whose explicit goal is to "shape American policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"—not to ensure American security.
If the goal is to topple a government, you're not looking for a solution that brings stability. You're looking for victory. In that framework, a genuine diplomatic solution isn't just a long shot. It's the enemy.
So I ask you, dear reader: How much American blood and treasure should be spent on yet another forever war so that a foreign government and the military industrial complex can profit?
Excellent.
Brilliant as always!