On Iran, Both Left and Right Agree: Better to Denounce Jews than Defend Freedom

While the ultimate outcome of the war on Iran remains to be seen, it has already clarified one stark reality in America. Namely, influencers on both left and right now fully agree: Better to denounce the war and blame it on the Jews, rather than recognize its urgent necessity, and thank Israel for its extraordinary partnership in this fight to end Iran’s long war on the free world.

On the far right, the usual media barkers are competing over who can most harshly demonize Israel. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Megan Kelly have all denounced Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as the supreme manipulator, having allegedly hoodwinked the Trump administration into fighting “Israel’s war.” Along similar lines, Alex Jones resurrects medieval myths of secret Jewish influence, claiming that “Israel is holding us hostage” and “controlling our foreign policy.”

A similar chorus of accusations animates the far left – and now has increasing traction on the not-so-far-left. Former Yale Politics Professor Jason Stanley, ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, and US Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy all blame Israel for having duped America into fighting “Netanyahu’s war.” Similarly, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman condemns Netanyahu for “playing both President Trump and American Jews for fools.”

Defenders of these denunciations might say they mention only Israel, not Jews. But their uniform invocations of nefarious Israeli manipulation and control of American leaders precisely echo the millennia-old antisemitic canard of “manipulative, scheming Jews.” Mere linguistic coincidence? Unlikely.

That alone should disqualify those many denunciations as unworthy of attention. But there is a more substantive reason why they deserve to be ignored: Amid all their sound and fury about Israel’s alleged scheming, they neglect an enormously important geopolitical reality, namely: Iran’s well-documented and abundantly demonstrated threats both to Israel – America’s most important national security ally – and to the security of the free world. These realities include:

Iran has spent decades declaring its commitment to the genocidal annihilation of Israel. Its leaders endlessly call for “the complete obliteration of the Zionist regime,” and pledge “the destruction of the cancerous microbe Israel.” Far from this being mere rhetoric, Iran has invested massively in that genocidal project. It financed and armed a death circle of terror armies around Israel: Hamas, the Houthis, Syria-based militias, and Hezbollah. After Hamas’s October 7 horrors, intelligence sources revealed Iran’s plans to unleash all those terror armies at once in a surprise attack, for a massively larger replay of the 10/7 slaughters.

But Iran’s annihilationist goals extend far beyond Israel, with America at the top of its target list. Its leaders constantly call for “Death to America.” Iran has orchestrated numerous killings of Americans, including: the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, killing 241 US troops; Iran’s proxy militias in Iraq that killed over 600 American soldiers; Iranian bounty payments for Taliban attacks on US troops in Afghanistan; three Americans murdered by a drone attack in Jordan; and years of Houthi attacks on US ships.

Iran’s shadow war on America also includes its brazen plots to carry out assassinations of both ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump.

Importantly, negotiating Iran off its path to nuclear capacity was never a possible option. The 2015 JCPOA – the “best” deal available – was riddled with holes: it banned no-notice inspections; and it explicitly permitted Iran to build nuclear weapons after ten years. Insisting on negotiations as the sole approach to Iran has meant in actuality, guaranteeing a nuclear Iran.

And that is why this was in no way a “war of choice” – it was one of stark necessity. As former US national security staffer Michael Doran recently explained, after America’s attacks on the deeply-buried Fordow nuclear production site, Iran renewed and accelerated both its nuclear materials production and its drone and ballistic missile acquisition. This placed Iran “on track for a stockpile of roughly 8,000 ballistic missiles by 2027” – which would have completely “overwhelm[ed] the air and missile defenses of Israel, the United States, and their Gulf allies.” In sum, Iran was making its nuclear weapons program immune from attack and dismantlement – and hence was on the verge of locking in its unstoppable path to nuclear weapons capacity.

This presented not one but two existential threats to the security of the free world. The obvious one is Iran’s acquiring both nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them worldwide. But the second one was similarly acute, namely, the nuclear arms race set to take off once Iran reached nuclear capacity. Many experts have warned that once Iran went nuclear, the Saudis, Turks, and likely other regimes were all committed to then acquiring their own nuclear weapons. By eliminating Iran’s nuclear program now, Israel and America are preventing the imminent launch of a nuclear arms race across the Islamic world.

Also overlooked by the war’s opponents is this stark reality: As a strategic ally of China, Iran’s having control over the straits of Hormuz can play a decisive role in China’s plans to invade Taiwan. When China invades, Iran could shut the principal oil supply to both Taiwan and our regional allies Japan and South Korea. Conversely, if the West controls Hormuz, China’s Taiwan invasion is greatly deterred by the risk of losing its own primary oil supply.

These facts illuminate the morally bankrupt reasoning of the Israel-Trump scolds. They condemn both parties for preventing a second Holocaust, for precluding a Mideast nuclear arms race, and for obstructing China’s planned Taiwan invasion. Worse, they offer nothing else that could prevent the genocidal Iranian dictatorship from building a horrifying arsenal of nuclear weapons.

These hard realities make clear that there is one, and only one, morally serious response to Israel’s and America’s take-down of Iran’s nuclear program and missile/drone arsenal. Namely: Thank you Israel, and thank you President Trump – for acting when no one else would, and for walking humanity back off the path to nuclear Armageddon.