Republican View: Don’t let Israel drag America into another war

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in this column are those of author Zachary Winn and are not representative of the thoughts or opinions of Tompkins Weekly. 

The United States is on the precipice of another Middle East war. By the time this prints, American bombs may well have already started falling on Iran. This conflict, initiated by Israel with the stated goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is not truly about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but regime change in Iran. Israel cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities or collapse their government without America’s help. Leveraging its massively disproportionate influence on America’s elected officials, Israel is leading the country into this conflict like a dog on a leash. It is worth remembering the last time the United States overthrew Iran’s government.

In 1953, the United States and United Kingdom orchestrated a coup to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. Mossadeq had nationalized Iran’s oil industry, previously controlled by the British. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) played a central role in orchestrating the coup, known as Operation Ajax.

Operation Ajax utilized a psychological warfare campaign against the Iranian people, involving bombings, distribution of propaganda, bribery, and orchestrated street protests—all designed to destabilize Mossadeq’s government. Mossadeq was eventually arrested, with the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, retaking power and ruling as an authoritarian dictator for the next 25 years. While this served as a model for future CIA-backed coups, these events fostered a deep resentment towards the U.S. among Iranians, contributing directly to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis. This outcome is widely cited as a textbook example of “blowback,” the CIA’s own term for the unintended consequences of covert operations.

If America joins Israel’s war with Iran, the conflict will take its place among other ill-conceived Middle Eastern military interventions and CIA-sponsored regime change operations. From Afghanistan, where $2 trillion was spent over twenty years, only for the Taliban to end up right back in power where it started. Then the invasion of Iraq, which saw the nation descend into sectarian violence, mass murder, suicide bombings, and terrorism amid an Islamic fundamentalist insurgency during an occupation that cost thousands of American servicemen their lives, setting the stage for the rise of ISIS. And while not technically part of the Middle East, America’s bombing of Libya led to the downfall of Muammar Qaddafi’s government, after which the country plunged into civil war, witnessed a resurgence of slavery, and saw the rise of extremist militias, culminating in the 2012 Benghazi attack on the U.S. consulate. 

More recently, the downfall of the Assad regime in Syria was a direct result of American sanctions and funding of rebel groups, with the conflict producing bizarre headlines like “In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA,” LA Times, 2016. Today, Syria’s new President, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a jihadist who fought with al-Qaeda in Iraq, rules over the remnants of a shattered state.

Time and again, American interventions in the region have followed the same pattern: massive expenditure, regime change, and then chaos.  

American military involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran is a bad idea. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. Iran represents no realistic threat to the U.S. The same type of propaganda campaign that was used to drum up support for the invasion of Iraq is happening again, right now, to manipulate people into supporting this conflict. From Iranian hackers supposedly plotting a cyberattack, to alleged Iranian “sleeper cells” in America waiting for their go-code, the American public is now the target of the type of psychological warfare that took down Mossadeq.

Since the “Global War on Terror” started, over 7,000 US servicemen have been killed in combat, and tens of thousands wounded in the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. These numbers do not account for post-deployment injuries such as PTSD, suicide, or illness due to toxic exposures, which add tens of thousands more to the broader casualty figure. And for what? There is a saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. In that sense, getting involved in this conflict is insane. There is no such thing as a limited involvement. Iran, with a population three times that of Iraq, will descend into chaos. Other regional powers like nuclear armed Pakistan may become involved. Bombs dropped in the Middle East result in refugees on America’s doorstep. Things don’t go according to plan.

President Trump must see through the fog of war. This is about Israel’s national interests. Not America’s. If Trump commits U.S. military forces to this conflict, even in a “limited” campaign to bomb Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, it will forever taint his legacy among his base and represent a total betrayal of what people elected him to do: keep America out of pointless wars.