Jun 16, 2025 9:10:12 pm
“It’s time to put down all weapons and start talking instead of more people being killed – and for what?” Orna – Israeli citizen.
At one of the residential sites hit in Haifa last night, many people are shocked but still support the government’s initial strikes on Iran. But that’s not representative of everyone. Orna tells me she felt the timing wasn’t good. “Although it’s important, because of nuclear bombs they [Iran] want to prepare, the timing is poor,” she says. “We still have at least 20 living hostages in Gaza. It’s almost like they’re forgotten. Instead of fighting to bring living Israelis we are causing more dead people.”
Her son, Eylon, says Israel’s initial strikes on Friday has taken the attention off Gaza. “What I mostly feel is enlarged empathy for the people suffering the genocidal mania of Israel in Gaza,” he says.
“The IDF seems okay for them to take this to Iran. They are now saying the same warnings they used to say to the Gaza residents to Iran.” He wants other nations to stop providing weapons to Iran.
“There is a growing number of Israelis that don’t stand with the Israeli government. It’s not the majority view, but the actions of the Israeli government don’t represent all Israelis. The destruction we see here is nothing compared to the rubble that is Gaza,” he adds. – Ione Wells BBC
A GEOPOLITICAL TRAP: Israel’s unprecedented strikes were designed to kill President Trump’s chances of striking a deal to contain the Iranian nuclear programme,” says Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“While some Israeli officials argue that these attacks aimed to strengthen the US leverage in the diplomatic path, it is clear their timing and large-scale nature was intended to completely derail talks.” Officials with knowledge of these negotiations had told me last week that “a deal was within reach”.
If Israel acted unilaterally as many suspect, what makes their attack different from the Hamas attack on October 7? Hamas reacted because Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of signing a historic accord, and now Israel has scuppered any realistic chance of a deal between America and Iran.
After taking the oath of office for his second term in January, United States President Donald Trump said he would push to “stop all wars” and leave a legacy of a “peacemaker and unifier”. But six months in, missiles are flying across the Middle East after Israel attacked Iran, risking an all-out regional war that could drag US troops into the conflict.
HARBINGER OF DOOM: The Israeli strikes on Iran, which Trump has all but explicitly endorsed, are now testing the president’s promise to be a harbinger of peace. They are also dividing his base, with many right-wing politicians and commentators stressing that unconditional support for Israel is at odds with the “America First” platform on which Trump was elected.
“There is a very strong sense of betrayal and anger in many parts of the ‘America First’ base because they have truly turned against the idea of the US being involved in or supporting any such wars,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute, a US think tank that promotes diplomacy.
“They have largely turned sceptical of Israel, and they strongly believe that these types of wars are what cause Republican presidencies to become failures — and what causes their broader domestic agenda to be compromised.”
INTRA-MAGA SPLIT – INTERVENTIONISTS VS ISOLATIONISTS: Several conservatives questioned the Israeli strikes on Friday, warning that the US must not be dragged into a war that does not serve its interests. Influential conservative commentator Tucker Carlson — seen as a major figure in Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement — said the US should not support the “war-hungry government” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so. It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases. But not with America’s backing,” the Tucker Carlson Network morning newsletter read on Friday. It added that a war with Iran could “fuel the next generation of terrorism” or lead to the killing of thousands of Americans in the name of a foreign agenda.
“It goes without saying that neither of those possibilities would be beneficial for the United States,” the newsletter said. “But there is another option: drop Israel. Let them fight their own wars.”
Republican Senator Rand Paul also cautioned against war with Iran and slammed hawkish neoconservatives in Washington. “The American people overwhelming[ly] oppose our endless wars, and they voted that way when they voted for Donald Trump in 2024,” Paul wrote in a social media post.
“I urge President Trump to stay the course, keep putting America first, and to not join in any war between other countries.”
Right-wing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also sent a message suggesting that she opposes the strikes. She has previously cautioned Trump against attacking Iran based on Israeli assertions that Tehran is about to acquire a nuclear weapon. “I’m praying for peace. Peace,” she wrote on X. “That’s my official position.”
WEAPONS OF MASS DELUSION – IRAN IS NOT BUILDING A NUCLEAR WEAPON: While many of Israel’s supporters have cited the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, the government in Tehran has long denied pursuing a nuclear weapon. Trump’s own intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in March that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.
Charlie Kirk, a key Republican activist and commentator who is a staunch Israel supporter, also voiced scepticism about engaging in a war with Iran.
“I can tell you right now, our MAGA base does not want a war at all whatsoever,” Kirk said on his podcast. “They do not want US involvement. They do not want the United States to be engaged in this.”
While the Israeli strikes garnered some criticism in Congress, many Republicans and Democrats cheered them on. But a key part of Trump’s base has been a segment of the right wing that questions the US’s unconditional support for Israel.
“They really are representative of a solid constituency within the Republican Party, especially if you look at younger individuals,” said Jon Hoffman, research fellow in defence and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Hoffman pointed to a recent Pew Research Center survey that suggested 50 percent of Republicans under the age of 50 have an unfavourable view of Israel.
“Among the electorate itself, the American people are sick and tired of these endless wars,” he told Al Jazeera. Foreign policy hawks who favour military interventions dominated the Republican Party during the presidency of George W Bush, who launched the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001.
But those two conflicts proved to be disastrous. Thousands of US soldiers were killed, and many more were left with lasting physical and psychological scars. Critics also questioned whether the wars advanced US interests in the region — or set them back.
MUSLIM-HATING WARMONGER: The nation-building project in Iraq, for instance, saw the rise of a government friendly to Iran and the emergence of groups deemed to be a threat to global security, including ISIL (ISIS). In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the Taliban returned to power in 2021, almost exactly two decades after the group was ousted by US forces. The US-backed Afghan government quickly crumbled as American troops withdrew from the country.
During his campaign for re-election in 2024, Trump tapped into the anger that the two conflicts generated. The US president also slammed his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris for her alliance with Dick Cheney, who served as Bush’s vice president, and his daughter Liz Cheney, criticising them as “war hawks”.
“Kamala is campaigning with Muslim-hating warmonger, Liz Cheney, who wants to invade practically every Muslim country on the planet,” Trump told another crowd in Novi, Michigan. He added that Dick Cheney “was responsible for invading the Middle East” and “killing millions”.
But critics say Trump’s posture towards the Israeli strikes in Iran risks embroiling him in his own Middle East conflict. Hoffman, for instance, pointed to the closeness of the US-Israel relationship and the persistence of officials within the Republican Party who have been pushing for conflict with Iran for decades, like Senator Lindsey Graham.
“There is a tremendous risk of the United States being dragged into this war,” Hoffman said. – AL JAZEERA
NO NEW WARS: The president has consistently prided himself on being the only one of his compatriots to not start any new wars while being in office. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who legislates with a heavy libertarian streak in his Republicanism, was one to acknowledge Trump’s foreign policy record this weekend, writing ‘No new wars on your watch—and you continue to push for a leaner, more accountable government. We appreciate your commitment to putting America first,’ in a Saturday post on X celebrating the president’s birthday.
Trump’s winning November coalition also heavily featured populist conservatives, may of whom consider Steve Bannon – a former Breitbart editor and a chief White House strategist from Trump’s first term – to be their ringleader. Bannon, who also has built his own media empire around his War Room podcast, noted during a Friday episode of the show that he believed the Israeli government was attempting trying to pull America into a war with Iran, saying they ‘want us to go on offense’ against Tehran.
Both inside and outside of government, the current GOP coalition has wide-ranging set of views on the level of American interventionism that is required on the global stage, particularly in the Middle East. The intra-MAGA split on foreign policy appears to be far-reaching, even extending as far at the leadership at the Pentagon itself. Semafor reports that the nation’s top military officials have competing visions about how involved America should be with Israel. – ABC News.
EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL – UNABLE TO FINISH WHAT YOU STARTED: Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has encouraged the United States to “enter into this very important operation” in Iran, telling CNN that President Donald Trump “has the option to change the Middle East and influence the world.”
Asked whether he was concerned that Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility remained intact, Gallant told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga: “We believe that the United States of America, and the President of the United States, has an obligation to make sure that the region is going (in) a positive way, and that the world is free from (an) Iran that possesses (a) nuclear weapon in the middle of the richest place in oil and gas in the world.”
The Fordow facility, which is buried deep underground in a mountainside near Qom in northern Iran, houses advanced centrifuges used to enrich uranium up to high grades of purity.
It has remained intact since Israel started striking Iranian nuclear sites on Friday, and analysts have told CNN it is likely that only the US has the weapons required to damage the site.
ENEMY NUMBER ONE – THE GENOCIDAL MANIAC OF ISRAEL: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday claimed that Iran’s Islamic regime had pinpointed US President Donald Trump as a threat to its nuclear program and actively worked to assassinate him.
“They want to kill him. He’s enemy number one,” he said, as quoted by Fox News.
“He’s a decisive leader. He never took the path that others took to try to bargain with them in a way that is weak, giving them basically a pathway to enrich uranium, which means a pathway to the bomb, padding it with billions and billions of dollars,” Netanyahu said.
“He took up this fake agreement and basically tore it up. He killed Qasem Soleimani. He made it very clear, including now, ‘You cannot have a nuclear weapon, which means you cannot enrich uranium.’ He’s been very forceful, so for them, he’s enemy number one,” Fox News quoted Netanyahu as saying.
He went on to call himself Trump’s “junior partner” in threatening Iran’s ability to weaponise nuclear arms. Netanyahu said his country was facing an “imminent threat” of nuclear destruction and was left with no choice but to act aggressively in the “12th hour.
Netanyahu reiterated what his administration has always maintained- by doing so, Israel is not only protecting itself but also protecting the world.
Netanyahu described the operation, coined as Operation Rising Lion, as “one of the greatest military operations in history.”