Benjamin Netanyahu draws a red line on a graphic of a bomb while discussing Iran during an address to the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2012. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Why are we on the verge of another regime-change war in the Middle East?
No one really knows. The US already “obliterated” or deeply damaged Iran’s sites that were aiming to build nuclear weapons capacity. The beleaguered Iranian regime currently poses little threat to the US, is not close to having a viable nuke, is nowhere near to constructing ICBMs that can reach America, has a wrecked economy, tattered legitimacy, and has seen its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, devastated by Israel to a staggering degree.
How on earth do they pose a threat significant and imminent enough to justify a risky, expensive war of choice?
Beats me. The American people don’t see it either: opposition in the polls ranges from 50 to 70 percent. Trump, for his part, was elected precisely not to do this kind of war, and MAGA could (and should) erupt if he does, especially if it drags on. Trump already pushed his luck with his base with the 2025 attack. And if you thought a State of the Union might be the time to make the case in full, you’d be shocked by Trump’s brief, vague comments toward the end. There was no case made. Because there is no case to be made.
Even the usual pro-Israel suspects have come up empty. Bret Stephens, for example, has spent much of this century calling for war on Iran (you have to admire the energy and consistency), but even he has to concede that everything I wrote above is true:
The [Iranian] regime has lost much of its nuclear infrastructure; watched its regional proxies be overthrown, decimated and incapacitated; presided over the implosion of its economy; and lost whatever domestic and international legitimacy remained to it.
So where’s the threat? Lindsey Graham is more candid. He wants a war precisely because Iran is no longer very dangerous. That’s an interesting interpretation of international law — and comports with the Vance/Miller/Napoleon view of foreign affairs. But launching a regime-change war simply because a regime appears weak would be a precedent that would authorize war everywhere on the planet.
And even the nuclear non-proliferation rationale collapses when you consider that there is only one nuclear exception to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the Middle East. And that’s Israel, not Iran. (We give them aid regardless, even though it would be illegal for any other NPT-flouting country.) The war the Israelis want is therefore not a war to make the Middle East a nuke-free zone, which might be a legit US aim; it’s a war to ensure Israeli nuclear exclusivity in the region, allowing them to routinely attack their neighbors with relative impunity. Why should we enable that?
Perhaps Israel needs extra moral support at this time when it’s so internationally isolated and despised. But it’s not as if we haven’t just finished providing at least $21.7 billion worth of military aid and 90,000 tons of arms and equipment for the razing of Gaza and the killing of 70,000 people. Our own munitions have been run down considerably because of it, and defensive interceptors for use in the next war for Israel are low in number. Some guess the US could only last 4 or 5 days in an Iran campaign before running dry of some critical munitions. And then what? We risk our own defensive security for Israel?
And yet despite all this, there’s still a sense it will happen anyway — a learned helplessness in the polity where the Jewish state is concerned. After all, Israel always gets what Israel wants — we all know this. Look at the past few years — a staggering series of concessions: the US embassy moved to Jerusalem, ramped-up ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, carte blanche in Gaza’s destruction, protection from the UN, more than $20 billion in military aid, and a bombing run last year that has seriously degraded Iran’s nuclear weapon capacity. But it’s still not enough! It’s never enough.
My bet is that if the administration goes to war with no Congressional vote or public debate, that learned helplessness will curdle into something angrier. A war in these circumstances would baldly expose the fact that this is a war for a foreign country, proof of principle of what really matters in American foreign policy in the Middle East is not the will of the American people.
The bloom has, already of course, come off the rose. There is a sea change in US opinion, especially among the young. This graph from Gallup today is staggering:
My own graph would have seen the green line start to drop around 2009, when Netanyahu tried to break President Obama. But many of us have come to the same conclusion and are now in the same place. No, we haven’t all become Jew-haters — and we’re sick to death of that cheap, ugly smear. We have simply witnessed what Israel has become.
Even though they kept — and still keep! — independent journalists out of the war crime scene in Gaza, you have to have blinders fixed on (and so many do!) not to be appalled at the suffering of Gazan civilians and the callous indifference of the Israeli public these past two years. You have to have them ever more firmly fixed not to see the racist evil at large in the West Bank. No hasbara can penetrate that. No hasbara can remove those images from our eyes. And your smears no longer work.
And, of course, the consequence of calling critics like me antisemites for years is that when Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens come along, the Israel stans are all out of credibility. Worse, thanks to the neocons, Fuentes and Owens now have the frisson of forbidden knowledge. And the Israel supporters’ arguments have gotten lazy. I listened to Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mike Huckabee this week and was struck as much by Huckabee’s flailing as Tucker’s excesses. Huckabee came off as the Israeli ambassador to the US, not the other way round. He held assumptions that would sound insane to anyone under 40 not steeped in generations of bizarre, evangelical Israel-fetishism.
He had zero explanation, for example, for why he would host a vile American traitor, Jonathan Pollard, in the US embassy. I mean: WTF? Huckabee barely acknowledged the existence of Palestinians at all. And he basically argued that the Old Testament is the dispositive guide to US foreign policy, and that Israeli expansion as far as Iraq (!) remains a divine right the US affirms. Dangerous lunacy — but then you realize the opposition leader in Israel, Yair Lapid, agrees, and you begin to see the scale of the problem.
All of which leads to one obvious conclusion. The only reason we may be on the brink of war is because Netanyahu knows this could be his last chance to leverage the might of the United States for his own ends: unchallenged Israeli supremacy in the region alongside more aggressive ethnic cleansing at home.
This is, in other words, the last chance for the tail to wag the dog. Get ready for the fallout.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: a talk with Michael Pollan about the enigma of consciousness; reader and listener dissents over trans politics and other topics; eight notable quotes from the week in news; 18 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of subjects; a Mental Health Break of Radiohead as smooth jazz; a wintry window from Japan; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
A new subscriber says he paid up because the Dish is “the best place to hear an opinion I disagree with.” From another:
I do not cleave to any particular party line or political stance, and I prefer to try to make time to become well-informed — through discussion and reading — about issues that matter to me. So I would like to praise your perseverance with the subject of gender dysphoria, and your two-paragraph manifesto in last week’s column really hits the spot.
One more note:
I have always viewed the Dish as one, long, constant conversation. And disagreements aside, I remain proud to be a part of it for the past 25 years.
Back On The Dishcast: Michael Pollan
Michael is quite simply one of the best nonfiction writers out the planet: a real role model. He’s been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine since 1987, and he’s the bestselling author of many books, including How to Change Your Mind — which I reviewed in 2018 — and its sequel, This Is Your Mind on Plants, which we discussed on the Dishcast in 2021. This week we covered his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the magic of spontaneous thoughts, and the consciousness of kids. That link also takes you to commentary on recent pods with Sally Quinn on Washington life and Jon Rauch on fascism. Lots of readers also debate the two pieces I wrote last week — on my advice for Dems on trans issues, and the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the pardon power, Derek Thompson on abundance, Matt Goodwin on the earthquake in UK politics, Jonah Goldberg on the state of conservatism, Tom Holland on the Christian roots of liberalism, Tiffany Jenkins on privacy, Adrian Wooldridge on “the lost genius of liberalism,” Tom Junod on his memoir and masculinity, and Kathryn Paige Harden on the genetics of vice and virtue. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
A reader writes, “Your continued dialogue on trans issues has me conflicted”:
I have a niece who, at the age of 13, identified as lesbian. At 15 she identified as male and changed her name. My entire family complied with her wishes and told her we loved her no matter her gender. Her parents, at her behest, got her a therapist skilled in trans teens. After two years of therapy, she identified as queer but sexually attracted to boys. Last year she went to the prom with her new boyfriend. Her identification as “queer” is more a political statement than one of gender.
I believe her story, regardless of gender choice, is the ideal outcome. With the assistance of family, friends, and a mental health professional, she found her true self.
My conflict comes in your overt hostility to care for these kids. I get your concern about biologic ruin visited on some, but you must understand that the right wing is hellbent on erasing trans kids or adults. Bills are popping up in state legislatures that would deny even mental health care for these kids. In liberal strongholds such as NYC, hospitals are shutting down their trans care, including mental health services, for fear of losing federal funding. I hold up my family’s experience as a sane way to handle the issue, but loud voices like yours are putting even that in danger.
Just last week, in the latest of these kinds of statements, I wrote in my column that “children with acute gender dysphoria should get much more support, much more therapy, and boundless love.” And yet you turn around and tell me I have “overt hostility to care for these kids.” I really don’t understand why you’d misrepresent me so crudely.
As for your niece, I’m glad she has had time to come to terms with her identity, and didn’t do anything drastic or irreversible to preempt that. But I’ll admit: I’m a little tired of straight and bi women calling themselves “queer” to be cool. My sexual orientation is not a leftist ornament.
Read another dissent here, from a trans reader, along with my response. More dissents are on the pod page, and please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. You can follow more Dish debate in my Notes feed.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as what’s next on tariffs, sex differences at the Olympics, and Tourette’s at BAFTA. Examples:
Ryan Self insists, “The FCC being wrong doesn’t make Colbert righteous.”
An Alabama bookstore is on the leading edge of resistance to AI.
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month sub if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the VFYW). Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. Here’s a creative entry from last week, written by our resident chef:
I have invented a new contest called VFYW Deconstructed. The goal is to find all the elements of the view in different places. Below is my entry for this week, where you will see that I have found, in Bogotá,
the lamp post with surveillance sign and anti-climbing collar
the brick pathway and curb
the decorative lamp post
the trash can
the dog walking sign
I could go on. I found all the things except the fucking building. Even if it turns out that the actual window is not in Bogotá, the deconstructed window is definitely there, so I win.
