First strike against the truth
How Marco Rubio was monstered by the "Jewish-conspiracy" lunatics
The war with Iran is the first war that America and Israel have ever waged as a joint enterprise. The Trump and Netanyahu administrations have been talking extensively for months, discussing and planning how finally to defang the murderous and fanatical Islamic regime in Tehran.
Both US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have understood the same thing, which has been crystal clear to all whose eyes aren’t sealed shut.
This is that the Iranian regime poses an intolerable threat to both America and Israel, against both of whom it has been at active war for 47 years and whom it remains determined to destroy; that despite the damage to its nuclear programme, missile batteries and proxy armies inflicted upon it by both America and Israel in last year’s 12-day war, it has been busily reconstituting all of them; and that the feverish pace of that infernal effort, alarmingly diminishing the window of opportunity to prevent an Iran armed for genocide becoming untouchable, meant time was fast running out.
In other words, the US and Israel were absolutely on the same page about this.
Yet the “Jewish-conspiracy” nutcases in MAGA-world have leapt upon remarks made by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and twisted them to promote their claim that Israel drags America into foreign wars against its own interests.
And much of the lazy and dishonest mainstream media has run with this odious throwback to the ancient libel of sinister Jewish power.
Rubio’s remarks made at a press conference on Monday were distorted by selective omission. Numerous media outlets reported him saying:
We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.
Cue immediate hysteria, with journalists and MAGA conspiracists clamouring triumphantly that the US had been forced by Israel into war with Iran.
But they all omitted to report what Rubio had also said. Asked whether he was saying that the US was forced to attack Iran because of an impending Israeli action, he replied emphatically “No.” He went on:
No matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen. That’s the question of “why now”. But this operation needed to happen because Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage.
Yesterday, besieged by reporters obsessively lobbing at him the same accusation that Israel had bounced the US into war, Rubio replied, in mounting irritation and exasperation:
Somebody asked me a question yesterday, “Did we go in because of Israel?” and I said, “No.” I told you this had to happen anyway. The President made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile programme, that Iran was not going to be allowed behind its ability to conduct these attacks. That decision had been made. The President systemically made a decision to systematically destroy this terroristic capability that they had, and we carried that out.
I was very clear in that answer. This was a question of timing, of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question of the intent. Once the President made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations, and that this was a threat that was untenable, the decision was made to strike them. That’s what I said yesterday, and you guys need to play it. And if you’re going to play these statements, you need to play the whole statement, not clip it to reach a narrative that you want to do.
He also addressed the question of “why now”. Asked if he was saying the war had to start last weekend because the Israelis were going to take action then, he replied:
No — this weekend presented a unique opportunity to take joint action against this threat. And I’m just — we wanted this to have maximum success. We want this operation to be successful at achieving its objectives. I’ll repeat the objectives. The President laid them out yesterday. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It cannot have — and therefore it cannot have the things it was hiding behind to have a nuclear weapons programme. What are those things? Number one, we are going to destroy their missiles and their missile launchers, we are going to destroy their capability to make these missiles and these launchers, and we are going to destroy their navy. Those are the objectives. And this weekend, acting at this time, gave us the highest probability of success in achieving those objectives.
The idea that Israel controls what America does is utterly ludicrous at every level. The US is the most powerful country in the world. Israel accordingly needs its protection. The only reason anyone might think that tiny Israel controls American foreign policy is if they believe that the Jews have some kind of sinister power to get inside people’s heads and make them do their bidding — in other words, the deranged fantasy that’s gripped Jew-haters through the ages, and is now cutting a swathe through the Republican party.
Proof — if any were needed — that America tells Israel what to do rather than the other way round was provided at the end of last June’s 12-day war. After the US pulverised Iran’s nuclear sites, Israel wanted to capitalise on a badly weakened Iran by bombing its missile sites. Trump lost his temper, issued a foul-mouthed expletive and forbade Israel to do so, causing its warplanes that were fully laden for their bombing run to turn round mid-air and return to base.
The single most important reason why the US went to war last Saturday was how Trump responded to the situation that had developed during that week.
At a press conference yesterday, when he was asked: “Did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran?” he said:
No... Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think [Iran] was going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen — so if anything, I might’ve forced Israel’s hand.
This (apart from the swaggering final phrase) is borne out by an Axios story. As reported by Times of Israel, Axios said that last Monday Netanyahu phoned Trump to inform him that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be gathering in Tehran with his senior advisers on the following Saturday morning, making it possible to take them all out in one strike.
Citing three sources reportedly briefed on that call, the Axios story said that Trump directed the CIA to look into the tip from Israel’s Military Intelligence. On Thursday, the CIA “confirmed that these people were all going to be together, and we needed to take advantage of it”.
That same day, Trump’s negotiators in Geneva told the president that the talks with Iran were going nowhere because the regime was refusing to make a deal that would satisfy Trump’s conditions. The next day Trump gave the order to strike Iran. “We didn’t make the case in advance as well as we could have because the opportunity came on us so fast,” said one Axios source.
While Axios reporting is not universally reliable, this makes perfect sense. Trump had said repeatedly that Iran could not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Either the regime would agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme, along with its ballistic missile programme and its support of proxy armies, or he would destroy the regime itself.
That indeed is what happened. The regime refused. Trump has set about destroying it.
In other words, Trump was working on twin tracks towards the objective of defanging the Tehran regime. When one track hit the buffers, and a rare opportunity presented itself for an enormous leap to achieve his objectives, he switched to the other track.
Why do so many Americans find it so hard to grasp such a twin-track approach?
Why do they find it so hard to grasp that Israel and America face a common foe?
And why do they find it so hard to grasp the meaning of “Death to America!”?