Das ist nicht Israels Krieg. Es ist Amerikas.

Occam’s razor. Simpler explanations exist

Protecting Israel and partners from Iranian proxy attacks and stopping Iran’s nuclear and missile programs have been US goals for a long time. This administration got overconfident after Maduro and decided they could achieve this quickly and decisively with military force before the midterms. Even without regime change as long as they get a defanged Iran that can’t fund proxies or develop nukes, that is a strategic victory.

There is no need to invent additional motives unless they are doing something contradicting the obvious ones.

That should be every decent nation’s war because yeah, war is bad… but once a normal government replaces the IRGC and stops spending the country’s money on global terrorism and butchering its own people, everyone (including the westerners who automatically criticize the US and Israel) will benefit from it in the long run, both economically and security-wise.

It really seems like a nice explanation. But then why not attack North Korea?

Why abandon Afghanistan?

That absolutely does not fit into this narrative if you ask me.

Why not support Ukrain more if it is about Russian and China’s sphere of influence?

Edit: Misread a little, N Korea has nothing to do with influence in the middle east.

This is Israel’s war. If America truly wanted to dismantle the “Axis of Resistance” then it could’ve done so in a myriad of different ways – all of which would be far less costly than the path taken now.

We know that Trump wanted to conduct a limited military strike back in January following his “help is on the way” tweet to help pressure Iran to the negotiating table. There was a lot of leverage then that Trump could’ve used to break Iran off this supposed Axis. But Netanyahu managed to convince him to hold off and wait for a much bigger, joint-Israeli military campaign. After this meeting, the USS Gerald R Ford was sent to the Middle East, spooking the Iranians. Now every participant in the talks have stated outright that the Iranians were pliant to U.S. demands around their nuclear programme. The only point of contention were the demands set out by Israel specifically – a decrease in their ballistic missile arsenal (in both quantity and range – so they don’t directly threaten Tel Aviv). The talks stagnated because of these maximalist demands, and as we know, they probably were never going to lead anywhere considering US-Israeli intelligence were waiting for the moment to strike Khomeini while he assembled the top brass to discuss them. The point is there was *no* direct threat from Iran to the U.S. in any way.

Now this is not a judgement of whether prioritising Israeli interests first when beginning this war is a bad thing. Maybe at the end of this war, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in missiles and the regrettable damages to Gulf allies – and potentially harming American capabilities in the other theatres, the Islamic regime might actually be toppled and a new democratic government comes in ready to put aside its differences with its neighbours to work for regional stability – and we can finally put the Middle East saga to rest. Just maybe. But this has been a gamble that favoured Israel first and foremost, rather than the U.S.

Also, since the war has began, we now know this “Axis of Resistance” is a hyped up situationship, at least when considering Iran. Neither of its backers have done anything meaningful to protect their partner in its time of gravest need.