...Whilst placing Iran’s nuclear program at the centre of the talks, U.S. Secretary of State Rubio – ahead of this (last) round of negotiations – nonetheless underlined that from Washington’s perspective, the threat of Iran’s ballistic missiles to be “a fundamental component that cannot be ignored”.
Rubio’s unlikely claim however is consonant with Israeli Hebrew press reporting that after Netanyahu’s December 2025 meeting with Trump, it was Netanyahu who demanded that the U.S. strike Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities — and that striking its missile armoury must take priority over attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The same (Israeli) reporting said that Trump accepted Netanyahu’s peremptory demand.
Overall, Trump has remained adamant that whatever the Iranian stand-off outcome – whether achieved through Iranian capitulation or attained by military force – he personally had to exit the confrontation appearing ‘strong’ and having an historic ‘achievement’ under his belt.
A war in search of a rationale
Thus, with the demise of diplomacy, the conflict has moved from the realm of strategic calculus and realism into one of psychological conditioning. That is, how to characterise a war without any clear rationale to an increasingly doubting American public. And how best to trigger war in such a way to provide the right psychological advantage to Trump in the lead up to Midterm elections.
Hence, we have the absurd claims by Trump that Iran is working to produce ICBMs with which to attack the U.S. mainland. In this psy-narrative, Trump is not just saving Israel, he is saving America!
These psychological conditioning considerations are forcing a divided Trump Team to move further and further away from reality – scrabbling to find the plausible casus belli to justify a military strike on Iran. Iran, despite Rubio’s claims, does not threaten the U.S. with ICBMs. Iran does not pose a threat to the U.S. at all — nor does it possess nuclear weapons.
Make no mistake, Will Schryver observes,
“This is an American war of choice. This war – and all its consequences – are owned by the United States. This is Trump’s war. This war was started January 3, 2020, by Donald Trump’s direct order”.
....Trump – but more precisely Netanyahu – has just triggered a multi front war, with attacks on Israel from many directions (from Iran, Yemen, Iraq …). A long war is more likely than a quick war.
Trump is stuck in Zugzwang. He is compelled to make the move on Iran, but in so moving, aggravates his own situation – ‘Zugzwang’. Reportedly, “many inside the Pentagon believe the U.S. will face generational disaster if it over-commits to a large-scale conflict with Iran [and does not perform ‘brilliantly’]”.
Yet the ideological momentum for a strike originating from the camp of Netanyahu and his diverse auxiliaries and donors in the U.S. proved compelling. These latter see a U.S. strike as a ‘once in a generation opportunity’ to re-cast the geo-strategic map – to remake Iran as a pro-western ally of Israel in a new coalition at war with Islamic radicalism.
Such sentiments – though fantastical – should not be brushed aside lightly. They are deeply embedded in culture and in various eschatological beliefs.
War logistics carry their own momentum: Once the ‘spring’ of military deployment is released, it takes a major effort to wind it back. At the outset to WW1, it proved impossible for the European leadership to reverse the mechanics of deployment – simply owing to the limitations inherent to the railway system. It takes a major effort to bring wide war-momentum to a halt.
In triggering such an existential global trial of strength, Trump will not be able, like King Canute, to ‘command’ the tide to recede. He has started events that will determine our global geo-political future. The future of China, Russia and Iran will hang in the balance, one way or another.
The economic order hangs in the balance too. Trump’s solution to the debt crisis hangs largely on his trade war. The viability of Trump tariffs to mitigate its debt obligations hangs on dollar hegemony. And dollar hegemony largely is a function of preserving the myth of U.S. exceptional military invulnerability.
But with Iran effectively having called Trump’s bluff, he is faced with the humiliating choices of either TACO-ing out (i.e. by twisting some premature call for ceasefire, as in the 12-day war, to proclaim ‘Victory’), or were it to be a longer war, to accept the U.S. military being perceived as a paper tiger and seeing the consequences reverberate across debt markets.
Trump is a truly committed supporter of Israel, but he is within a whisker from sinking his Presidency on this rock.
Perhaps he had no choice.
