The Neo-Con road to war with Iran

Most of the Neo Cons (Plato’s modern-day timocrats¹) are jumping for joy. They’ve been plotting to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran ever since they failed to defeat it when Washington covertly encouraged Saddam Hussein’s horrific war with Iran from September 1980 to 1988, which killed roughly 500,000 people, if not more.

How the Neo-Cons loved the stench of Chemical Ali’s poison gas!

Yet, to their great regret—instead of weakening the Iranian mullahs and Revolutionary Guards—Iraq’s brutal invasion of Iran galvanized the Iranian population with the Ayatollah’s regime and strengthened the grasp of the Guardians of the Revolution over much of the country’s economy…

The Neo-Con desire for death and destruction did not stop there…

After the September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Neo-Cons opted to take on the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Yet, they failed to eliminate Al Qaeda, and their intervention resulted in a 20-year occupation that led to a humiliating US and NATO withdrawal in 2021. And now the so-called “new Taliban" are at war with Pakistan. A great American success story!

The Neo-Cons then went after Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, after Colin Powell’s limited 1990 Gulf War to kick Saddam out of Kuwait did not result in regime change. Even George H.W. Bush opposed his son’s 2003 war and the occupation that would follow.

How the Neo-Cons loved the stench of burning oil refineries and oil pits!

The Neo-Cons and their Neo-Liberal allies had Qaddafi assassinated in Libya in 2011 in their quest for “democratic” regime change that destabilized and divided Libya into warring factions. The collapse of the Qaddafi regime helped strengthen pan-Islamic forces throughout the Sahel. Much of French-speaking Africa soon fell to Islamists and military coups.

The Neo-Cons then went after Daesh, or the so-called Islamic State, which was a post-Iraq War creation of Saddam Hussein’s remaining intelligence forces. But the major goal was the overthrow of the pro-Russian Al Assad regime in Syria from 2013 to 2024. Whether the former Al Qaeda member and Al Nusra leader, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, who now runs the country, will implement truly “democratic” reforms that respect Syrian minority groups—as the neo-cons and neo-liberals have led us to believe—remains to be seen.

GWOT was truly a "crusade," as George W. Bush once called it. And it is still not over!

Now, under Trump, the Neo-Cons and their allies have a chance to go after Iran itself. Ironically, the Ayatollah was able to penetrate and control the predominantly Shia regions of Iraq and populations throughout the Shia crescent—in support of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis of Yemen, as well as Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, against the Greater and Lesser Satans, the US and Israel—after the neocons had engaged in their “regime change” war with Iraq in 2003, which divided and devastated the country.

Now, under the leader whom Republicans in Trump’s first term once referred to as the “Orange Jesus”—the man who came to save America (while pocketing the cash), the man who had claimed to oppose the Neo-Con “forever wars,” and the man who promised to be a “peacemaker” in his second term—the oil pits are once again flaming throughout the whole region.

How Neo-Cons love the stench!

In the name of Christian Zionism and Trump’s bipolar timocrat/plutocrat mental condition and lust for megabucks, Israel and the US launched their devastating war against the Islamic Republic and its so-called “axis of resistance” in Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen—just when the possibility of a negotiated peace² was at hand.

The Straits of Hormuz are essentially blocked. Oil prices, fertilizer prices, plastics prices, and insurance rates have begun to skyrocket, impacting the global economy…

Iran has counterattacked US, French, and Italian military facilities. Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Turkey, Oman, Cyprus, Jordan, and Iraq have all unexpectedly found themselves under sporadic bombardment. Israel—which believed its Iron Dome was impenetrable—has been unable to check all of the Iranian bombs.

The US and Israel now appear to be backing Kurdish forces in the hope of breaking up the theocratic regime. They also hope the Arab, Azeri, Balochi, Turkman factions will rebel inside Iran, but it is not certain the scheme will succeed³. This is, in large part, given the reality that the US and Israeli neo-con backers of these ethnic separatists are not seen as liberators but as repressors themselves.

From the Iranian perspective, in addition to the US and UK putting the Shah in power, it was primarily the US that had backed Saddam Hussein’s vicious assault on Iran from 1980 to 1988. And it is the US that is now backing Israeli democide in Gaza and imperialism in the West Bank, Southern Syria, and Southern Lebanon… And it is the US and Israeli "neo-cons" who are now pulverizing Iran itself.

Blame game

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to blame the origins of the war on Israel, when the Neo-Cons of both countries, the US and Israel, are at fault. Rubio asserted, “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.”

Contrary to Rubio, however, both the US and Israel had been planning this war, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury," for quite a while. Perhaps “Israeli action” did surprise the Trump administration, which had probably been planning to strike Iran in the summer, and thus press Trump to intervene sooner, as Rubio claimed. Yet if so, this indicates that even the militarily powerful US cannot control its own ally—and signals significant political weakness on the part of the Trump administration.

Or maybe it was not Israel but really a Trump administration effort to deflect attention away from the Epstein affair that really precipitated the attacks? Who knows!

In any case, the US has engaged in the whole “little excursion” (as Trump called it) without really thinking through its dangerous consequences for the region and the world:

“Oh gee! We did not think the Iranians were really going to block the Strait of Hormuz⁴. We thought it was just a bluff! In any case, we did have contingency plans. We’ll just attack Kharg Island and maybe blow up 90% of Iran’s oil production. Who cares what China and Asian countries say! And if the Revolutionary Guards attack the entire Gulf region’s oil production, as they’ve threatened, we’ll just buy energy from Venezuela and Russia. Putin has a lot of energy to spare! Don’t worry, everything will be fine. The ‘good guys’ will soon take over in Iran after we drop a few more bombs!”

Threat and Counterthreat… For the Neo-Cons, it’s all high-stakes hyperpoker!

The roots of the US-Israel war with Iran

The roots of the present US-Israel war with Iran lie in Trump’s ill-considered decision to dump the JCPOA Iran nuclear accord in 2018 as advised by then National Security Advisor John Bolton—a decision supported and praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—but not by all Israeli leaders⁵, nor by all US Republicans and Democrats.

Along with Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and other Neo-Cons, John Bolton has been publicly urging a war with the Islamic Republic of Iran for years, even if he does not consider himself to be a "Neo-Con."

Under an Iranian fatwa, a death threat, and charged by Trump with mishandling classified documents, Bolton, however, is not very happy with Trump and Netanyahu’s war. That’s because he wants “real” regime change, and he is not sure that TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) will succeed in achieving that goal…

Yet what does Bolton think would be the realistic outcome of such a war—even if he had still been National Security Advisor for Trump? Does he really expect the “good guys” to come to power? And besides, Bolton must know by now that Trump always succeeds by transforming lies into golden truth with the Midas touch!

While it is not clear that Trump truly expects positive “regime change” to take place in Iran, one of Trump’s major goals in attacking the Islamic Republic is to break the twenty-year Russian-China “no limits” strategic partnership signed in 2022 and the January 2026 Trilateral Strategic⁶ Pact of Russia, China, and Iran.

Yet it is not clear that Trump will achieve that goal either. If Trump does not play his diplomatic cards right, the ongoing war with Iran could actually push Russia and China into closer energy and political, economic, and military interdependence—including a mutual defense pact.

Will Trump then be able to claim “success” if Russia and China do forge a military pact? Of course, he will try to blame everything on his subordinates when he made the decision himself!

Much like the series of conflicts in the Balkans that led to the so-called “Great War” in 1914, World War Trump is at hand…

I can just hear the drones humming and hypersonic missiles whistling⁷… as the Neo-Cons and their supporters continue to push the world into engaging in the most monstrous conventional, nuclear, cyber, and AI “hybrid” arms race in human history….

It is a complete failure of post-Cold War American diplomacy!!! A total cataclysm!!!

This is what I said about Trump’s policies toward Iran during his first term, in my book, World War Trump.

(Prometheus Books, 2018)

Iran Nuclear Accord and Threat of U.S. Intervention

In addition to intervening militarily in Syria and striking an IS target in Afghanistan with the Mother of All Bombs, Trump has likewise threatened to strike Iran, which is directly involved in defending the Syrian regime and in supporting Hezbollah—if the latter does not fully comply with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that seeks to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.

In effect, the JCPOA took at least a decade for the UN Security Council plus Germany to negotiate through concerted Contact Group diplomacy. The Obama administration argued that the JCPOA was absolutely crucial in that it would limit the chances of a regional nuclear arms race. And it would also limit the possibility that Iran would develop a covert weapons-grade enrichment program.

Trump, however, has claimed that the Iran JCPOA nuclear deal puts “limits on (Iran’s) military nuclear program for only a certain number of years, but when those restrictions expire, Iran will have an industrial-sized, military nuclear capability ready to go with zero provision for delay, no matter how bad Iran’s behavior is.”

The truth, however, is that the Iran nuclear deal promised 15 years of Iranian compliance, plus international inspections. Trump’s concerns appear to be more about his opposition to Iran’s actual foreign policy toward Israel, Saudi Arabia, and support for Syria than the nuclear accord itself.

Iran further angered Trump with the testing of a new intermediate-range missile in January 2017. For its part, however, Iran claimed that its missile test did not violate UN Resolution 2231. The missile was ostensibly not designed to carry nuclear weaponry and was only to be used for purposes of conventional “deterrence.”

The JCPOA nuclear deal is strongly backed by the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans. The problem is that Iran’s missile test violated the spirit, but not the actual letter, of the JCPOA accord. Neither Russia, China, nor the Europeans would permit Washington to apply language that would prohibit all kinds of missile tests. Only tests for those missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads would be prohibited.

A possible Trump-Pence administration decision to reject the JCPOA accord could 1) undermine U.S. credibility; 2) start a new nuclear arms race in the wider Middle East with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, if not with Egypt; and 3) make it more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve a nuclear arms accord with North Korea.

Alienating Iran so that it decides to engage in a nuclear weapons program could furthermore make it more difficult to find ways for Tehran and Riyadh to establish a modus vivendi that would seek to dampen the “terrorist” proxy wars between the two rivals and thus attempt to achieve regional political settlements.

A rejection of the JCPOA would threaten to undermine not only Trump’s promises to achieve a positive relationship with Moscow, but it could also further alienate Beijing, if not the Europeans, who are just as close as Israel to a possible Iranian missile attack.

And a possible U.S. or Israeli attack on the suspected Iranian nuclear program could work to mobilize the Iranian population against the U.S., as during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war….

Here, a new dimension of the global rivalry manifests itself. The fact that Iran has been moving closer to both Russia and China in the post-Cold War era raises questions as to whether the three countries could forge a new Eurasian Alliance. This appears plausible given the fact that Iran has been considered for membership in both the Russian-led CSTO military alliance and also the more security cooperation-oriented Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—even though it has not yet joined either. Tehran has also closely aligned with Moscow and Damascus in the conflict raging in Syria and Iraq….

Conclusions

In sum, one of the major reasons Trump launched the February/March 2026 war with Iran—whether Netanyahu or Epstein helped spark it or not—was to break the Russia-China-Iran strategic triangle that is crucial for China’s Belt and Road initiative. By attacking Iran, in addition to overthrowing the Maduro government in Venezuela earlier in the year, Trump has hoped to weaken China’s geostrategic, political, economic, and burgeoning military challenge to US military predominance and political economic hegemony—in large part by attacking China’s sources of energy.

There is a further danger that the US-Israel war with Iran may backfire—if it does not result in installing a new regime that is under the US thumb but instead results in a highly unstable country—with no effective leadership—afflicted by regional opposition movements, revolutionary guard warlords, mullahs, and mafias, that could soon become a source of tensions, acts of terrorism throughout the world, and conflicts in the entire region.

While Trump and the Neo-Cons appear to care less for the regional chaos their interventionist policies have instigated over the years since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, they might begin to care if Beijing and Moscow transform their “no limits” strategic partnership into a full-fledged military alliance—as is now the case between Russia and North Korea⁸—in response to the US-Israeli war against their strategic partner, Iran.

All this means the time is ripe for peaceful “regime change” in the USA and Israel. If not, World War Trump is around the corner.