In this catastrophic war of choice, it is Tehran fighting a rearguard action to restore geopolitical sanity. If Iran loses, god only knows where Israel and the US will drag the world next
The recent confession by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, reinforced by Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, that Israel compelled Washington to strike Iran, has understandably sparked controversy.
Rubio revived a notion often dismissed as an antisemitic stereotype, contending that the Trump administration had no alternative but to attack Iran because, otherwise, Israel would have initiated hostilities regardless, putting American troops at risk of retaliation.
He declared: “The president made the very wise decision: 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.”
.@SecRubio: “The president made the very wise decision—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… pic.twitter.com/Jp5rqpRH4T
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 2, 2026
However, Rubio’s use of “preemptively” was unconventional and misleading.
According to international law, aggression is an unlawful use of force – termed the “supreme international crime” by the 1950 Nuremberg tribunal. An exception exists when a state acts preemptively, meaning it responds to an immediate, serious threat.
Rubio did not suggest the US acted “preemptively” against any Iranian threat; rather, he implied that Washington preempted Israel’s potential assault to avoid American casualties.
Had true preemptive action been intended, the US would have targeted Israel instead of Iran.
Paper tiger
Rubio’s remarks also raise the question: Why didn’t the US simply forbid Israel from launching an attack on Iran without approval?
Israel could not have conducted an offensive on Iran without vital support from the US.
It depends heavily on American military bases scattered throughout the region, often hosted by Arab allies.
The offensive required the backing of a large US naval fleet deployed by Trump.
Israel’s ability to withstand retaliation relies on US-funded missile defense systems.
Moreover, Israel’s regional dominance is maintained by hefty US financial aid, worth billions annually, keeping its military among the world’s strongest.
Put simply, Israel is incapable of waging war on Iran unaided. Without US backing, it is a paper tiger.
Rubio’s statement suggests one of two scenarios: either the US military, the most powerful in history, is submissive to a small state like Israel; or Trump has subordinated America’s armed forces to Israeli interests.
Either way, it contradicts Trump’s constant claim that he prioritizes “America First.”
This glaring contradiction probably explains why Rubio quickly retracted his comments the following day. Meanwhile, Trump hastened to claim he pressured Israel to attack Iran, reversing Rubio’s assertion.
“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”
Donald Trump denied that Israel forced him into attacking Iran, contradicting his own Secretary of State and Republican leaders who were saying the opposite just yesterday. pic.twitter.com/ACKj9dqSqr
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 3, 2026
Geopolitical insanity
The more plausible explanation is that Trump was misled by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s false assurance that an attack on Iran would be easily won—if timed to eliminate Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Trump was led to believe such a decapitation strike would mirror his Venezuela “success,” where President Nicolas Maduro was allegedly kidnapped from Caracas for trial in New York.
In that instance, the US flagrantly violated international law, intending to intimidate Maduro’s successor, Delcy Rodriguez, into compliance.
Netanyahu expertly convinced Trump—who was still emboldened by this lawbreaking—that a similar operation in Iran would topple the ayatollah’s successor just as easily.
Therefore, in this disastrous war initiated by the US and Israel, Tehran now strives to preserve some geopolitical rationality. Should Iran collapse or the US prevail without serious costs, the world’s further descent into chaos at the hands of Israel and Washington is unpredictable.
The fate of the globe, in effect, rests with Tehran.
This joint strike on Iran starkly reveals how effectively Netanyahu has “Israelised” Washington and the Pentagon over the past 25 years.
While America has a long history of illegal wars, its leadership did not always resemble unrestrained psychopathy. Netanyahu’s influence appears to have unleashed a new, deeper extremism under Trump’s administration.
Evidence is everywhere.
On Wednesday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth—who seemingly replaced the conventional title of “secretary of defence” with one less law-abiding—abandoned all pretense of morality.
He declared US forces were “acting without mercy” and proclaimed the Iranian regime “are toast.” The US promised to deliver relentless “death and destruction.”
The day before, Hegseth laid bare the strategy: “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
Hegseth: No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don’t waste time or lives. As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always… pic.twitter.com/7Zpg2UkcrO
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 2, 2026
This rhetoric deviates from earlier US administrations’ emphasis on Western superiority or civilising missions abroad.
Instead, it channels colonial hubris and echoes the military medievalism frequently expressed by Israeli officials.
Hegseth’s tone closely resembles that of General Moshe Dayan, Israel’s defence minister in the 1960s, who articulated Israel’s military ethos as: “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” (source)
‘Mad dog’ tactics
Before the assault, the US had endeavored for years to incite revolt in Iran by starving its population, similar to Israel’s 16-year blockade of Gaza aimed at overthrowing Hamas.
Both tactics failed because they overlooked a fundamental truth: that oppressed people cherish freedom and dignity over degradation.
Now, embroiled in a grueling war of attrition with Iran, the US lashes out like a “mad dog,” much as Israel did in Gaza after Hamas’s brief but humiliating breakout from the enclave it effectively turned into a concentration camp.
Hegseth’s “no rules of engagement” declaration signals that the US openly regards all of Iran as a combat zone, just as Gaza was.
This explains why one of the initial US and Israeli targets was a primary school, where over 170 civilians perished, most under 12 years old.
Even reported by the right-leaning Telegraph, US and Israeli bombings have created an “apocalypse” in Tehran. Critical civilian facilities including hospitals, schools, and police stations are being targeted. Residential neighborhoods endure carpet-bombing while medical and food supplies dwindle dangerously.
Rubio has threatened that far worse atrocities are forthcoming.
Clearly, the US has embraced the harsh logic of the Dahiya doctrine, formulated by Israel during its successive campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza.
Smouldering ruin
The Dahiya doctrine goes beyond traditional asymmetric warfare by redefining civilian casualties as deliberate, legitimate targets equal to military objectives.
For Israel, this doctrine emerged from the recognition that conventional war goals were unattainable against Palestinians or Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Israel sought not mere pacification of Palestinians—an impossibility given its refusal to pursue meaningful political solutions. The “two-state solution” was a façade for Western audiences, lacking genuine domestic support in Israel.
The true objective was to employ overwhelming indiscriminate violence to terrorize Palestinians into self-exile, replicating the partial ethnic cleansing of 1948.
In Lebanon, where the Dahiya doctrine originated, Israel did not aim for political agreement with Hizbullah but sought to inflict so much suffering that internal sectarian conflict would fracture Lebanon, enabling Israel to continue the displacement—and now genocide—of Palestinians.
The doctrine acknowledges the enemy as not only militants but the broader society underpinning them. Since no traditional military victory was possible, Israel aimed to leave behind a smouldering wasteland.
Time after time, Israel has deployed massive force against civilian infrastructure and neighborhoods to crush societal resistance—to push populations back into what Israeli generals call “the Stone Age.”
This is precisely the strategy that Hegseth and Rubio now proclaim for the US campaign in Iran: ruthless, wanton destruction with no strategic purpose beyond collateral terror.
Rubio declared a return to brutal western colonialism – and Europe applauded.
Read my latest here: https://t.co/v7IUUqY5W9
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) February 19, 2026
Morbid pathology
This approach is neither a military nor political success. It is not even a flawed plan; rather, it represents the pathological mindset of a cult.
This explains the numerous complaints from US troops during the opening days of Trump’s Iran war—over 110 reports so far, documented by Jonathan Larsen on Substack.
One non-combat officer reportedly told his non-commissioned officers that Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
Hegseth’s Department of War, led by an evangelical Christian who frames the conflict as a “crusade” against Islam, appears to be disregarding constitutional bans on proselytizing within the military.
The religious infusion of the US military is not new—George W Bush invoked a “crusade” against terror nearly 25 years ago—but it seems that evangelical zealotry within the ranks is now deeply entrenched, with Israel at its core.
Mikey Weinstein, MRFF president and Air Force veteran who served under Reagan, told Larsen that his group has been overwhelmed by soldiers describing their commanders’ ecstatic belief that this “biblically-sanctioned” war signals the imminent arrival of the fundamentalist Christian “End Times.”
In this eschatology, based on the Book of Revelations, an apocalyptic battle between good and evil unfolds at Armageddon—a site in modern northern Israel—preceding the Messiah’s return and the Rapture, where believers ascend to be with God.
Weinstein noted: “Many commanders are particularly excited about how graphic and bloody this battle must be to fulfill fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world prophecy.”
The word of God
At the heart of these beliefs is the gathering of Jews, regarded as God’s Chosen People, into the Land of Israel—which encompasses territory far larger than the current Israeli state.
For Christian fundamentalists like Hegseth and numerous US commanders, Israel catalyzes the End Times.
Israel has pursued close ties with the vast numbers of Christian fundamentalists in the US, whose political influence helped elect Trump and who treat Israel as a top domestic priority rather than mere foreign policy.
They support Israel’s territorial ambitions across the Middle East without concern for the repercussions on Palestinians or neighboring peoples.
This aligns perfectly with an ideology promoted by Netanyahu and the Israeli military, which years ago was taken over by religious extremists from the settler movement known for violent attacks and land theft in the West Bank.
During Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Netanyahu urged soldiers onward by invoking their fight against Amalek—the biblical enemy of ancient Israel.
According to the Bible, God commanded King Saul to annihilate the Amalekites completely, killing men, women, children, infants, and all livestock.
The devastation of Gaza reflects this literal interpretation. Israeli soldiers were not only fulfilling Netanyahu’s orders but believed they were following a divine command.
‘Clash of civilisations’
Netanyahu’s strategy extends beyond sacralising indiscriminate violence to fostering a broader racist and anti-Muslim atmosphere in the US and Europe to facilitate Israel’s wide-scale destruction across the region.
He actively promotes a “clash of civilisations” narrative, portraying a supposed “Judeo-Christian West” locked in an eternal conflict against the barbarism of Islam.
The fusion of a US military enraptured by Christian fundamentalism and an Israeli military steeped in biblically motivated Jewish supremacy manifests starkly in Iran today.
This joint war machine disregards human rights entirely.
It does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
It prioritises its troops’ safety—as executors of divine will—over the lives of the people they attack.
Believing that devastating Iran fulfills God’s plan, it ruthlessly crushes Iranian society.
This exposes the genuine nature of the war apparatus purportedly defending “western civilisation.” These are the true principles at stake in Iran; all else is merely propaganda.
Original article: www.jonathan-cook.ne
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