These are the three social evils Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned would destroy America from within: Militarism, materialism, and racism. Decades later, they help explain the divisions in our country that led to the January 6 attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol. Of the three, however, the role our recent wars have played in exacerbating these conditions is often the most overlooked.
Video produced by Khody Akhavi.
Ali Larijani
Why did Israel target Ali Larijani, and what are the implications if it is confirmed that he was killed?
I see three potential motivations behind the assassination attempt:
One: Israel is trying to literally kill off Trump's off-ramps. Larijani was not only a key figure within the regime who had emerged as the chief consensus builder, but also someone who favored talks with the U.S. and who could build consensus within the system for an Iranian off-ramp at some point.
He also favored de-escalation with the GCC states and supported Pezeshkian's message on that point (though not the apology). There had been some efforts by Larijani to speak directly with senior Trump officials in December, for instance, to prevent the war.
The Israelis want the war to continue to further degrade Iran's military capabilities to shift the balance in the region in Israel's favor for years to come. They have fought for more than two decades to get the U.S. to go to full war with Iran, and having finally achieved that goal, they do not want Trump to cut the war short. Without figures like Larijani in the Iranian system, Trump's pathways to ending the war just got narrower.
Two: The U.S./Israeli strategy may be shifting back to regime decapitation. The reason for this is that it's becoming increasingly clear that reopening the Strait of Hormuz militarily is simply too risky, and there is no international coalition willing to support Trump. But the Strait must be reopened from Trump's perspective because of the impact on energy markets, which eventually will impact gas and food prices in the U.S., and push Trump's own base to turn against this war.
If he cannot open it militarily, then the original idea of regime implosion may prove another path. As such, the killing of Larijani may have been seen as a second bite at the apple. The first bite, the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, did not yield results. But, the thinking would go, a few more assassinations of key figures may do it.
Three: Opportunity. The assassination may have also simply occurred because the opportunity presented itself, rather than having been motivated by either a shift in strategy or a sabotage effort by the Israelis to kill off Trump's off-ramps.
Either way, while this undoubtedly is a significant tactical blow to the Islamic Republic, it is difficult to envision it considerably impacting Tehran's war execution. Plans for these eventualities had already been established during the June war.
Moreover, when relatively moderate voices have been killed by Israel, they have more often than not been replaced by a younger generation of more hawkish voices who opposed Iran's policy of "strategic patience", who opposed the June ceasefire, and who currently oppose any de-escalation or ceasefire.
Whether this was Israel's intent or not, the most likely outcome, nevertheless, is the destruction of potential off-ramps for Trump.
The intra-GOP debate over the Iran war has now reached inside the Trump administration, triggering the first senior-level resignation over the conflict.
Joe Kent, a former U.S. Army officer, resigned Tuesday from his position as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), saying in a letter that he could no longer “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.” Kent focused his blame on “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” for leading President Donald Trump down this dangerous path and deceiving him into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat and that a war could be won quickly and easily.
“I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term,” Kent wrote to Trump in his resignation letter. “Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”
Kent, who served eleven combat tours, primarily in Iraq, between 1998 and 2018, lost his first wife, herself a servicemember with the Navy, in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019, when their children were one and three years old. “I wouldn’t say necessarily Shannon getting killed changed my mind. It solidified some things,’” he said in a 2021 video for Concerned Veterans for America. “Why are there young men, young women in Afghanistan right now, in Syria right now, in Iraq right now? What are they doing?”
Kent highlighted his military experience in his letter.
“I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives,” he wrote.
Kent was the Republican nominee for a House seat in Washington in 2022 and 2024, but he lost two close elections. During his campaign, Kent was characterized as one of a growing number of veterans who, disillusioned by their experiences, had become right-wing war skeptics.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in which NCTC is housed, has been a home for previous critics of long-term American military entanglements abroad, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Will Ruger, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration.
On Monday, the New York Times reported that Dan Caldwell, a former Pentagon official who was accused and then cleared of leaking classified information, had been hired for a role at ODNI.
As the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran intensifies, Americans have shown little appetite for another war in the Middle East. Far fewer Americans support the war than in previous conflicts at this stage, including Iraq, Afghanistan, or Kosovo.
Washington think tanks, however, have been far more enthusiastic. They also happen to be funded by weapons contractors that stand to profit handsomely from the war.
For instance, many fellows employed by the Hudson Institute are supportive of strikes on Iran. As the Trump administration built up its military presence, Hudson Institute fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs went on Fox News and celebrated Trump’s initiative to “push the regime over” as a “major strategic opportunity for peace and stability in the Middle East.” After a week of strikes, Heinrichs celebrated the escalation of the military campaign. “We have a lot more of those kinds of munitions, and now I would suspect that we are just going to continue to destroy the production capabilities and any other storage facilities that they have deeply buried underground, so that’s good for the United States,” Heinrichs told Fox.
The Hudson Institute has received over $4 million from the defense industry since 2019, with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics CEO Neal Blue among their largest donors. Those companies’ weaponry has been used extensively in Iran. Northrop Grumman manufactures the $2 billion B-2 stealth bombers that are used to strike Iran. Lockheed Martin manufactures a variety of aircrafts used in the attacks, as well as the $300 million THAAD radar system that was recently destroyed by Iran. General Atomics, for its part, produces the MQ-9 Reaper drones used in the campaign. RTX, the manufacturer of the Tomahawk missile that killed 168 girls at their elementary school in Minab, Iran, is also a major donor.
General (Ret.) Jack Keane, Chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, took to the airwaves to claim the U.S. should "take Iran off the map." In a segment on Fox, Keane made the case against exiting the conflict prematurely over rising oil prices; "Are we saying we can't accept several weeks of oil prices being higher than what they should be to take Iran off the map as a predator in the Middle East for decades to come?" asked Keane. "I think we're much tougher than that frankly."
ISW, Keane’s think tank, has received funding from major Pentagon contractors General Dynamics and CACI, but recently delisted the names of both donors from the website. In response to a request for comment, Alexander Mitchell, Director of External Relations at ISW, said, “ISW does not share information about our supporters or their giving histories outside standard 990 reporting.” ISW does list several other corporate sponsors on its website.
The Atlantic Council, which accepts more funding from the defense industry than any other think tank, hired an Israeli national security insider in the lead-up to the war, who used his new perch to make the case for U.S. attacks. Michael Rozenblat, who the Atlantic Council describes as a “visiting research fellow from the Israeli security establishment,” published an article titled “Six reasons why Trump should choose the military option in Iran” less than two weeks before the strikes, framing an attack as a “moral imperative.” Rozenblat concluded that “a decisive US-led coalition effort aimed at regime change may offer a more sustainable strategic outcome” in Iran.
Last year, the Atlantic Council published a report recommending that the U.S. procure more THAAD and SM-3 missiles to deal with threats abroad, including Iran. The manufacturers of those missiles, RTX and Lockheed Martin, have given the Atlantic Council $850,000 and $700,000 respectively since 2019. Both systems have been used extensively for missile defense against Iran.
War has been good for those donors’ pocketbooks. As stock exchanges opened the week after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the share price of weapons manufacturers RTX, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin soared.
On March 12, the senior director of the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center Matthew Kroenig defended the military campaign on Iran during a debate with Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, which publishes RS. “Removing the Islamic republic from the chessboard, or significantly weakening it for years or a decade I think stands to greatly improve regional and global security, and the lives of ordinary Iranians,” said Kroenig.
Many of the most outspoken voices pushing for regime change in Iran come from dark money think tanks, which reveal nothing at all about their donors. Around 40% of the U.S. top think tanks fall into this category, according to the Quincy Institute’s newly updated Think Tank Funding Tracker.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a prominent dark money think tank, has been advising the U.S. to topple the Iranian regime for years. Founded with a goal to “enhance Israel’s image in North America,” FDD played a critical role in pushing Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
On the day of the U.S.-Israeli strikes, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz and senior analyst Ben Cohen wrote in an op-ed that “the survival of this regime – a nuclear-seeking, terror-sponsoring, protest–crushing dictatorship – is far more dangerous than the risks that come with its collapse.” Dubowitz has been cheering on the regime change effort since, recently retweeting an AI-generated video from Mossad encouraging Iranians to work with Israeli intelligence in overthrowing the Islamic Republic. FDD’s experts are invited to testify to the House Foreign Affairs Committee more than almost any other think tank, second only to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) is another dark money think tank pushing for the military campaign on Iran. JINSA’s fellows include Benjamin Netanyahu’s former National Security Advisor, the former Commander of the Israeli Air Force, and Trump’s former Iran adviser, Elliott Abrams, as well as over a dozen retired U.S. generals and admirals. In 2020, after the U.S. assassinated Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani, two JINSA scholars argued in the Washington Post that the United States “must keep up the attacks against Iranian assets in the region and join Israel in rolling back Iranian aggression,” with the goal of provoking a regime collapse.
When the military operation on Iran began, JINSA published an open letter signed by 75 retired generals and admirals in support of the war. Blaise Misztal, Vice President for Policy at JINSA, argued in an article titled “Iran is not Iraq” that fears of repeating the failures of Iraq are overblown.
In a recent appearance on Fox Business, JINSA strategic advisor Vice Admiral Robert Harward described the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a “short-term problem” and argued that ending the war on Iran now would “only exacerbate” problems in the region.
Many other think tank experts have expressed support for the U.S. pursuing a military campaign against Iran. Analysts from the Washington Institute, which was founded as a spin-off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have long pushed for Congress to pre-emptively authorize the use of military force against Iran.
The Middle East Forum, meanwhile, recently published an article pushing Congress to appropriate funds not just for missile stockpiles but also nation-building efforts in Iran. Gregg Roman, the Executive Director of the Middle East Forum, suggested the U.S. should fund “transitional governance planning” including “constitution-drafting support, judicial reform expertise,” and “lustration frameworks that remove regime loyalists” in Iran.
The Atlantic Council, the Hudson Institute, FDD, JINSA, the Washington Institute, and the Middle East Forum did not respond to a request for comment.
After the American public soured on the Iraq War, many groups that pushed for the invasion, including FDD, tried to downplay their role in the debacle.If the U.S.-Israel bombing campaign on Iran continues on its perilous trajectory, one can’t help but wonder whether these pro-war organizations will once again attempt to memoryhole their supporting role in America’s latest military misadventure.
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