Biden's Middle East trip: Following in Trump's footsteps
WATCH: Biden looks poised to betray his campaign promise to sideline Saudi Arabia. Does this really serve America's interests?
Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
Top photo credit: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (Shutterstock/Maxim Elramsisy)
Tulsi said Iran not building nukes. One senator after another ignored her.
June 17, 2025
The U.S. intelligence agencies’ Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) is billed as an opportunity “for the American people to receive an unvarnished and unbiased account of the real and present dangers that our nation faces.”
That’s according to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark), chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who personally presided over a public hearing this year to hear its conclusions.
It’s too bad neither he nor almost any other senator who sits on the committee seemed to pay attention to it, if current discourse over the Israel-Iran war is anything to go by.
On March 25, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard delivered the U.S. Intelligence Community’s (IC) collective conclusions covering a broad swath of national security issues and geographic areas — including the threat posed by Iran and its possible development of a nuclear weapon.
“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” she told the committee bluntly. Gabbard was echoing an assessment that U.S. intelligence agencies have been making since 2007.
Yet despite this testimony, most of the committee members have issued statements over the past days and weeks that have entirely ignored this assessment, instead painting a picture of an Iran speeding toward a nuclear bomb, and Israel’s self-proclaimed “preemptive” war against Iran as an unavoidable and understandable act of self-defense.
That includes Cotton himself, who has since hearing that testimony repeatedly issued statements and given interviews that make reference to Iran’s supposed “development of nuclear weapons,” its “nuclear weapons program,” and that it was “on the path to nuclear weapons.”
In a recent Face the Nation interview, Cotton equated Iran’s uranium enrichment with a “nuclear weapons program.” A week ago, he claimed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “confirmed that Iran’s terrorist regime is actively working towards a nuclear weapon,” wildly twisting Hegseth’s actual, heavily qualified response to a point-blank question about whether Tehran was building a nuke: “There are plenty of indications that they have been moving their way toward something that looks a lot like a nuclear weapon.”
This week, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) went further and actually cited his position “as a member of the Intelligence Committee” to make the charge that “independent experts had “time and time again” determined that Iran was “using that program for military purposes” and “very quickly rushing towards the development, we have to assume, of a nuclear weapon” — even though Young had been told three months earlier that U.S. intelligence agencies believe the exact opposite.
Elsewhere, Young has pointed to “Iran’s nuclear ambitions” to justify backing Israel’s attack.
“This Iranian regime has clearly been preparing to make nuclear weapons for years,” read a statement from Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who, as Israel launched its attack, said that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, it’s just simply gotten to that point.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) has similarly called the nuclear program “a very real threat to the United States,” and, while tweeting out his support of the Israeli war, claimed Iranian leaders had “advanced their nuclear weapon capacity,” insisting they “cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
“A nuclear Iran was always an unacceptable outcome,” tweeted Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who backed Israel “tak[ing] action to ensure Iran could not add a nuclear weapon to its arsenal.” Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has reposted a spate of tweets claiming that Iran was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon and needed to be immediately neutralized, and at one point approvingly quoted Trump that “you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
It was little better on the Democratic side of the aisle. “It’s unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” tweeted Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) as Israeli bombs rained down on Tehran. Elsewhere, Kelly has said that Iran has “been on this trajectory for a while, to be able to build a nuclear weapon,” and suggested he might back a direct U.S. attack on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, because he “would like to see Iran's nuclear capability to be completely disarmed.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime Democratic hawk on Iran, referenced “Iran’s nuclear ambitions” in the same breadth that he announced his support for “Israel’s right to defend itself” last week.
“I have long believed that the Iranian regime must not acquire a nuclear weapon,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), but “Iran has proceeded rapidly with its nuclear program,” necessitating self-defense from Israel. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) warned in the midst of the war that “Iran has been developing nuclear capability,” and that because “ it must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon,” she would “always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
These 10 senators constituted the majority of those who attended the Intelligence Committee hearing that day and heard Gabbard’s testimony, which said the exact opposite of what many of them are saying now.
Those senators who were absent, and so presumably would have been later briefed on what had been reported in the hearing, mostly all still ended up using the same misleading rhetoric about an Iran inexorably barreling toward a nuclear weapon, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) (“We know for a fact that the Iranians are increasingly enriching uranium for the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon”), Jim Risch (R-ID) (“I pray for the people of Israel and support its right to defend itself against a nuclear Iran”), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) (“Iran’s sprint to become a nuclear threat to America and our allies”), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), (“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”).
Only a few, specifically Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Jerry Moran (D-Kan.), and Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) simply haven’t put out any public statements on the issue at all. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), meanwhile, has been highly critical of what he called Israel’s “reckless escalation,” and has warned that “the drive for nuclear weapons, I think, by the Iranians, might ironically even be accelerated” by the attack.
Meanwhile, as the Trump administration considered heeding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeal to join Israel’s attack, additional cold water was poured on these claims. Four sources told CNN that intelligence agencies continue to believe Iran was not actively pursuing a nuke and that, even if they were, it would be three years away, while the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials had rejected Israeli intelligence that supposedly proved Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Trump himself has dismissed Gabbard’s testimony (“I don’t care what she said”) and reportedly excluded the more war-skeptical DNI from a critical national security meeting over the weekend (that was later clarified to say the DNI was on National Guard duty over the weekend).
All of it paints a very worrisome picture of a Washington driving headlong into a new Middle East war — one where lawmakers and the president have actively chosen to ignore the intelligence they have been provided by their own intelligence community.
Editor's note: Story has been corrected to reflect the meeting DNI Gabbard missed and why.
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Top photo credit: General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, visited Israel in July 2022 to meet with Israeli Defense Force (IDF) leadership, to include the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt General Aviv Kohavi. (U.S. Central Command public affairs)
Is Israel's favorite US general helping to push us into war?
June 16, 2025
Did the Israelis strike Iran when it did because Michael Kurilla is still commander of U.S. Central Command and a “window” for a prospective joint operation with the U.S. might be closing?
Some are speculating that because Kurilla is expected to retire from the military this summer that the Israelis saw their chance. The Army general, 59, has been widely reported to be on one side of a split in the Pentagon over whether the U.S. should support and even be part of Israeli strikes against Iran’s nuclear program.
In April, Israel news outlet Ynet coined him as “The U.S. general Israel doesn’t want to strike Iran without.”
“Israeli defense analysts say the window for a successful attack on Iran’s nuclear program is rapidly closing,” wrote Alon Strimling on April 19. “That window could narrow dramatically once Kurilla steps down, as his successor’s stance remains unclear.”
Kurilla is retiring this summer after a nearly 40-year career that dates back to the first Persian Gulf War. Ynet noted that Kurilla “is seen as one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the American defense establishment,” and his relationship “runs deep” dating back to his time as a young officer in his 20s.
“He’s a hawk of hawks,” noted Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative. “(The Israelis) knew they were losing an ally soon. They knew the negotiations (with Iran) were ongoing. The Iranians had signaled that they were close to accepting a deal days before the strike. So all of these things were a factor.
"And then meanwhile, I think there's every piece of evidence that Kurilla would at least start the conflict and pop his cork on it before he leaves.”
Kurilla, according to the New York Times, had been open to Israeli strike plans earlier this spring, “that would have combined an Israeli commando raid on underground nuclear sites with a bombing campaign, an effort that the Israelis hoped would involve American aircraft.”
“Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, both discussed how the United States could potentially support an Israeli attack, if Mr. Trump backed the plan.”
Sources who spoke to RS since Friday’s attacks on Iran suggested that Kurilla wasn’t just “open” to such plans, he was actively promoting them inside the DoD. That’s not a surprise, said Justin Logan, director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Cato Institute.
“He has been pushing for war with Iran and away from diplomacy since before Trump took office in ways that run over civilian officials,” Logan told RS. The CENCTOM commander reports directly to the Secretary of Defense.
Dan Caldwell, former adviser to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, told the Breaking Points podcast Monday that he didn’t think the timing of the strikes were a “coincidence.”
“I think it's been reported, and you know, based on my experience with him, that he takes a fundamentally different view of the importance of the Middle East than a lot of other people in the administration. And he also, I think, believes that a military campaign against Iran will not be as costly as others,” Caldwell said.
“So I think there are a lot of folks that want to see some type of military action occur before he retires as a result of that,” he added. "So he retires in the middle of July. And I don't think it's a coincidence you see a lot of pressure ramping up to do something prior to his retirement time.”
To understand the authority the CENTCOM commander wields is to understand that the combatant command oversees an AOR (Area of Responsibility) that spans 21 countries — including Israel now — across the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of South Asia. It directs five "service component commands" of Army, Navy (including the Fifth Fleet), Air Force, Marines, Space Command, as well as a joint special operations command (SOCCENT).
Kurilla has pursued a highly elaborate system of military integration with Israel and partners in the region in what he has called a “strategy to deter Iranian aggression.” It has been referred to as a “security umbrella” or “Kurilla’s umbrella.”
Even as Iranian proxies in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran itself were taking blows and losing influence after Oct. 7, 2023, Kurilla was telling Congress that it was important to that U.S. not be the “security guarantor” but the “security integrator” in the region because essentially Iran is still an existential threat to everyone.
“Iran and its expansive network of proxies and partners saw a once-in-a generation opportunity to reshape the region to its advantage. They have accelerated their efforts to expel Western presence and neutralize our influence in the region, enabling a long-term strategic goal to further their revolution and establish regional hegemony,” he told the House Armed Services Committee in March 2024. “Iran knows that its decades-long vision of dominating the region cannot be realized if the region’s states continue to expand integration with each other and deepen partnership with the United States.”
He spoke of the importance of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation states), the contributions and joint training with Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar. The U.S. boasted that Arab states played a role in a “coalition” to help thwart Iran’s retaliatory attacks against Israel in April 2024.
“Israeli military officials dubbed this system ‘Kurilla’s umbrella,’ noting that U.S. radar systems in the UAE and Qatar can now aid Israeli defense,” Ynet’s Strimling reported. “According to foreign reports, that umbrella also included quiet cooperation from Saudi Arabia and Jordan during Iran’s failed missile and drone barrage in April 202(4).”
That coordination also kicked in during Iranian retaliatory strikes against Israel in Oct. 2024, where experts say without the U.S. and its partners, more missiles would have hit inside Israel’s territory.
According to reports, Kurilla had wanted a more aggressive approach to the Iran-backed Houthis in the last year of the Biden administration but didn’t get his chance until Trump took over in January.
He pushed for sustained attacks in March. He got his wish, according to the Times, but then Trump imposed a 30-day test. When the 30 days were up, Kurilla and team had little to show for the millions in munitions dropped on the Yemeni militant group and Yemen civilian infrastructure, and Trump proceeded with making a deal to end the direct fighting.
In that time the Houthis had shot down seven MQ-9 Reaper drones and two F/A-18s went tumbling off the flight deck of the USS Truman aircraft carrier. The operation cost the U.S. over a billion dollars, adding to the billion already spent fighting the Houthis during the Biden administration.
Nevertheless, Kurilla was successful in getting more military equipment moved into the Middle East during that period, including a second aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, to join the carrier USS Harry S. Truman, two Patriot missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), plus B-2 bombers capable of carrying 30,000-pound bombs were sent to Diego Garcia, a U.S. base in the Indian Ocean.
Meanwhile according to reports, he’s been engaging in a full court press behind the scenes for a joint operation with the Israelis in Iran. That pressure campaign may have gotten Waltz fired from his top job at the National Security Council back in May. He apparently had private “intense discussions” about it with Benjamin Netanyahu before the prime minister’s meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.
In a trip to Israel in April, Kurilla discussed "continued efforts to deepen the military partnership between the United States and Israel and increase interoperability between our forces," according to a CENTCOM statement, adding, "Gen. Kurilla reiterated the ironclad military-to-military relationship between the U.S. and Israel."
On the other side of the ledger are other voices, including Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who have counseled the president to focus on the diplomatic pathway instead of indulging plans for aggressive military action.
Semafor reported the split this week, citing tensions between Kurilla and Colby.
“US military leaders, including the chief of US Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, have requested more resources to support and defend Israel,” wrote Semafor's Ben Smith. “But their requests have drawn resistance from undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby, who has long opposed moving US military assets from Asia to the Middle East, people sympathetic to each side of the argument told Semafor.”
This is true said Caldwell, who was let go from Hegseth's office in a very public imbroglio in April. “We're in an environment where the United States military resources are constrained. We've had 20 years-plus of wars in the Middle East. We have emptied many of our magazines of ammunition and our arsenals to support Ukraine as we have an environment where our resources are not limitless, so trade offs are real,” Caldwell told Breaking Points.
“So every asset we move into CENTCOM comes at the expense of another Combatant Command like the Indo-Pacific, where we have a real threat, a real challenge, in China; we trade off against things we're trying to do in the Western Hemisphere.” Caldwell said. He added that Colby and others were trying to stress this, seeing diplomacy with Iran as the priority, which Trump was committed to, too, and still may be today.
No doubt there are voices on the inside and out that want Trump to greenlight full U.S. intervention, the joint operation that Kurilla and others had envisioned. Caldwell said many of the political appointees and also members of the uniformed military know the risks such an intervention would bring. “But there are a lot of people …(who) are still bought in on this idea that this is largely a risk-free proposition, but let me tell you if the U.S. gets involved there is a risk that it could be one of the biggest national security catastrophes we have seen in the last 20 to 30 years.”
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Top image credit: Baqubah, Iraq, March 30, 2007 (Stacy L. Pearsall USAF photo)
Welcome to Iraq War 2.0
June 16, 2025
Like all things in the Middle East, the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran can seem complicated. It’s not. The unprovoked Israeli attack on Iran is the 2003 Iraq War 2.0, except it has the potential to be far, far more catastrophic than the absolute catastrophe that was Iraq.
Like President George W. Bush’s 2003 war on Iraq, the war on Iran is an unprovoked, illegal, offensive, unilateral war of aggression, potentially aimed at regime change, and sold to the public based on lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
Just as the administration of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney lied about a bogus threat of Iraqi “mushroom clouds,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lying about a nuclear threat from an Iran that has no nuclear weapons and was in negotiations to avoid getting them.
This time the lies are even uglier because Netanyahu is weaponizing the memory of the Nazi Holocaust and 6 million dead Jews (including some of my family members), by trying to scare people with talk of a “nuclear holocaust” and “never again is now.”
Israel is the country with nuclear weapons, along with the United States. Iran has none. Iranians are the only ones now at risk of a nuclear holocaust.
Despite Donald Trump’s election night promise not to “start wars” and instead to “stop wars,” the United States is already fighting Iraq War 2.0 by defending Israel militarily, by arming Israel, by sharing intelligence with Israel, and by failing to stop Israel despite having advance notice of the war. President Trump called Israel’s attacks “excellent” last week and more recently said the U.S. military “could get involved.” Referring to Iran, Trump told ABC News, “There’s more to come, a lot more.”
People are sick of endless U.S. wars. People are sick of endless Israeli wars.
As Israel’s predominant patron, Trump has the power to stop Iraq War 2.0 by cutting off all weapons and assistance, including missile defense and intelligence sharing. If Trump doesn’t do these things, the war looks set to escalate further. Netanyahu has promised “weeks” more of fighting. Every passing day brings new opportunities for the U.S. military to get drawn further into the war, as Netanyahu has long hoped. How will Trump respond if an Iranian missile even accidentally kills U.S. soldiers in the region? The danger of a wider regional or even world war is equally real.
The longer term consequences could be equally catastrophic in unpredictable ways. Bush and Cheney’s 2003 war began with similar “shock and awe” attacks that quickly overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime only to birth an incredibly violent insurgency and civil war and the militant organization that became the Islamic State.
The total death toll in Iraq (alone) will never be known but is conservatively estimated at 1.2 million people killed from direct and indirect causes. The war displaced an estimated 9.2 million Iraqis. Injuries surely reach into the millions. The cost to U.S. taxpayers of 20 years of fighting in Iraq and against the Islamic State in Syria reaches nearly $3 trillion.
Too many have been killed already in Iran and Israel thanks to the Israeli government’s unprovoked war. How many more Iranians, Israelis, and perhaps, soon, Americans must die before Trump stops Iraq 2.0 (as Iranian leaders are also requesting)? How much more taxpayer money must be squandered, on top of the tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of dollars the U.S. military has surely spent to date?
Netanyahu and neoconservative warmongers in the U.S. have long dreamed of seeing U.S. troops marching on Tehran. We cannot risk the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran becoming the full-blown sequel to the Iraq War that Trump has long claimed he opposed.
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