Follow us on social

Baqubah, Iraq

Welcome to Iraq War 2.0

Except Israel's unprovoked attack on Iran has the potential to be far, far more catastrophic

Analysis | Middle East

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 promisedweeks” 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.


Top image credit: Baqubah, Iraq, March 30, 2007 (Stacy L. Pearsall USAF photo)
Analysis | Middle East
Kim Jong Un
Top image credit: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the country's nuclear material production base and nuclear weapons institute, at an undisclosed location in North Korea, in this photo released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on January 29, 2025. KCNA via REUTERS

Reality check: North Korea won’t give up its nukes

Asia-Pacific

During North Korea’s parliamentary session last week, Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, delivered a speech expressing his clear willingness to engage in diplomacy with the United States. But under one strict precondition: the United States must stop seeking to denuclearize North Korea.

“Personally, I still have good memories of U.S. President Trump,” Kim said in his speech. He added, “If the U.S. drops its hollow obsession with denuclearization and wants to pursue peaceful coexistence with North Korea based on the recognition of reality, there is no reason for us not to sit down with the U.S.”

keep readingShow less
Joint-base-lewis-mcchord-scaled
Top image credit: The DoD found high levels of dangerous chemicals in the "PFAS family" around several military bases, including JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash., pictured here. (U.S. Air Force Photo/Abner Guzman)

DOD has money for boondoggles but not clean water for bases?

Military Industrial Complex

The Defense Department plans to delay cleaning up a class of toxic "forever chemicals” that its activities have left at and around military bases across the country — even as it pursues other financially wasteful endeavors that do little to advance, or may even be counterproductive to, U.S. national security.

The Pentagon estimates it will cost $7 billion per year to clean contamination from perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, found in a firefighting foam the military still uses. This cost estimate, despite increasing in recent years, ultimately amounts to a small fraction of the DoD’s budget, which grew to a staggering $895 billion for FY2025.

keep readingShow less
Benjamin Netanyahu
Top image credit: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also seen on a television monitor, addresses the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York October 1, 2013. (Reuters/Adrees Latif)

Israel is the main source of instability in the Middle East

Middle East

Is conflict in the Middle East at an inflection point? It might seem so, given how international outrage over Israel’s lethal conduct in the Gaza Strip has become increasingly intense and widespread in recent weeks.

Several major Western countries that previously had declined to join most other members of the United Nations in formally recognizing a Palestinian state used the opening of the current session of the General Assembly as the occasion to take that step. Popular demonstrations in the West in support of the Palestinians have been as large and conspicuous as ever, and recent polls show a sharp decline in the American public’s support for Israel.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.