{"id":320982,"date":"2026-01-01T08:42:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320982"},"modified":"2026-01-02T13:11:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T13:11:57","slug":"did-netanyahu-just-ask-trump-for-another-war-and-get-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320982","title":{"rendered":"Did Netanyahu just ask Trump for another war \u2014 and get it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trita Parsi \u2013 Responsible Statecraft Dec 30, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump said that he will allow Israel to attack Iran once again to strike its ballistic missiles.<\/a><\/p>\n

But what exactly does that mean? Will the U.S. be involved in the actual strikes? Will it “limit” its involvement to shooting down Iran’s retaliatory missiles?<\/p>\n

If the former, Trump is not just “allowing” Israel<\/a> to strike; the U.S. will actually be at war with Iran<\/a>. This would be a betrayal of his promise to his base to keep America out of wars (he has, of course, violated that already).<\/p>\n

Moreover, unlike the nuclear program, which incorporates a small number of known facilities, the missile program is spread throughout the country<\/a> in a large number of hidden facilities, many of them probably unknown to the U.S.\/Israel.<\/p>\n

Thus, Trump will likely not be able to frame this as mere “military action” rather than war. Nor will he likely be able to negotiate with Tehran a limited Iranian response since the missiles are Iran’s last line of defense \u2014 the last leg of its deterrence.<\/p>\n

Tehran has gone to great lengths to avoid a military confrontation with Washington, but just because it has shown restraint in the past does not mean that it can afford to do so in this scenario. Indeed, given that Iran will be totally exposed without its missiles, it will likely reckon that it has no choice but to strike directly at U.S. targets.<\/p>\n

Even if Trump opts to “only” support Israel defensively in yet another Israeli choice of war \u2014 which is the position Biden took \u2014 it nevertheless incentivizes Israel to restart war, as the U.S. is lessening the cost for Israel to do so.<\/p>\n

The cost to the United States is great even in this scenario. Washington depleted 25%<\/a> of its THAAD interceptors in the course of 12 days this past summer \u2014 for Israel’s war of choice, in a region four American Presidents have declared no longer is vital to U.S. national security.<\/p>\n

As I wrote last week<\/a>, every time Trump caves to Netanyahu and agrees to another war, it only prompts Israel to come back to Trump after a few months with another war plan for Americans to give their blood and tax dollars to.<\/p>\n

This will go on endlessly until Trump decides to end it.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Dear RS readers: It has been an extraordinary year and our editing team has been working overtime to make sure that we are covering the current conflicts with quality, fresh analysis that doesn\u2019t cleave to the mainstream orthodoxy or take official Washington and the commentariat at face value. Our staff reporters, experts, and outside writers offer top-notch, independent work, daily. <\/em>Please consider making a tax-exempt, year-end contribution to Responsible Statecraft<\/em><\/a>so that we can continue this quality coverage<\/em> \u2014 which you will find nowhere else \u2014 into 2026. Happy Holidays!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time Trump caves to Netanyahu and agrees to another war, it only prompts Israel to come back to Trump after a few months with another war plan for Americans to give their blood and tax dollars to. This will go on endlessly until Trump decides to end it. Will he ever do so, or does Israel have compromising material on Trump via Jeffrey Epstein? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":177166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Iran","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=320982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320983,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320982\/revisions\/320983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/177166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=320982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=320982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=320982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}