Attacks on Iran Show How US Support for Israel Fuels Regional Instability

Israel’s attack on Iran opens a huge danger of escalation in the Middle East.

Israel has a long history of attacking Iran — including bombing Iranian facilities, assassinating Iranian leaders and scientists, launching cyberattacks, and more. Iran has on occasion struck back, including launching strikes on Tel Aviv in this latest back and forth.

But this latest assault is more dangerous than previous rounds of violence. It holds the prospect of full-scale war between the two strongest military forces in the region — and potentially the United States too.

For decades, Congress and multiple administrations have guaranteed billions of dollars in military aid to Israel every year — an amount that’s skyrocketed since Israel’s attack on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice and other authorities have called a genocide. In 2024 alone, for example, U.S. taxpayers paid 40 percent of Israel’s entire military spending.

So while it’s not yet clear how much the U.S. knew or approved of Israel’s attack on Iran, there’s no question that Washington’s longstanding military and economic support made it possible. That alone is enough to make the U.S. complicit in Israel’s illegal war — and worryingly, a target of Iranian retaliation, especially with so many U.S. military facilities nearby.

There are about 40,000 U.S. troops stationed across the Middle East, and now the U.S. is sending two additional destroyers to the coast of Israel. Iran has already retaliated against Israel. If Tehran also makes good on a threat to attack U.S. targets in the region, or if the U.S. decides to help Israel escalate its attacks, there’s a real risk the U.S. could become directly involved — perhaps including airstrikes or troops on the ground.

Because the U.S. government has long supported Israel, there’s a lot about Israel you simply don’t hear very often in the United States. For one thing, there is only one nuclear weapons state in the Middle East — and that’s Israel, not Iran.

Israel reportedly maintains at least 90 nuclear weapons, but it’s the only nuclear power in the world that refuses to confirm or deny its arsenal. While Iran has enriched uranium, it has no nuclear weapons and — despite Israeli claims — does not have a program to create one.

In the U.S., we hear a lot of negative messaging about Iran. And like any government, Iran’s has policies and practices that can be legitimately criticized.

But we should be clear that, when it comes to life and politics in the Middle East, it’s Israel that remains the main destabilizing force. Just in the last two years, Israel has attacked and occupied new swathes of territory in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. It has also bombed Iraq and Yemen.

Now Israel’s government is raising the level of instability to a new level, directly confronting Iran.

U.S. support for these policies has led to enormous suffering across the Middle East. And now it may be directly endangering Americans as well, something the American people seem to understand. In one recent poll, 60 percent of Americans — including over half of Trump voters — oppose the U.S. getting more involved in the fighting between Iran and Israel.

As in Gaza, Americans bear a particular responsibility to try to stop this fighting, for the simple reason that our government is supplying Israel’s weapons and preventing any accountability for how they’re used.

Our message needs to be clear: No war with Iran!