As the U.S.- Israel war against Iran entered its fourth week, American and Israeli missile attacks continued to pound the nation, while Iranian missiles and drones targeted U.S. military bases and Gulf nations’ energy infrastructure. On March 21, Iranian missiles struck near Israel’s main nuclear research center at Dimona in the Negev Desert. Iran said their attack was in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike against Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility.
On March 21, Trump declared on Truth Social he would “obliterate” Iranian power plants within 48 hours if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened to cargo ships and oil tankers, which had caused oil and gas prices to spike and close critical supply chains. Iran responded by warning it would destroy essential regional energy infrastructure, including water desalination systems if Trump followed through on his threat. Then on March 23, Trump extended his deadline by five days, claiming that Iran and the U.S. have had “productive” talks to end hostilities, negotiations that Iranian officials denied were taking place.
As Trump seeks $200 billion from Congress to fight the war on Iran and is deploying some 8,000 U.S. soldiers to the Middle East. Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey have offered to broker a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with Democracy for the Arab World Now (or DAWN) founded by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his assassination. Here, he discusses the current state of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the different goals of the two nations.
RAED JARRAR: Israel and the United States are really not fighting the same war. Israel, what Netanyahu is doing, it’s what he’s done all over the region. He is fighting a war of destruction and domination. He’s done that in Palestine. He’s done that in Lebanon. He has talked about that in other places. He has attacked seven different capitals around the region last year. And what he wants to do with Iran is the complete destruction of Iran because he sees Iran as a threat to Israel’s hegemony in the region. He sees Iran’s existence as a threat to his personal and political projects. So what he wants to do is not to create a prosperous Iran. He wants to completely destroy Iran. He wants to destroy Iran as a nation and as a nation state.
Trump, on the other hand, he was duped into thinking that Iran is going to be a Venezuela. And that is actually what he believed. He thought that he’s going to amass all of the U.S. forces the same way that he amassed a lot of U.S. forces around Venezuela. And he’s going to do a quick decapitation hit and insert someone else and say goodbye. And the United States in general, whether it’s Trump or even Lindsey Graham or other crazy leaders in this country who have been advocating for war against Iran, they haven’t really advocated for the full destruction of Iran as a nation. So when Israel started bombing the Iranian oil industry and refineries, everyone was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Even Lindsey Graham came out publicly saying, “Oh my God, why would you attack their oil infrastructure? Because we don’t want to destroy Iran. We just want to change its leadership.” Which is a very naive and almost laughable notion to think that the United States and Israel can just go and install a new government in Iran and leave.
Like that is not going to happen. So the answer is the United States and Israel are fighting two different wars and we see this deviation becoming more and more and more clear every day, where Israel is trying to pull Trump into this very expensive, lengthy regime change, nation-destruction kind of war. And Trump is trying to figure out what the heck he’s doing there. He’s in trouble. He’s in very, very serious trouble. And as you said, he’s trying his best to control the damage. So he lies and makes up stories every morning to control the price of oil. But this is not very sustainable. You can’t lie your way out of war because this is very, very serious. What we’re dealing with now is a serious situation that will continue to devolve over the next few weeks and months, not hours and days.
SCOTT HARRIS: In 2015, President Barack Obama successfully negotiated with Iran, the International Nuclear Deal, JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) as it’s called, which was by all accounts being observed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Then Trump unilaterally tore up this nuclear agreement that was working, which led to the earlier U.S.-Israeli attack in June—the 12-day war—and of course the current war. Most observers, if they trace it back, will blame Trump for what we are in today.
But in the aftermath of this war and the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader and their whole leadership structure, there are many observers who believe that now Iran may be considering that in the aftermath of this decimation of their government, they may need to build a nuclear weapon as the only effective deterrent to prevent a future attack. It’s a scenario that I think follows some logic that we all have to understand.
RAED JARRAR: So I mean, it’s obviously like conventional wisdom now that the U.S. and Israel have no respect to international law or sovereignty or U.N. charter, but it seems like they would respect strong countries with nuclear weapons. So unfortunately, that’s the new world order that is being created under this U.S. government over the last decades where the erosion of law would lead more countries to obtaining, going into a nuclear race. But I’ll tell you something important here. Iran has never, never, ever said or done anything that will indicate that they’re building a nuclear weapon.
And unlike Israel, they actually have signed all international treaties and got all of the inspectors of everyone to come and verify that. But now with these attacks, we have 450 pounds of enriched uranium that no one knows where it is anymore. Like, it’s either under some rubble or in someone’s truck in their basement, I don’t know where they are, but what we know is that they’re enough to create 11 nuclear bombs and this is the legacy of Trump, the loose nuclear material, the giving incentives for more nuclear deaths and destruction.
For more information, visit Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) in the Middle East and North Africa at dawnmena.org. Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Raed Jarrar(26:34) for more insight into an off-ramp for Trump and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter.
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