How did Trump get convinced to start the Iran War?

Peter Beaumont summarizes a number of the ways in which the Netanyahu government in Israel enticed Trump with the idea that attacking Iran as the US and Israel did on February 28 was a grand idea. (1)

• When Netanyahu visited Trump in Washington in late December, he gave him the Israel Prize for Trunp’s alleged “tremendous contributions to Israel and the Jewish people.” Trump is notoriously interested in getting such honorary awards.
• The Israeli intelligence service Mossad presented an evaluation that the Iranian regime was on the verge of collapse in the face of mass protests.
• Netanyahu promised the Orange Sucker that it would be a quick and easy war.
• The decapitation strategy of assassinating top Iranian leaders that Israel successfully carried out as part of its joint war effort with the US failed to cripple the regime and to instigate new instigate moves for regime change.
• Trump got a big boost in his confidence in winning wars quickly by his kidnapping operation against Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
• “Axios, quoting a US source using Netanyahu’s nickname, reported last week: ‘Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements’.”

It’s not clear on that last point if J.D. Vance was conned by that pitch as much as Trump appears to have been.

In the end, of course, the US is responsible for its own foreign policy decisions. They don’t get to use “But Bibi told me it would be easy!” as an excuse for disastrously bad decisions.

But there’s no question that Israel’s view of the Middle East has won a lot of support among American officials over the decades, with the active help of the Israel Lobby. And Netanyahu in his recent actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran is pursuing a policy of seeking to illegally annex further territories while carrying out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians with a goal of making itself the Mideast’s superpower.

The catch is that Israel still is in no position to carry out these ambitions without the diplomatic and material support of the US.

Beaumont also reports:

What is clear from what has subsequently emerged is that Netanyahu – a self-styled “expert” on Iran – and the wider Israeli military establishment were fully invested in their pitch of an easy war. …

When viewed as a discrete conflict, it is as much owned by the US as Israel, but it is part of Israel’s war; the latest front in Netanyahu’s state of permanent conflict that has raged since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

That attack altered the country’s strategic calculations. And in the expanding regional conflicts that have followed in Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran, with the Houthis in Yemen and in the Syrian hinterland, a common theme has emerged: Netanyahu has promised and declared victories of which the realities are always more ephemeral and hubristic.

Semafor is taking a pretty dim view of the prospects for success in the war by the US-Israeli side:

The conflict looks set to batter allies’ economies by driving inflation up and hitting economic growth, while analysts have questioned the feasibility of Washington’s goals — whether regime change, or destruction of Tehran’s nuclear program or its missile stockpiles. Instead, “the war has empowered Iranian hardliners, blocked a vital shipping lane, and handed a windfall to Russia,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in The Washington Post.

At best, the political scientist Dan Drezner argued, US President Donald Trump is “stuck trying to sell a strategic defeat as a tactical victory,” while The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof said: “We’ve botched our way into an Iran cul-de-sac.” (2)

Owen Jones just did an informative interview with Stephen Wertheim on the developing Iran War disaster: (3)

We’ll soon see what happens with Trump’s latest obscene deadline, whether it sets off a new level of escalation by Iran – which currently has the escalation dominance in the situation – or it turns out to be another TACO moment.

Trump also announced on April 6:

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Iranians are "animals," therefore bombing their civilian infrastructure like power plants would not be considered a war crime.

"How would it not be a war crime to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants?" A reporter asked Trump.

"Because they killed 45,000 people in the last month...they are animals," Trump said, referring to casualty numbers from a brutal crackdown on demonstrations earlier this year. (4)

Notes:

(1) Beaumont, Peter (2026): Was Trump oblivious to the realities of Netanyahu’s promised ‘easy’ war on Iran? Guardian 04/06/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/06/trump-iran-war-netanyahu-israel> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).

(2) Critics say the US war in Iran is a ‘strategic defeat’. Semafor 04/06/2026. <https://www.semafor.com/article/04/06/2026/washingtons-iran-strategy-questioned> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).

(3) Trump's Disturbed MELTDOWN Over Iran - w/. Stephen Wertheim. Owen Jones YouTube channel 04/05/2026. <https://youtu.be/dKNmHFi0c2w?si=xNzKYJxZrCR-tAax> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).

(4) Trump says Iranians 'animals' when asked why he would bomb power plants. Middle East Eye 04/06/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/trump-says-iranians-animals-when-asked-why-he-would-bomb-power-plants> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).