Submitted 10 hours ago by RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Here’s the process as I understand it (please correct my errors):
Trump is torn between the neoconservatives like Rubio, formally bolton etc, and Israel that want regime change and his own unwillingness to go full troops on the ground. The neocons successfully get trump to blow up Obama era deals designed to keep the peace by catering to Trump’s ego telling him he can get a better deal than Obama, in reality they don’t want a deal and want to escalate but this is the best they can get.
So trump goes to the negotiating table only to find out that Obama’s deal is the best he can get. Frustrated and unwilling to admit Obama was just as good a negotiator as him he begins to blame the leaders for their intransigence. The longer this goes on the dumber he looks for blowing up the original deal and not being able to get a new one, all the while Iran is enriching more uranium to try and push the US to accept the old deal.
Then Venezuela happens and he comes up with a new plan, if you can’t change the deal you can at least change the negotiating team. He can take out the leader, use them as a scapegoat for the long stalled negotiations, sign the same deal and call it a win. Maduro repeatedly said he was willing to play ball with Trump but it would be on similar grounds to the Obama era deal but trump couldn’t go back to the US and say he re-imoosed all these sanctions for nothing, so he took out Maduro, got a reason to declare victory and went home.
My guess is he’s trying to do the same here, say all the issues with negotiations were because of the Ayatollah, sign a new version of the same deal with Trump branding like the USMCA , declare victory and head home.
Is Israel gaining something that I’m not seeing? Destabilization the main goal?
Yes, Israel doesn’t want regime change because they know hatred for Israel is so broad that it will survive a regime change. They want to turn Iran into the next Syria and get them to turn all of their ire inwards instead of at them.
You’d be amazed at what a cabal of pedophiles will do to protect their secrets.
The word is horrified, but yes.
Israel allows the U.S. to maintain a foothold in the Middle East and have an influence in the region (which is plentiful in natural resources like oil), that’s the gist of it. The U.S. also has a large Jewish community that is generally pro-Israel (not all of them, but many are. In recent events, many Jewish groups in America are now condemning Israel for their war in Gaza, starving the population, all that heinous stuff)
Iran’s government has made it clear that they don’t like Israel’s existence (due to their displacement of Palestinians, various war crimes, that sort. They also don’t like that they are so heavily American influenced). They don’t like the U.S. either, as they believe that they are an imperialist power that wants to take advantage of the Middle East. That is one reason that the United States deems Iran an enemy. Note that Iran’s government’s viewpoint is not necessarily the same as those of the Iranian people. Additionally, the state of Iran funds many proxy terrorist groups across the Middle East, all of which do terrible terrorist things, which the U.S. doesn’t like at all (especially when they do terrorist things against American citizens living in the Middle East).
Israel and Iran’s rivalry (and you can include the Saudi Arabia, UAE in this too) is mostly down to wanting to be top dog in the Middle East, having the most influence and power, and it doesn’t help that they have very different beliefs (not just religion, different styles of government, different policies, that sort)
TLDR:
U.S. supports Israel for Middle East influence
U.S. don’t like that Iran’s government is anti-America and anti-Israel, and they don’t like that they support terrorist groups either
Israel competes with Iran for power in the Middle East, and have very different beliefs
Please note that I am not trying to incite a political debate. America and Israel has done bad stuff (war crimes, imperialism, etc), Iran has done bad stuff (terrorist proxies, political repression, etc), both are bad in my book.
They don’t like the U.S. either, as they believe that they are an imperialist power that wants to take advantage of the Middle East. That is one reason that the United States deems Iran an enemy.
In 1953, the CIA and MI6 effectively ended representative democracy in Iran when they backed a coup d’etat that deposed Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mosadegh. Mosadegh had tried to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which later became a division of BP).
The 1953 coup resulted in the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, ruling autocratically and with heavy support from the United States. This status continued until 1979, when an Islamist revolution deposed the Shah and installed the Islamist government led by a clerical Supreme Leader that exists today.
In 2013, the CIA released declassified documents that showed that the CIA planned and carried out the 1953 coup using all kinds of abhorrent tactics, including bribery of public officials, astroturfed paid protesters, and false flag operations.
So hopefully that explains why the US is “the great Satan” to Iran, and why Iran keeps spouting “death to USA” rhetoric.
yup, anyone who seriously questions why so much of the world hates the US has nwver opened a history book. there are many many reasons, damn near all of them generally coming back to a sovereign nation trying to check the US’s extractive, unsustainable, capitalist-colonialism
This is way bigger than just Israel, most of the Gulf Arab states hate Iran and would love to see its government fall. You’ll also notice that they’ve been funnelling literally billions of dollars to the Trump family since just before he took office again. The Qataris, Emiratis, Bahrainis, and Saudis are all openly bribing Trump, and this attack is almost certainly at least partially, if not mostly, driven by their talks with Trump behind the scenes.
So why was NOW the time? What’s the USA really gaining here with these strikes?
Israel has some real, incontrovertible dirt on Trump that they are holding over him
He’s also desperate to have the US at war so he can suspend elections, because he knows that he will be hurt by the midterms
He’s also pathetically insecure, and history has traditionally looked back fondly at wartime leaders like Churchill and the like. He’s hoping for that
And the worst motivation, but one that I sincerely believe is accurate, is that he wants to use nuclear weapons. He wants to be remembered as a president who pushed the button. He’s a child, and he wants to play with all the toys
I hope he dies before he can do more harm
Distraction from the Epstein files, amongst other things. I straight up call this the Epstein war.
In the past, there have been moves against Iran (sanctions and the sort that are worsening their already mismanaged economy) but the recent strikes have been down mostly because Iran doesn’t really have any allies that are able to support them should they get attacked. Russia has their invasion of Ukraine that they are grinding soldiers in, and the Assads have been overthrown in Syria. Their bad bad economy also means they have lots of domestic issues too, making them super vulnerable.
Russia is impotent to act. Iran had recent protests indicating that the regime is weak. China has not done anything preemptive and can’t do anything now because it’s too late.
Best case protests reignites and replaces the regime with something less US hostile. Worst case denies China cheap oil and Russia some war materials for a while.
Distraction. Americans have a long history of supporting any asshole as President the second they declare war.
all these other comments are giving far too much credit to those in-power in the US right.
the only thing that matters to republicans, all establishment US politicians really, is that their lines go up. republicans actively try to crash the US economy every time their in power, as they’re abject disaster capitalists…smart people have to hedge when instability threatens their bottom line, disaster capitalists essentially run around throwing rocks at windows.
everything this sociopathic cunts do is ultimately used as a way to extract liquidity out of the US stock/futures/bond markets…every…single…time. follow the money
The Epstein files are the reason
Depends on who you ask. I think topically it feels like it’s an Epstein files distraction. There’s also the whole issue with them enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. It doesn’t help that Israel leadership has been crying wolf about “Iran will have nukes in the next 3 years” since the 90s.
It’s likely they are working to get nuclear weapons, and given that they fund all this terrorist stuff, it can’t be ignored. They’ve already been caught enriching uranium to levels beyond what’s needed for any peaceful application.
If you look at news from the past few months you see Iranians were in famine and drought and political violence leading to many protestor deaths in Tehran and the Iranian leadership moving out of the capital. Now was the perfect time to strike.
Note that America’s support for Israel has exist since pretty much when it was founded after the end of WWII by Britain, this certainly isn’t a new thing. As for the dislike of Iran, that has been a thing for ages too (see the coup against the democratically elected leader when they were against American business interests, Iranian revolution that propped up the new government and had Americans living in the embassy taken hostage by protesters)
You forgot the nuance of Iran being backed by China and Russia.
For your information, in a later comment I did note that the weakening of Russia due to their invasion of Ukraine is playing a part in making Iran more vulnerable. In terms of their ties with China, that is correct, their relations are an additional reason why the U.S. doesn’t like them very much. It doesn’t look like China would support them in a conflict though, at least not with troops on the ground.
Pedophilia
THE FILES WERE MADE TO START WARS. This multinational blackmail campaign has been running since the 80s to let a handful of rich men(and Ghislaine and her sister) control countries, industries, resources, borders and anything else they want.
Also a bunch of billionaires want more money, feudalism, Skynet, the literal Rapture, and other competing bad ideas.
To distract from the Epstein files and make Trump’s handlers money on oil.
It s not a lie, but its a very unhelpful answer. I don’t know why you’re being upvoted.
It answers the title, says why now, and refers to the POTUS and his “tendency” to act on personal rather than national interest. I don’t think it was that unhelpful, though of course it’s a simplification.
Not really, based on what trump has said before, it’s very clear the only reason he’d start a war is to distract from domestic troubles.
Republicans since the 60s have only ever had two ideas: invade countries and lower taxes on the rich.
Trump is surrounded by republicans and is a 90 yr old narcissist. He either has dementia or doesn’t give a fuck what happens
he has reached new levels of unpopularity due to his status as an epstein style sex predator of kids, his killing of americans in an attempt to punish ‘santuary cities’ by violating the constitution using ICE as a political tool, as well as tariff bullshit.
trump when in a pinch tries to do a new “newsworthy event” to reset the news cycles. Often it will be some advisor of his that has the idea. Its clear that being surrounded by republicans “invade iran” is probably a regular mantra.
Holy Wars by Megadeth is a decent primer
There’s a complex set of reasons but my take is:
Trump needs a national emergency so he can implement restrictions on voting in November. He’s already cited election interference in 2020 and 2024 as the reason for the invasion. He will use this to issue executive orders banning mail in voting and to ensure ICE are present at polling booths.
Additionally, Trump is very easy to manipulate. If a couple of other leaders like Bibi and Putin said “hey everyone would think you were so amazing if you flattened Iran right now”, he would do that, 100%. Some people are saying that someone is blackmailing Trump because they have the unredacted Epstein files, but I don’t think you really need that to manipulate Trump.
Because Israel has a leash around Trump’s neck.
“Why is the USA attacking Iran?”
Trump’s insecurity:
By associating with “biblical” Netanyahu’s “Israel”, he gains “validity”.
By bombing someone, he gains “authority”.
By pretending that his-regime’s actions benefit the protestors in Iran, he gains “humanitarian credibility”, while warring against the people living in the US’s own Democrat states.
By doing all this NOW, he deflects from his being an Epstein-associate who’s on evidence for crimes against women, & girls.
See the PATTERN, not just some single-aspect of it, & then it makes more sense.
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This is a great question and one that is worth diving into a bit, but not necessarily by me. There are a plethora of answers here with some insightful and some less so backgrounds. I suggest that you dig into some outside sources and potentially you can work through the complexity of the answer, as history often is.
I’m sure others have some great references as well, but given this crowd I’d suggest some youtube videos. I also suggest some recently written long form articles in foreign affairs which is always good for understanding context, as well as a few books.
RealLifeLore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8kSGH4I8Ps - Why Iran Regime is Failing (Water, economics, and more.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3l5bCGjqLE - Why It’s So Hard to Defeat Iran Militarily https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmvB7KW7WJA - How The US & Iran Became Arch-Enemies
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oytfhLUy0Fg - How Israel Checkmated Iran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuFGyFLehNw - Why Russia’s New Axis is Way Dumber Than You Think
Also Foreign Affairs has some good long form pieces: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/why-iran-will-escalate https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/trump-iran-gamble-vaez https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/what-it-will-take-change-regime-iran https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/americas-best-chance-transform-iran-trump
Book wise I recommend:
Worlds Apart: A Documentary History of US-Iranian Relations, 1978–2018 by Malcolm Byrne and Kian Byrne - offers a meticulously curated collection of declassified documents tracing pivotal moments in bilateral tensions, including the Iranian Revolution and nuclear negotiations
Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations by Afshin Matin-Asgari - examines America’s Cold War hegemony, the shah’s regime, the 1979 Revolution, and Trump-era escalations, including the 2025 US-Israel attempt at regime change in Tehran
Iran’s Perilous Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons by David Albright - uses Mossad-seized Iranian documents to detail clandestine weapons efforts, assassinations of scientists, and cyberwarfare like Stuxnet
Oh you are new to this? America has always been on Israel side, for decades. Its their proxy for operations in the middle east.
“[Supporting Israel] is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” US senator Joe Biden, 1986.
They’ve shown multiple times that they don’t need a proxy for war in the middle east.
POTUS Donald Trump intends to use America’s wars with Iran and Venezuela as justification for cancelling the US midterm elections for Congress. That will prevent the hugely unpopular Republicans, all Trump Nazis, from losing power.
It shouldn’t work; the US has had plenty of wartime elections, and the POTUS should not have that power, anyway. But US law means nothing to today’s Republicans or the Nazi, Donald John Trump.
Trump will decree the midterms cancelled; blue states will tell him to fuck off, while red states will agree. Half the country won’t even prepare their polling places. The whole mess will go to SCOTUS, and they will side with Trump. The midterms will be cancelled. The 2028 POTUS election will similarly be cancelled. The Republicans will remain in power without the support of the US population, and Trump will be a full-fledged dictator and POTUS for life, free from prosecution for his numerous crimes.
Trump is the most powerful and successful criminal in US history, and his iron-fisted reign of terror continues because the Biden Administration was too feckless to bring him to justice when they could. If Trump wasn’t POTUS, today he would be in jail or house arrest. But he is POTUS, and he’s all too happy to abuse that power to the fullest to remain a free Nazi.
Let’s not all forget that Israel is not finished eradicating Palestine, but now everyone is looking at Iran. Violence in Gaza will again escalate but now with no coverage because a bigger war has started.
Gives them a pretense to give money to the weapons industry -> weapons industry has higher profit -> stock goes up -> Dow Jones is over 50k, which makes their other crimes legal.
It’s a state that’s always been hostile toward the US and its interests - both directly and by funding groups that share the same goals as Iran does. Over the past few years, though, the war in Ukraine, Israel’s strike on Iran, the US follow-up bombing of their nuclear sites, and the special Maduro operation have all shown that Russian air-defense systems aren’t much of a threat to Western fighter jets anymore. So they probably figured that if they’re going to do this, now’s the time - while Iran’s at its weakest - instead of waiting around. Countries like North Korea have dodged the same fate by holding Seoul hostage, but Iran doesn’t have that kind of leverage.
It seems naive to think that you could accomplish regime change with only air strikes? America tried occupation, tried training Afghanistan, none of that worked.
What the US has often done in the past is provide air support for aligned local rebels on the ground. In this case, though, that rebel force doesn’t really exist, so I figure the reasoning is to show the people of Iran that if you want to take back your country, now’s the time - and we’ll help you. There’s at least some evidence that a big chunk of the Iranian population is fed up with the Islamist government but whether this’ll lead to an uprising or regime change remains to be seen.
I’m in the same boat, I think the USA needs to be working with revolutionaries and a War Powers Resolution needs to be done to limit Trump’s bomb-happy attitude.
It’s a part of an infinite proxy war between the USSR and their successors Russia and China, against the interests of the USA and Europe.
Iran is a puppet state for China, currently, and they provided weapons and funds for Hamas leading up to the October music festival attack and capture of hostages reigniting the war and consequently the Gaza Genocide. Previously the Russian backed Syria was also a key player but they collapsed recently due to civil war (revolutionaries partially funded by the USA and UK).
Israel is supposed to be the USA’s “puppet state” in the same vein, but tbh they’re so rogue and don’t fuckin listen on anything and they’ve got so much economic ties to Russia such as Abromovich steel and international distribution that they’re just a bad friend that the USA is stuck with because the second best friend they had in the region, Afghanistan, fell due to Trump incompetently releasing 5,000 Taliban fighters from US Custody, and number 3 is Iraq and the USA spent a long time waging war in Iraq for virtually no reason due to Bush incompetence and oil executive greed but I guess we’re sort of cool for now.
The USA and NATO often cooperate with Saudi Arabia as a way to fight extremism in the region, though they’re not US allies and they are often much more aggressive than the USA are in their tactics.
Basically, the cold war isn’t over.
Riots that were encouraged by US actors in the region to destabilise and give this excuse
It’s an old play by the yanks, but it has worked more than once
Was the starvation also staged? Has the USA been running Iranian Economic and Agricultural planning in secret for years? Was Climate Change all a ploy in order to put pressure on Iran?
Those devious masterminds!
Its hard to know for certain given Trump’s insanity, but my own read on the situation is that they want to permanently remove Iran as a threat to Israel or the US. Basically, destroy the current government, and destabilize the country. What happens after that, they don’t care.
He is not insane, just evil. Which is bad enough.
He isn’t insane, but he does seem to have pretty serious dementia.
The only answers i can give you without conspiracy theories:
But why now? Why at all?
The top of the Iran administration (khamenei and top military generals) decided the meet in person. Israel found out and bombed the shit out of the building. That’s why khamenei and top military generals all died in the beginning of the war.
The negotiations where progressing in a good rhythm and it caught the US (Israel informed US right before the bombing, but there was nothing US could do) and Iran of guard.
Is Israel gaining something that I’m not seeing?
Iran is the only close country that still keeps an aggressive stand against Israel (mainly by using hezbollah as a proxy). By doing this Israel wants a more friendly government.
By doing this Israel wants a more friendly government.
Israel knows there will never be a friendly government to them in Iran, Israel knows that hatred for Israel is broad and will survive a regime change, especially one triggered by a war of aggression from Israel. They’re hoping to turn Iran into the next Syria, keep them fighting amongst themselves so they can’t turn their ire towards them.
Because Trump is a compromat, and he is scared of Putin, and Putin wanted higher oil prices.
Trump probably now hopes that a war will help his popularity.
Iran is one of the main supports and weapon suppliers for Russia … Putin is not happy about this.
Iran asked Russia for help,using the Russian S400 systems they have stationed in Syria, to help defend against Israeli missiles.
The response from Russia, was to shut down the S400 systems, to prevent them from being a target.
So very clearly no aid is coming from Russia, and I think part of the reason is that this is what Putin want.
US sees China as it’s main rival, Russia as Europes headache. Iran, Venezuela, Nkorea, cuba as minor annoyances that support China.
Worst case Denies China cheap oil imports for a while when both Iran and Russia are too weak to do anything. Also denies Russia some war materials. Best case scenario the protests reignite and replaces the regime with something less US hostile.
US sees Israel as the most reliable ally in the region, because all their neighbours hate them and they must stick with the US. A strong Israel lets US dictate much of what goes on in the middle east.
Because one lunatic…
For money. Every other explanation is BS.
BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world 1 minute ago
So this is one where actually it really makes no sense for the US to attack Iran - this comes down to a bad president making impulsive decisions. It certainly benefits Israel. Trump seems to think he is untouchable after attacking Iran last year and kidnapping Venezuela’s president. This war seems to be him shooting from the hip and not being restrained by those around him from making very bad decisions.
From a US strategic point of view, it can’t achieve regime change in Iran by bombing the country (it’d need troops on the ground) and it has low supplies of air defence munitions thanks to selling stocks to Ukraine and also using up some supplies in it’s 2 day war against Iran in 2025. Going to war now is foolhardy - Iran just needs to prolong this war beyond a few weeks and the US will be in trouble. It will need to pivot to a defensive posture to protect its allies in the region as defenses run out, which will be tough and cost US servicemen and women’s lives. It will also cost a fortune to prosecute this war without any real benefit.
US allies in the middle east have been drawn into a conflict they certainly didn’t want, global trade will be disrupted by closing the Strait of Hormuz (a very major shipping route), oil prices will spike and could stay high if oil infrastructure is damaged in the war, air traffic will remain disrupted and the gulf states economic hub plans (building up Dubai as an Economic centre etc) will be damaged. It’s possible this could even tilt the global economy to recession, or even precipitate an earlier end to the AI stock-market bubble.
This war is looking like a major strategic blunder by the US; more stupid than the Vietnam war (which was at least thought-out by strategists). Its likely the Pentagon was against this war, but sadly Trump and his clown-car cabinet are pulling the shots. It’s a war that’s goals cannot be achieved, yet will costly the longer it runs.