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The US-Israel Culture of Annihilation

Do CounterPunch, 6 de abril 2026
Por Gerald Sussman



“I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate.”

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1911

“I’m not looking for war, and if there is, it’ll be obliteration like you’ve never seen before.”

– Donald Trump, 2019

In close coordination with the Israeli regime, Donald Trump has embraced Roosevelt’s style of gunboat diplomacy without prior congressional authorization or a declaration of war but with far more violence and destruction. This is a man who came to politics not only undisciplined by the formalities and limitations of the presidential office or the Constitution but with the level of narcissism and egotism of a dangerous sociopath holding massive WMD. This is the lowest point in US political history.

Trump chose people for conducting foreign affairs with no training in international relations or diplomacy, only personal loyalty. Britain’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, said that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, on whom Trump primarily relied in deciding whether to go to war in Iran, are simply “Israeli assets.”

Both Kushner and Witkoff are ardent Zionists and, like Trump, have used Middle East negotiations to conduct multibillion dollar personal business transactions in the region, illegally and unashamedly violating Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution, the emoluments clause. They have played key roles in false flag operations to try to deceive the Iranian leadership into believing the US was serious about negotiating an agreement to foreclose Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.

The Israeli government doesn’t even pretend to negotiate. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has said that Israelis as a whole think of militarism as the first, not the last, option in dealing with adversaries. Their model for dealing with Muslim or Arab nations, all potential Amalekites in Netanyahu’s view, is the Gaza final solution.

It is confirmed by abundant human rights reports and physical evidence that Israel, using the Gaza playbook, is targeting and destroying residences, hospitals, clinics, schools, sports stadiums, businesses, cafes, civilian infrastructure, as well as assassinating Iran’s top leaders and negotiators. Their objective is plainly not to negotiate but to wipe out Iran as a nation state and as a people as part of its hegemonic project in the region, as it has done in Syria and is attempting to do in Lebanon.

The US-Israeli assault on Iran calls to mind the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, when the Nazi troops were sent to the front to burn down villages, but with an underestimation of their enemy and without adequate resources to win a war of such magnitude. Iran may not be Russia, but neither is it Iraq or Libya or Venezuela. Trump and Netanyahu have completely failed in their primary mission – to destroy the Iranian state. Instead, they have played Armageddon with the world economy.

And to their own shock and awe and despite the self-censorship of the US mainstream media (MSM), Israel and the American military bases in the Middle East have been pummeled by the seemingly endless stock of accurate Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, along with, most probably Russian-assisted, precision guidance systems. For the Russians, their assistance is in part retaliation for US military communications intelligence, weapons, targeting, and logistics given to the Ukrainian military to launch missile attacks on Russia.

In the current situation, Trump’s and Netanyahu’s combined air force power has blitzed its way into Iranian cities, yet is unable to force a surrender. And while Iran has already suffered enormous civilian casualties, it has in effect rope-a-doped the two imperial states into depleting their arsenal and rendered both unable to prevent a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has cornered himself into acting like Netanyahu’s puppet, the next (il)logical step being the possible commitment of ground forces into the country, which will result in significant American casualties (the Israelis long having used the US troops as their mercenaries). Such a step will further burden American taxpayers with massive increases in non-productive public spending. Déjà vu all over again.

The US war effort appears to be without any coherent strategy, Trump’s pronouncements on this question changing by the day. Instead, what we see throughout the Middle East is the Israeli tail wagging the American dog. Many have speculated about the grip that Netanyahu and Mossad appear to have over Trump and the possibility that Israeli intelligence apparatuses have compromising evidence of the US president in the Epstein files.

If Trump is serious about regime change, he has seriously blundered himself into a trap for which there is no available escape route except either an extraordinary admission of US failure, even if couched as victory, or nuclear annihilation.

It is hard in fact to fathom Trump and his band of warmongering miscreants actually having a credible long-range strategy, presumably toward China. He has every reason to walk away having secured a $2 billion investment offered by the Saudis in Jared Kushner’s private equity firm.

If there is a long-term policy, and it’s unlikely that Trump or his appointees think in those terms, it has to do with the looming threat that Iran may conduct future oil trade outside of the dollar-based reserve currency system and encourage other Gulf states to do the same. As the Saudis and other oil-rich regimes prop up the American economy and its deficit spending through massive purchases of stocks, bonds, Treasury notes, weapon systems, and real estate, the shift away from petrodollars would likely be devastating.

At the same time, Trump, no less than past Democrat presidents, is beholden to billionaire Zionists like Miriam Adelson, who allegedly offered him $250 million to fund his third term in office. Zionists dominate the pool of largest individual donors to both parties. The Israel lobby group AIPAC openly boasts of its successful purchase of American politicians. And the MSM, including the Times and Post, are heavily tilted toward the Israeli perspective vis-à-vis the Palestinians and other resistance movements in the Middle East, subserviently denigrating them as “terrorists.”

Then there’s the influence of the US defense sector. In 2025, military sales to Saudi Arabia alone among the Gulf states was $142 billion. However, if the US proves unable to defend the protective shield of bases in those oil sheikdoms, those regimes may have greater reason to seek peace with Iran and move closer to Iranian allies China and Russia. This could mean cancellation of the US bases agreements on their soil and the ending of arms purchases from the American military-industrial complex.

Given its experience with the perfidious and ruthless US-Israeli assault on their country, Iran is unlikely to accept anything less than the elimination of further military and economic threats to their country. This could necessitate the development of nuclear weapons as deterrence.

It is important to recall US interference in Iran going back to the 1953 CIA coup, which ousted a democratically elected government and installed a ruthless dictator, Shah Pahlavi, whose rule ended with the Islamic revolution of 1979. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats appear to understand this or otherwise have the moral outlook to recognize that far from being a threat to the West Asian region, Iran has suffered continuous abuse and intervention from the Anglo-American alliance, which includes Israel.

Fortunately, large majorities of Americans oppose the war, while Trump’s approval ratings are among the worst ever for a US president. However, given Trump’s apparent state of detachment to the human suffering in Iran, encouraged by the even more cold-blooded genocidal attitudes of his Mossad partners, there’s no telling what may be further in store, including the possibility of an escalation to nuclear attacks. For Israel, there is no such thing as a win-win diplomatic solution.

In the near term, one can only hope that the regime change the US and Israel seek to impose on Iran will soon happen in their own countries.




Gerald Sussman is professor emeritus of urban studies and international studies at Portland State University. He is the author or editor of seven books, including the most recent (2025), British and American Electoral Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism: Parallel Trajectories (Routledge). This article is an abbreviated version of a forthcoming article in the journal New Political Science. Professor Sussman can be reached at: sussmag@pdx.edu

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