Jack Rasmus

Dr. Jack Rasmus

Copyright 2025

After promising during the 2024 election to stop the USA’s ‘forever wars’ in the 21^st century, in less than six months in office Donald Trump is about to start another ‘forever’ war with Iran.

There’ll be no prior vote in Congress, as required by the US Constitution. No seeking support of the United Nations or forming a coalition with allies. Nor even a preparation of public opinion, apart from the Fox News network that appears completely on board. There won’t even be a suspension of the War Powers Act, as occurred in previous ‘forever wars’. 

Trump plans to simply order US aircraft to bomb Iran, within days or perhaps even hours. Certainly as soon as the three additional US aircraft carrier task forces he’s ordered arrive on station in the Arabian sea off Iran’s southern coast.

The carriers and planes are there to neutralize Iranian coastal and inland anti-aircraft missile forces to create a corridor for US B-2 strategic bombers flying from USA’s Diego Garcia island airbase in the Indian Ocean. The B-2s will drop US made GBU 43 bunker busting bombs on the three or more Iranian sites that Israel, and now USA, allege are producing nuclear material for use in an Iranian bomb.

The US bombing will occur on the flimsiest evidence supporting the claim Iran is just weeks away from having a nuclear weapon, as the US and Israel leadership and both countries’ media are saying. To the contrary, however, UN IAEA inspectors this past March 2025 publicly said there was no evidence Iran was near having such a weapon. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of the US Director of National Intelligence, which coordinates all 17 US intelligence services, also told Congress that same month there was no evidence.

Two days ago as Trump was leaving a G7 meeting in Canada he was asked by the media what he thought of Gabbard’s view and statement. Trump replied: “I don’t care what she said. I say they’re working on a weapon…I don’t listen to her”. So who does Trump listen to? Netanyahu? Israel’s CIA-like counterpart, Mossad, instead of US intelligence services?

Trump will send US planes and bombers into Iran— not to prevent an attack on the USA by that country; not in response to an actual or imminent attack by Iran on US bases or its 40,000 troops now in west Asia; nor in response to an attack by Iran on US warships or any international shipping.  Iran is not at war with the USA nor plans to; nevertheless, the USA will soon be at war with Iran. 

Iran publicly offered this past week to sign a treaty saying it has no nuclear weapon and agrees not to develop one—a move strongly suggesting it is not concerned US inspectors would find anything indicating it has.

Trump is thus preparing to take the USA into another ‘forever’ war, this time with Iran on behalf of a foreign nation—Israel—simply because its leader, Natanyahu, has asked him to do so. The Israeli leader has been asking the USA to attack Iran since 2002 when he addressed the US Congress on the eve of the USA’s imminent Iraq invasion in 2003. Now he’ll likely get what he’s been asking for: the USA to attack Iran on behalf of Israel.

Since 2002 Natanyahu has cleverly deepened Israel’s influence—and indeed control—of the US government through its lobbying group, AIPAC, and other personal connections within the US bureaucracy, aka its Deep State.

A majority in Congress has already been writing a blank check to Israel to cover the costs of its current wars in GAZA, Lebanon and Syria. Congress will no doubt rubber stamp quickly any US air attack on Iran, in order to legitimize US bombing Iran—an act of war and aggression by America by any definition of international law. Like Congress, the US government bureaucracy and Deep State is also deeply aligned with Israeli interests, as is the Trump administration and the president himself. 

The two political systems—USA and Israel—are fused at the political hip and have been for some time. There has never been anything quite like the political integration of the two systems, America and Israel, in the entire 250 year history of the USA.

Israel is the American Empire’s landlocked aircraft carrier looking out over the entire middle east, enforcing US imperial interests; America is Israel’s military weapons industry and blank check writer. It is estimated more than $340 billion in aid has been given to Israel by the US government since the 1970s. Most of which gets recycled back to the US companies providing Israel US advanced weaponry.

The USA ‘How to Go to War’ Playbook

Since 2001 America has been embroiled in what can only be called wars of empire: Wars to expand the empire. Wars to punish those who try to break from it or dare to chart an independent path. Wars to pre-emptively attack those who pose a potential challenge to it in the future. 

There have been three defining wars of empire in the 21^st century: the Iraq war of 2003-10 (of which the Afghan war was a second front). The Ukraine proxy war of 2021-25. And the Israel-Iran proxy war of 2023-25.

In retrospect, there is a pattern in how the US prepares and initiates war across all three.

When the US imperial elites—in government, Deep State, and Military Industrial Complex—shift the machinery of war into first gear and the war train leaves the station there is no calling it back. The gears of war were set in motion in 2002 in the case of the Iraq war; in 2021 in Ukraine; and sometime during 2024 in the current case of Iran. War plans are developed and the funding sources identified and earmarked months, and sometimes years, before military action is initiated.

Once the decision is made what remains is mostly the timing, i.e. when is it best to pull the trigger. That timing depends on getting the necessary military assets in place, lining up agreement to go to war with key players in Congress and US allies, preparing public opinion by creating an imminent threat image with the US public, and, if time and conditions permit, staging a ‘false flag’ event to give credibility to the imminent threat.

Here’s how the playbook works after initial preparations, as the US war train shifts into higher gear as evidenced in the last three major wars in the 21^st century: Iraq, Ukraine, and Iran:

The Case of Iraq 2003

First, the US raises a set of demands the target country must meet and engages in a period of negotiations with it. 

In the case of the Iraq war of 2003 the US charged Iraq with possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that it was planning to use. Who can forget the visuals of Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the UN security council showing charts of African countries from where Iraq had purchased ‘yellow cake’ to make nuclear material. WMDs include chemical or biological weapons. But Powell’s presentation suggested Iraq’s WMDs were also nuclear.

UN and US inspectors found no evidence of WMDs in the run up to the war. And after the war it was confirmed there were none. That didn’t matter at the time. The US War train had left the station months before. Assets and allies, Congress and public opinion, were already prepared and in place. In negotiations on the eve of war, Iraq agreed to US initial demands.  The US just moved the goalposts. It demanded instead of UN IAEA inspectors the Iraqi armed forces submit to the occupation of Iraq by US/NATO forces to ensure there were no WMDs. In other words, agree to de facto unconditional surrender.

The WMD issue was just a cover. The real US demand was regime change in Iraq and the deposing of Saddam Hussein as the country’s leader and dismantling of his political party. When the US goes to war it is always about regime change. The manufactured threat issue is always just a cover. Negotiations are never intended to reach a compromise. They are just a tactic.

The US war prep playbook is to never agree to a deal via negotiations but only make it appear one is possible. The US raises new, more unacceptable demands and ignores concessions offered by the target country as a basis for a deal. Negotiations are thus used to lull the opponent into thinking a compromise is possible when in fact no deal will ever be agreed to. However, as the US ratchets up demands and moves the goalposts, it issues public statements in parallel that discussions are going well and negotiators are getting closer to a deal to avert war.

In the weeks just prior to the Iraq war erupting, Saddam offered UN and US inspectors free access to all sites, including military, in Iraq to determine there were no WMDs. The US ignored Saddam’s offers. WMDs were just the pretext. It was always about regime change. It always is.

And then when all assets are in place, the war hammer drops. An attack is launched by surprise with no prior indication or warning.

The parallels with the current imminent US war with Iran are notable.

The Case of Iran 2025 

Ever since the collapse of Syria in late 2024 and Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency, the US has been using negotiations to lull Iran into thinking a deal was possible to avert a US involvement in Israel’s war with Iran.  When Iran agreed last week to sign a treaty indicating it had no bomb and would not develop one in the future, the US moved the negotiations goalposts: it demanded the Iranians open up their military sites to US and Israeli inspectors to verify if nuclear production machinery was creating fissionable material.

The US further demanded Iran turn over its entire existing stock of fissionable uranium.  Iran agreed to do so for all its excess material except for what was needed to run its civilian nuclear power plants. It offered to turn over all its excess stock of uranium to be managed by a third party, in this case Russia.

The US responded Iran must turn over all its uranium stock, including that needed to run its civilian nuclear generating plants. In other words, Iran had to shut down its civilian nuclear power plants.

As negotiations proceeded last week, Trump publicly declared the US and Iran was close to a deal. He added the situation looked promising and a deal was likely on Sunday, June 15, when US and Iranian teams were scheduled to meet again. Within 48 hours of Trump saying a deal was imminent, Israel launched its surprise attack on Iran. It is naïve to believe Trump had no knowledge of Israel’s surprise attack launched in Friday, June 13. He as much indicated he knew. And he knew such an attack would lead to a cancelling of June 15 negotiations. He knew no deal was imminent. Negotiations had served their purpose to lull Iran into thinking a deal was possible, even imminent.

Whether this tactic resulted in Iran leaving its guard down on June 13 cannot be known for certain. What is certain is that Israel’s June 13 attack wiped out much of Iran’s air defense system and giving Israel aircraft more or less free entry into Iran air space to bomb not only military facilities but power plants throughout the country, including nuclear, as well.

It was the Israeli version of Colin Powell’s ‘shock and awe’ prediction of the prior US air war launch on Iraq.

Israel’s surprise attack not only neutralized many of Iran’s air defense facilities but Israel simultaneously carried out assassinations of high ranking Iranian military, government officials as well as civilian Iranian scientists. Israel thus included a ‘decapitation’ strategy, which had previously proved successful with Hamas in GAZA and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Purposely targeting and decapitating civilians is considered a war crime.

So is targeting civilian nuclear facilities. In the initial attack Israel bombed several, with reported nuclear radiation fallout occurring in several locations in the country. 

To sum up: the US Iran war playbook has followed much of that employed by the USA in Iraq: engage in negotiations to lull the opponent into thinking a deal is possible. Keep moving the demands goalpost as the opponent makes concessions. Use a pretext like WMDs (Iraq) or nuclear bomb in weeks (Iran) to maneuver public opinion in support of the war. And as in the case of Iraq, the actual goal is regime change. Military action is designed to achieve political objectives. Launching a surprise massive air campaign is to inflict as much damage on the economy and disable the government in order to spark political uprisings to depose the regime and its leaders.

Neither WMDs or a nuclear bomb are ever the real issue or objectives. They are the excuse to launch a massive military air strike to wreck the economy and create political instability and engineer regime change. And negotiations in the run up to war are a tactic, not a step in a process to reach a compromise and a deal to avert war. Their purpose is to lull the opponent into thinking a deal is possible when it isn’t.

When the US playbook believes pretexts and excuses like WMDs or nuclear bombs are not sufficient to invade, it adds a ‘false flag’ operation to the playbook. Some notable false flags from earlier US wars include the alleged ‘Tonkin Gulf’ attack by North Vietnam boats on US destroyers that was used to justify US expanding its war in Vietnam; the claim the Cuban army had invaded Grenada and seized US medical students as hostage; the charge that Panama president Noriega was running a drug operation transporting Colombia cocaine to American cities as justification for the US invasion of that country in 1989; the claim that Assad, president of Syria, was using chemical weapons; Iraqis in 1990 were killing Kuwaiti babies in incubators.  Every US war playbook engineers a pretext and/or a false flag operation leading up to initiating  military action.

The Case of Ukraine

The case of Ukraine is a variation on these themes.  In 2014 following the US financed and CIA directed coup in that country, Russia occupied Crimea to prevent NATO from seizing its naval base there, which would have led to NATO occupying the entire Black Sea.  There were brief military conflicts in eastern Ukraine, followed by negotiations and a cease fire in a Minsk Agreement between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. Germany’s then Chancellor, Merkle, and France’s president, Holland, served as guarantors of the Minsk agreement. Later in 2022 they would both admit publicly the purpose of the Minsk negotiations and deal was to lull Russia into thinking the military conflict as over. Ukraine was not militarily prepared to go to war yet. It would require 8 more years to prepare massive fortifications and weapons development and training of troops before it was.

The US/NATO decision to go to war with Russia in Ukraine was made by US president Biden around June 2021 when he met with Putin for the first, and last time. The US plans for the Ukraine war date back to 2015. They were shelved when Trump won in 2016 and thereafter quickly dusted off by Biden when he took office in January 2021. Biden in August 2021 ‘cleared the decks’ in Afghanistan by pulling out. US advisors and weapons thereafter began pouring into Ukraine. Putin attempted to ‘negotiate’ with the US from afar during the rest of 2021 without any progress. The US-Ukraine plan called for a major Ukraine offensive in February 2022 to defeat what remained of the local Russian ethnic resistance in Ukraine’s two eastern provinces, Lughansk and Donetsk. But the Russians pre-empted that and invaded first in late February.

Russian advances were swift even though it invaded with barely 90,000 troops across a combat line of 1500 kilometers from Kiev to south Donetsk. That limited force was no where near sufficient to occupy Kiev or conquer Ukraine. Its purpose was intimidation to force Ukraine into a compromise deal which was tentatively reached in Istanbul, Turkey. As discussions in Istanbul were occurring, Russia was asked to show good faith by withdrawing its forces from Kiev which it did. A tentative deal was then reached between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul in April 2022 which was quite favorable to Ukraine. However, NATO convinced Ukraine president Zelensky to reject the deal and to continue the war. The Istanbul negotiations collapsed.

Twice Russia was lulled into negotiations to ‘buy time’, as Merkle and Holland admitted in 2015 with the Minsk deal and Ukraine did again in April 2022. US/NATO rushed in weaponry and advisers after Istanbul and Ukraine launched a major offensive that threw Russian forces back from Kiev and other locations to limited positions in Lughansk and Donetsk.  Thus Russia was out-maneuvered twice by negotiations with US/Ukraine that were never intended to conclude with a compromise deal to end the war in Ukraine.

As in the cases of Iraq and now Iran, from the outset the US playbook in Ukraine proxy sought the ultimate objective of regime change in Russia.  The admitted strategy was a military conflict in Ukraine, financed and provided with weapons by NATO, which the plan envisioned would lead to a collapse of the Russian economy, political instability, and the deposing of Putin by Russian oligarchs and military. 

The US neocon and CIA analysis was Russia’s economy was weak and the Putin government even weaker. A military conflict, supported by extensive sanctions on Russia’s economy was argued in US war planning to lead to Russian implosion and NATO/Ukraine victory. Regime change was again the objective.

Negotiations at Minsk in 2015 or Istanbul in 2022 were never meant to reach a deal but to lull Russia into thinking one was possible. In 2025 the US and EU again tried to lure Russia into a negotiation that demanded as a precondition to negotiations that Russia agree to a ceasefire first. The preconditions in turn allowed Ukraine to rearm and mobilize and train more troops during negotiations.

It was clear the US/NATO 2024 proposal was another example of negotiations employed as a tactic to ‘buy time’ to prepare for another military offensive—after which the pretext of negotiations would be dropped. This time, however, Russia did not agree to ceasefire first and then negotiations. Nor will it again agree to negotiations as a delaying tactic after twice being manipulated and out-maneuvered in 2015 and 2022.

Unlike in the cases of Iraq in 2003 and Iran today, in the case of Russia the US playbook’s negotiations tactic as well as its strategic objective of regime change have both conclusively failed.

What’s Next in the US-Israel Proxy War On Iran?

The official position of the USA is that it isn’t involved in Israel’s war with Iran. Few believe that given the US provision of weapons to Israel, likely planning the operation for months, and obvious US satellite surveillance and targeting assistance.  As US official spokespersons deny US involvement, Trump himself publicly refers to the Israel attack as “we”, calls on Iran to ‘unconditionally surrender’ and says the US knows where Iranian leader Khamenei is located and could ‘take him out’ any time. All of which hardly suggests no USA involvement. Will the US then overtly escalate its involvement by bombing suspected Iranian nuclear weapons development sites deep inside several mountains. No one yet knows for certain but it is very likely Trump will do so.

But what if the US GBU 43 ‘bunker busting’ bombs do not achieve their objective and destroy Iranian deep mountain sites? The only further weapon that can is a tactical nuclear US bomb. Will it risk that?

It is likely should Trump allow B-2s to drop bunker buster bombs that Iran will attack US naval bases in the Persian gulf located in Bahrain and elsewhere. The same response may occur should US carrier plans attack Iran’s Persian Gulf ports and naval installations. A large contingent of US naval forces are stationed in Bahrain. What happens if the Gulf erupts in military conflict? One outcome is certain: global oil and gas prices will quickly rise and so will US consumer energy costs and inflation in general.

There is also the question what will Russia, now a signatory to a mutual Russia-Iran defense agreement since January, do in response to a US direct military involvement in Iran? It is difficult to imagine Russia will not come to Iran’s defense. That would greatly undermine its credibility everywhere. Nor will China remain neutral. Reports are it is already shipping weapons to Iran by air. It is very unlikely Russia or China will permit its ally Iran to be militarily defeated or its government to collapse. And then there’s Pakistan that has vowed to provide Iran with nuclear weapons if either Israel or US use them on Iran.

Can an air attack by Israel, with or without the USA, actually succeed in bringing about regime change in Iran? That too is extremely unlikely.  Iran is not Libya. Its leadership is not isolated from public support, as was Assad in Syria.

It is difficult to see how the Israel air attack, despite some of its initial successes, can succeed in the longer term in bringing about the primary objective of Iranian regime change. What then? Can Netanyahu then agree to compromise after significant Israeli military bases and urban areas have been seriously damaged by Iranian hypersonic missiles that have shown to penetrate Israeli air defenses and will continue to do so? Iran has a population of 92 million and has shown it will sacrifice millions dead in its 1980s war with Iraq if necessary.

Neither the US or Israel have sufficient ground forces with which to invade Iran. Israel is a population of 10m with military forces engaged in GAZA, Lebanon and recently Syria. It would be a disaster for the US to invade Iran with ground troops.  Even an air attack on Iranian sites risks significant US losses of aircraft. Trump should remember the disastrous US air invasion of Iran during the Carter administration to attempt to rescue US hostages in Tehran. It failed miserably, with the US losing several aircraft on the attempted entry.

Despite these likelihoods US neocons like Lindsey Graham now call for the commitment of US troops to Iran. Thus proving once again that neocons never compromise or admit defeat; once their plans fail they simply double down and call for further escalation.

Trump should also consider the effect of a decision to bomb Iran on his domestic base. The initial phase of a MAGA movement realignment in domestic US politics may impale itself on Trump’s escalation in Iran. Already significant voices in the MAGA movement are challenging Trump’s imminent decision to bomb: Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and a growing list of MAGA members in Congress.

Millions of American voters in 2024 no doubt voted for Trump last November in part because of his campaign promise to end America’s ‘forever wars’. Bombing Iran after less than six months in office will reveal that was just another fake election campaign pledge that presidents feed the public for votes, then turn around and do the bidding of the neocons who’ve been running US foreign policy since 2001, the US military industrial complex and their Deep State allies in America.

Should Trump soon decide to bomb Iran that act will likely unleash global and domestic US responses not easily contained by the Trump administration. Trump’s advisers should remind him not only of Carter’s disastrous invasion in 1979, but of Nixon’s bombing of North Vietnam which only accelerated the collapse of US’s war in Vietnam. 

Air wars are successful only when targeting small weak military state opponents. They worked with Serbia, Libya, in Sudan, and such. Even in Iraq and Afghanistan US ground troops had to be committed and then were forced to leave. And this time the US simply has no sufficient ground forces, short of reinstituting a draft. Europe has even less.

Trump’s decision to bomb Iran will result in forces of global and domestic US political entropy spinning out of his control. But like the US neocon community—which Trump has now apparently joined—looking beyond the immediate situation to possible consequences is not part of their mental apparatus nor in either of their war time playbooks.

Looking back in the months to come, the USA proxy war in Ukraine may be understood as the dress rehearsal to World War III. But a US-Israel war on Iran will be understood as the actual start of a global conflict.

Dr. Jack Rasmus

Copyright 2025

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