MAD DOG

Is it the United States that leads Israel, which is its docile instrument for the control of the Middle East, or vice versa is it Israel that actually controls the USA, also thanks to the widespread action of AIPAC [1], which between funding and ad hoc ostracisms holds the entire Congress in its grip?

There has been a heated debate for a very long time on the relationship between the United States and Israel, on the nature of this relationship – which certainly cannot be simply summarized in geopolitical terms. The prevailing opinion, at least in the so-called dissent circles, seems to be that it is the USA that holds the reins of command, and as always in these cases, once a thesis is assumed one ends up reading every fact as consistent with the thesis itself.

My personal opinion, on this matter, is that the nature of this relationship is in fact much more complex than can be summarized in the binary choice, A or B. And that, ultimately, both have powerful levers to influence the choices of the other, just as - consequently - both need each other. The recent conflict with Iran, the so-called 12-day war, is an excellent opportunity to test these different theses.

What we can take for granted is that Washington knew that Tel Aviv was preparing the attack. And, obviously, this can be read in different ways. It could mean that the negotiation started by Witkoff with the mediation of Qatar was, from the beginning, nothing more than a smokescreen to cover the attack itself. Or, vice versa, since Iranian firmness was blocking the negotiations, Trump thought that the Israeli action could induce Tehran to moderate his counsels. In both cases, however, the real question is: given that both Washington and Tel Aviv could not have been unaware of the structural limits of Operation Rising Lion, what was the real objective?

Obviously, the Iranian military nuclear issue is a fairy tale for the Western public, which has also been swallowing it for thirty years [2], so what was wanted was not the destruction of Tehran's nuclear program.

The ultimate objective, on which both the US and Israel agree, is obviously the Western reconquest of Iran. It is no coincidence that for a couple of days Prince Reza Pahlavi, heir to the Shah (a ferocious dictator at the service of the Seven Sisters), reappeared. But carrying out this ambitious plan is not possible, at least not without putting boots on the ground – something that neither partner is in a position to do.

If the hypothesis of the US guiding Israel were true, it should be deduced that Washington knowingly sent its Middle Eastern ally forward, in an enterprise that was born in any case short of breath and without great hopes; one wonders why it should have done so. If, on the contrary, the opposite hypothesis were true, one should suppose that the intent was to drag the United States into a war destructive for Tehran; but then one wonders why this did not happen.

While it is important to dispel the mythology that sees the West – and specifically the USA and Israel – as always winning and always capable of making the right moves (history tells us exactly the opposite), and therefore taking into account that one or the other – or both – may have made errors of judgment, we must consider how the entire issue developed. In the first phase, the US willingness to negotiate seemed real (so much so that the Iranians took it seriously), and is in fact consistent with the final outcome of events: the White House's intent was and is to avoid the outbreak of a generalized regional conflict – the outcomes of which are unpredictable, and threaten the agreements just reached with the Arab countries of the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. [3]). The US starting position (“no to the development of nuclear weapons, no to the enrichment of uranium beyond the limits necessary for civilian use”) was in fact perfectly acceptable to Iran, since it never had the intention of building a nuclear weapon, and the enrichment itself was in fact nothing more than a form of pressure to reach a negotiation, and therefore the end of sanctions.
Obviously, the possibility of reaching an agreement, so predictable and so easy, in the eyes of both Israel and the most extremist factions in the Trump administration, seemed like smoke in the eyes.

Therefore, a sort of ballet began, with US requests that varied over time with ever new additions (“total stop to enrichment, stop to the missile program, stop to support for the Axis of Resistance…”), and with a misalignment between what Witkoff said in Qatar and what Trump said on Truth. The weakness of Trump’s presidency, which is directly linked to his eclectic personality, first made this uncertainty possible, and then, consequently, produced a stiffening on the Iranian side. The result was to block the negotiations. And this stalemate opened a gap for the Israeli initiative.

Trump probably convinced himself that it was necessary to force Tehran’s hand, and Netanyahu extolled to him a dazzling plan of attack that, without involving Washington too much, would have brought Iran to its knees.

Trump wanted an agreement and did not want a war. Netanyahu did not want an agreement and wanted a war.

If we look at how things went, we see that neither of them got what they wanted. There is no agreement, and there was a war – albeit a very brief one. Ergo, neither of them exercises complete control over the other.

But what was the real Israeli plan? First of all, and given the close relations that exist between the two countries, it is impossible that Tel Aviv was not aware that Washington would not be dragged into war. Or at least that this hypothesis was extremely remote, and almost certainly linked to a real and imminent danger of strategic defeat for the Jewish state. A risk that no one in Israel would ever have taken into account. It therefore seems probable that the plan was different. As the development of the military operation itself seems to suggest.

In the first two days, the decisive ones, the Israeli attacks had the clear objective of dismantling the Iranian political-military system, even more than diminishing its offensive capabilities. The very fact that Tel Aviv decided to play the card of its vast network of infiltrators and covert agents (precious fruit of years, if not decades of secret work by the Mossad), mobilized both to carry out drone attacks or to signal targets, and to fuel chaos and confusion, testifies to the belief that it had a chance to shake the regime. The calculation of the Zionist leadership, then, appears plausibly to have been to open a gap; not so much to drag the United States into a kinetic war with the Islamic Republic, but to offer an opportunity to the American leadership. To produce a shock in Iranian society and leadership, such as to open a window of opportunity in which, by adding the offensive capacity of Israel and the United States, it would appear possible to rapidly bring about the collapse of the regime.

It is clear here that the calculation was not only wrong from a military perspective (Iran's ability to react) but above all from a political, strategic perspective. Not only was there no collapse in Tehran, but from the third day onwards the concrete risk of the Israeli defence collapsing began to emerge. As has been said, "Iranian deterrence is not just the sum of ballistic missiles and drones. It is a political culture, a horizon of discipline, an ability to be at war without losing oneself. It is a way of being an organic reality in a hostile world" [4].

What was supposed to be (in the Israeli plan) a chance to liquidate the Islamic Republic, or at least (in the US vision) an effective move to force it to negotiate on Washington's terms, quickly turned into a trap.

The rapid degradation of the operational capabilities of Israel's air defense [5], due essentially to a shortage of interceptor missiles (a problem that concerns the entire West [6]), has placed Tel Aviv and Washington before a real and imminent problem.

The reduced interception capacity, in fact, opened the way not so much to growing waves of Iranian missiles - which Tehran was well aware would offer the US a reason to attack heavily in turn - but to a series of less massive, but increasingly effective launches, which would gradually demolish Israel's strategic infrastructure.

The problem was posed under the dual profile of preventing a too significant (and difficult to conceal) Israeli military defeat, and of avoiding the triggering of an escalation with unpredictable developments - and certainly unwelcome to moderate Arab countries.

From this point of view, the solution found between the Pentagon and the White House – namely the simultaneous attack on the three nuclear sites of Ferdow, Isfahan and Natanz – was highly effective in many ways, and also offered the opportunity to show off a considerable capacity for projection of US air power. From this point of view, a perfect example of Clausewitz’s “continuation of policy by other means”.

However, this operation – which certainly made it possible to save both the goat and the cabbage in a short time – is not without negative political and military implications from the Israeli-American point of view.

First of all, and not trivially, 14 GBU-57 MOP bunker busters were used in the attack out of a total of 20 available to the US. And above all, despite the strong news emerging about the poor effectiveness of the attacks themselves [7], both Washington and Tel Aviv are forced to support their absolute destructive effectiveness with all their might. Which, obviously, disarms both of them from a short-term revival of the hackneyed narrative about the imminence of the Iranian nuclear threat, and strengthens Tehran's position in rejecting the resumption of negotiations.

Trump had to deny the rumors of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and Tulsi Gabbard herself, to support the thesis of the decisive attack. In turn, Netanyahu - who is hiding from the Israelis the damage actually caused by the Iranian missiles - is thinking of exploiting the wave of this fake victory (which he obviously attributes to himself) to call early elections and make a clean sweep: 80% of the Jewish population believes (still) in Israel's military success and supports the decision to strike Iran. Both, therefore, find themselves in the need to politically capitalize on a non-existent positive outcome of the conflict, and must therefore fully support the actual consistency of the attack.

In turn, Tehran has an easy game in capitalizing in turn. Internal consensus has strengthened, political and military structures have held up very well, the relationship with allies Russia and China is stronger than ever [8], and its regional role is consolidated.

Once again, therefore, what emerges from the factual observation of the relationship between the United States and Israel is that it is difficult to affirm, demonstrably, that one is a mere instrument of the other. It is certainly a dialectical relationship, whose dynamics are changeable based on the internal and international context, and in which the reciprocal capacity for conditioning is not constant over time and intensity. That said, it is all too evident that – even regardless of the considerable power in influencing US choices, by the Zionist lobbies (Jewish and Evangelical) – the objective condition of Israel is that of an existential dependence on US support, from a military, economic and political-diplomatic point of view. Ultimately, therefore, it is Washington that keeps Tel Aviv on a leash. Even if, precisely based on contingent situations, the strategic interests of the United States must in some way be made compatible (or vice versa) with those of Israel.

At the same time, since these interests are not always reconcilable, Israel cannot rely exclusively on AIPAC’s influence, and must retain the ability to independently tug on the leash, unbalancing whoever holds the other end and forcing him to follow the Zionist leadership’s lead. In short, Israel is a bit of a mad dog for the United States. It is not always obedient, and often tries to escape control, putting Washington in trouble. But it cannot be left to its fate, and it knows it.

Notes

1 – As Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (D-Calif.), M.A.G.A., said in an interview on Tucker Carlson’s channel, members of Congress are essentially forced to pledge allegiance to Israel. She said lawmakers are expected to consistently declare that “Israel is our greatest ally” and publicly show their support, both on social media and in person. It’s become so routine and programmed, she said, that it’s impossible not to notice. See the video on X: link
2 – CNN produced a collection of clips of Netanyahu’s repeated claims, dating back to 1996, that Iran is close to a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu has been saying this for nearly 30 years. See the video on X: link
3 – It must be kept in mind that the strategic importance of the Middle East, for the USA, is no longer so much linked to oil production (at least since they have been self-sufficient), but to the petrodollar, that is, to the link between the US currency and oil trade, which today constitutes one of the most solid pillars on which the dollar's predominance still stands. And in this respect, maintaining a privileged relationship with Saudi Arabia is essential.
4 – Cfr. “Iran insubordinato, resistenza e crisi dell’impero: la paura cambia campo”, Pasquale Liguori, L’Antidiplomatico
5 – About half of the interceptions of Iranian missiles and drones are due to the defense systems of the IDF (however powered by the USA). About 22% of Iranian ballistic missiles were intercepted by the Jordanian Air Force, 25% by THAAD systems and US ships in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, and only the remaining 53% were intercepted by Israeli defense systems.
6 – According to Carolina Lion (US analyst), it seems that Washington has exhausted about 15% of its THAAD arsenal in just under two weeks, to defend Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles. Which means that the air defense munitions would probably run out in about 6 weeks, in the event of a war against Russia or China. See also “Israel Is Running Low on Defensive Interceptors, Official Says”, Shelby Holliday, Wall Street Journal
7 – According to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Dan Cain, who spoke about it during a briefing with US senators, the USAF did not even try to hit the Isfahan facility with GBU-57s, since it is at such a depth that these bombs would not have been effective. The US used Tomahawk cruise missiles on the surface part of the complex and the entrances to the underground part, which do not appear to have suffered much damage, as the Iranians had previously protected them by filling them with earth. It is therefore assumed that the facility is at a depth significantly greater than 100 meters, and presumably the center of Fordow is not much different. See “US did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran’s nuclear sites, top general tells lawmakers, citing depth of the target,” Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen, CNN
According to IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, the most sensitive material from Iran’s nuclear program is located at a depth of about half a mile (about 800 meters) underground. See “UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi: ‘I am a calm person. I focus on what I can do’”, Financial Times
As reported by Reuters, another underground site has been built in recent years under a mountain (Pickaxe), near the center of Natanz. It is believed that it is also deeper than Fordow and that the Iranians have secured part of the fissile material there. See “U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites set up ‘cat-and-mouse’ hunt for missing uranium”, Francois Murphy and John Irish, Reuters
8 – As Timofey Bordachev, program director of the Valdai Club, writes, Iran’s security and stability are important to Moscow not only because of the cooperation agreement or its role in the Eurasian corridors, but “Iran is a key player in the Eurasian balance of power and a descent into chaos could turn it into a launching pad for foreign interference aimed at Russia and China via Central Asia”. See “Война на Ближнем Востоке угрожает Центральной Азии”, Timofey Bordachev, Vzglyad
As for China, as Lorenzo Maria Pacini observes on Strategic Culture, “the conflict also affects Beijing’s interests. (…) China and Iran have a $400 billion agreement, based on oil and technology, and it has become Iran’s leading trading partner, occupying 30% of the Iranian market, for over $15 billion. Most important is participation in the BRI corridor, which establishes Iran as an irreplaceable friend for a long series of guarantees. (…) the interest at stake is great and, consequently, China’s commitment as a peacekeeper cannot but be great”. See “China Steps Up for Peace in the Middle East”, Lorenzo Maria Pacini, Strategic Culture