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Israel, Oil, and Megalomania Are Behind Trump's Iran War
Why did Trump suddenly move so sharply in favor of war in his second term, turning against his popular base and his promises of no new wars? In an interview, historian David N. Gibbs offers some answers.
Mar 30, 2026
The world’s two major rogue states, the US and Israel, attacked Iran on February 28, 2026 by using an imaginary threat to overthrow the Iranian regime and hoping in turn to install in its place a “friendly” government. There is no end to war in sight after one month as Iran hasn’t lost the capacity to retaliate and there has been no rebellion inside Iran. Moreover, there are very strong indications that the US is preparing for ground operations in Iran, a move that, if it materializes, will unleash hell in the neighborhood and beyond.
In the interview that follows, renowned historian David N. Gibbs describes the war against Iran by the United States as a prime example of the “extraordinary subservience” on the part of President Donald Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The Butcher of Gaza had long hoped to drag the US into direct military confrontation with Iran and has finally succeeded doing so. But the interviewee also points out that Trump may have had in mind objectives of his own when he decided to go to war with Iran.
David N. Gibbs is a professor of history at the University of Arizona, who specializes in political conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and Afghanistan, as well as US economic history. His most recent book is Revolt of the Rich: How the Politics of the 1970s Widened America’s Class Divide.
C. J. Polychroniou: David, as the Iran war rages on and threatens to engulf the entire Middle East region and beyond, I want to start by asking you to reflect on the following. The first Trump administration proved to be less warlike than both the Obama and Biden presidencies. Why do you think Donald Trump is pursuing such a bellicose foreign policy during his second term?
David N. Gibbs: One of the most striking features of Donald Trump’s second presidential term is the belligerent, violent stance, much harsher than what was seen in his first term. This has been true across the board, from the streets of Minneapolis to the Caribbean and Greenland; and now very dramatically in the Persian Gulf. This is a pure war of aggression, since Iran presented no imminent security threat to the United States or to Israel, as intelligence specialist Joseph Kent, who recently resigned from the Trump administration, has made clear. Accordingly, the war is a violation of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits wars of aggression not authorized by the Security Council. Trump has also violated the US Constitution, which stipulates that international treaties that are signed by the United States—such as the UN Charter—form part of “the supreme Law of the Land.”
In launching war against Iran, Trump II is acting very much like previous presidents from both parties. He is following in the grand tradition of the US president as war maker. Consider George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was equally reckless and destructive, producing enormous costs in both dollars and lives, with no security benefits whatsoever. And yet it was backed by both parties, with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) acting as a loyal supporter of the war. The extraordinary subservience that Trump is now displaying toward the Netanyahu government—despite his promises of “America First”—also follows a long tradition of pro-Israel activities by previous administrations, since at least the 1970s.
Trump’s desire for national greatness through war dovetailed nicely with the neocon idea.
And there have been many more cases of disastrous US interventions, besides Iraq, including the violent regime change operations against governments in Libya and Syria, with negative consequences for both the inhabitants of those countries and for regional security. In 2014, US officials helped to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, thus destabilizing the country and laying the groundwork for a later war with Russia (and in doing so, they violated the Charter of the Organization of American States, which prohibits all forms of external intervention). In the 1990s, NATO bombing campaigns in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo augmented the scale of human suffering, while US officials blocked negotiated settlements that could have settled these conflicts through peaceful means.
Consider too the weaponization of economic sanctions by US presidents, which over the past 50 years have killed many millions of innocents, according to one recent study. American officials in previous administrations have shown remarkable callousness, when queried about the deadly effects of sanctions. While his bizarre communication style is unique among recent presidents, Trump’s penchant for violence is not unique.
It should be emphasized that Trump’s newly aggressive foreign policy seems fundamentally different from what we saw in his first term: In the first term, Trump showed many disturbing tendencies, including the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and the breaking of a perfectly viable US-Iranian agreement that limited Iranian nuclear enrichment. What Trump did not do in his first term was start any new wars, and in this respect, the first Trump presidency stood out historically. Many on the left bristle at this idea—but the fact is that first term, Trump was indeed one of the least warlike presidents since 1945.
Why did Trump suddenly move so sharply in favor of war in his second term, turning against his popular base and his promises of no new wars? My best guess is that Trump—in his instinctive megalomania—wanted to be not merely a two-term president, but also a great president, comparable to Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a war-winning leader fit for Mount Rushmore. Other motives included a desire to enhance US control of world oil, to be used as an instrument against challengers, such as China; to open up through force new investment opportunities for US companies; to enable old-fashioned corruption of the type that almost always is associated with war and covert operations; to please the ubiquitous Israel Lobby; and to distract from Trump’s embarrassing associations with Jeffrey Epstein. On balance, however, I assume that Trump’s quest for greatness loomed large in his decision to wage war.
Obviously, Trump’s aim for Mount Rushmore is failing, as his glorious war against Iran is already producing political and economic disaster. The preparations for war seem remarkably superficial, in a way that is once again, reminiscent of past wars. Recall the numerous failures associated with the War on Terror. What most impresses me most about the Iran war is how similar it seems to past US foreign adventures.
Polychroniou: The MAGA era was defined by isolationism and rejection of the neoconservative fantasy of remaking the world in America’s image. Is it accurate to say that the Trump administration has reverted to a neocon foreign policy?
Gibbs: Neoconservatism emerged during the 1970s, in response to the US military humiliation in Vietnam. Having studied the private papers of neoconservatives at Stanford University and elsewhere, I view the neocon ideology as a form of pro-military extremism, which glorifies overseas US interventions as inherently desirable, based on the experience of Israel. The neocons openly admire the military accomplishments of the Israel Defense Forces, who aggressively attack their adversaries. And the IDF does not apologize or express regret about their aggressiveness. In the eyes of neocons, the IDF points the way to how America should behave in the world arena. Since they first emerged half a century ago, the neoconservatives have gradually become the dominant foreign policy perspective in both US parties.
You are correct that in the first presidential term, Trump resisted the neoconservative agenda of relentless militarism and was publicly critical of the neocons. Many prominent neocons moved away from the Republicans and toward the Democrats, beginning in 2016. However, Trump has now pivoted to a neoconservative strategy, especially in his war against Iran. He has finally jumped on the bandwagon. In executing this pivot, Trump is responding to two pressure points: First the neocon idea is so pervasive that it is difficult to find policy specialists who are not active neocons. In the present Trump cabinet, Marco Rubio—who is both secretary of state and national security adviser—has always been in the neoconservative camp and has emerged as the main shaper of policy. And secondly, Trump’s desire for national greatness through war dovetailed nicely with the neocon idea.
For Trump’s base, I sense exhaustion with the prospect of permanent war. There is a realization that we have been spending too much on guns, too little on butter, and Trump was initially seen as the solution to this problem. When Trump backers use the term “America First,” many of them mean that we should focus on improving living conditions here in the United States, while reducing our emphasis on global power projection. Trump’s abandonment of the America First agenda is already producing splits within the Trumpian coalition, which are sure to grow as the war becomes a fiasco. These political splits will become even more dramatic if (or more likely when) Trump decides to insert US ground forces into Iran, and American casualties mount.
Polychroniou: It’s quite obvious that both the US and Israel miscalculated Iran’s response to war. The US and Israeli air campaign has decimated Iran’s political and military leadership, but the regime is still intact and there has been no Iranian uprising. Indeed, Trump has gone from “we’re winning the war” and “we won the war” to asking for help from NATO allies. How likely is it that we will see a US military ground invasion of Iran?
Gibbs: US interventions are often associated with the idea of “mission creep,” whereby small interventions inexorably grow into larger interventions. This happened in Vietnam on a large scale, where relatively small numbers of US military advisers gradually evolved into a massive ground war over many years, with disastrous consequences.
The most important accomplishment of the Iran war will be heightened nuclear danger.
We are seeing this same pattern play out in Iran, whereby Trump’s fantasy of a quick win, through “decapitating” the Iranian leadership—murdering their leaders—has failed. The Islamic Republic, despite its numerous weaknesses, has proven more durable that many had imagined. I do not see any immediate likelihood of a ceasefire or a compromise settlement, since the Iranians have no incentive to compromise. They have been attacked by Israel and the United States twice in only a matter of months, first in June 2025 and now again. And, as John Mearsheimer emphasized, Iran now holds the upper hand on the battlefield.
In the absence of any compromise settlement, Trump will be tempted to land US ground forces in Iran, first on a limited scale, perhaps on Kharg Island, then followed by larger and larger numbers of ground forces. What we are clearly seeing is a growing military and economic quagmire of immense proportions.
Polychroniou: Nuclear weapons haven’t been used in wartime since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. I fear that the Trump administration may not hesitate to make use of nuclear weapons against Iran if it realizes that it’s going to lose this war. Do you have such concerns? And in the event that the worse case scenario unfolds, what might be Iran’s own response?
Gibbs: One clear effect of US military aggression over the years has been to accelerate nuclear proliferation, as more and more countries conclude that the only way to deter US aggression is to acquire nuclear weapons. Many will look to the North Koreans, who adopted a nuclear strategy—complete with long-range missiles—and are thus protected from attack. Another case worth considering is Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi, who gave up nuclear ambitions in exchange for a tacit understanding that the United States and its allies would not overthrow his government. Then, in 2011, the US and NATO took advantage of Libya’s weakness and violently overthrow the government, with Gaddafi being tortured to death.
The obvious result of this history is that more and more countries will consider developing nuclear weapons of their own, beginning of course with Iran. And the coming wave of proliferation will heighten the risks that nuclear weapons will be used, thus endangering global security. The most important accomplishment of the Iran war will be heightened nuclear danger.
One of the most disturbing features of contemporary politics is the absence of any real antinuclear movement in the United States or anywhere else. During the Cold War, the antinuclear movement was huge, and fear of nuclear war was integrated into the popular culture, as a constant source of anxiety. When the Cold War ended, however, the antinuclear movement disappeared without a trace, and people now seem unworried about the very real dangers of nuclear war. The political left in particular seems completely uninterested, and I am baffled to understand why.
Polychroniou: What Can We Do About It?
Gibbs: In the short term, we on the left must set aside our petty prejudices and form a broad anti-war coalition, including people on both the left and right who oppose what Trump is doing in Iran and permanent war more generally. And let us revive an antinuclear movement, while we are at it. There is clearly a large and growing anti-war movement on the right, and smart leftists should not hesitate to work with them. Let us forget the culture wars for one moment and focus on the horrors of real war.
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Nuking Iran Would Mean Stepping Beyond the Brink of Evil
There may be no recovery from such an action; indeed, “recovery” is only possible before such an action occurs: before the nuclear missile hits.
Mar 26, 2026
This is the first sentence of a column I cannot write... of a “war” I cannot win. There’s just no way to condense the psycho-spiritual devastation of an unleashed nuclear bomb into words. All I can do is ask a question that has no answer: What is the opposite of Armageddon?
Can a collective human embrace be larger, more intense and powerful than collective suicide? Is “peace” a force in its own right, or just a brief moment of quiet while humanity reloads?
OK, no answers, just a bit of context with which to ponder the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran (and throughout the Middle East). Lawrence Wilkerson—retired US Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell—put it this way in a recent interview with Democracy Now: “This is a war with long legs and I think Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who has interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks right now.”
One alleged reason why we’re waging a war on Iran is because it has nuclear “capability,” which we need to obliterate for our own safety. Apparently, only the boss countries—the world leaders, the conquerors and colonizers—can be trusted to have nukes. USA! USA! This club also includes Israel, which in fact possesses a large number of nuclear warheads and may actually use one if the war it started comes back at it with too much ferocity. In other words, if Iran’s retaliation is too successful: “...winning against such insatiable enemies could provoke a cornered Israel to turn the war nuclear,” according to the publication Jacobin. “A Trump adviser recently warned that Israel might use a nuclear weapon against Iran.”
I don’t believe it’s possible to turn a nuclear assault into a verbal abstraction: “Gosh, Iran was just nuked.” If that happens, we’ve just inflicted hell on all of humanity. We’ve stepped—collectively—beyond the brink of evil.
Let’s take a moment to let this sink in. The Iran war could go nuclear. Here’s where things get incomprehensible: horrifically unimaginable. The human race has far more skill at murder than it has at understanding, conflict resolution... sanity.
The Jacobin piece continues:
Israel has a large nuclear arsenal, officially undeclared, of over 100 warheads that it built with the help of the French and hid for a decade from the Americans. It can be deployed by submarines as well as long range missiles and is considered by Israeli planners to be the "Samson option," named after the last biblical judge of Israel who tore down the columns of the temple of an ancient fertility God to destroy the Philistines. It may resort to using this weapon if it feels it is existentially threatened.
Samson brought the temple down on himself as well, as I imagine you know. Could an ancient story be more relevant to the present moment?
This is where I lose any sense of what to say. First of all, I don’t believe it’s possible to turn a nuclear assault into a verbal abstraction: “Gosh, Iran was just nuked.” If that happens, we’ve just inflicted hell on all of humanity. We’ve stepped—collectively—beyond the brink of evil. There may be no recovery from such an action.
Indeed, “recovery” is only possible, in all likelihood, before such an action occurs: before the nuclear missile hits. Recovery has to start happening right now—and it is, or so I hope. Something’s happening. More than 3,000 No Kings Day protest rallies are planned around the country on March 28. Protest is not enough, of course, but it’s yet another beginning. Let this be the match that lights the candle.
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War Is Hell for People and the Earth
Given the increasing violence across the world, it is essential that the international community more seriously address the environmental impacts of war as a persistent threat to the biosphere.
Mar 23, 2026
By any measure, Homo sapiens is one of the most violent animals on Earth. At any one time today, humans are engaged in over 100 armed conflicts and wars across the world, many with a resource component—oil, diamonds, gold, timber, territory, water. In the 20th century alone, over 130 million people were killed directly in war, 210 million if including government killings in non-war situations. The United Nations now reports that the world is entering “a new era” of increasing violence and conflict, and that “unresolved regional tensions, a breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted state institutions, illicit economic gain, and the scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change, have become dominant drivers of conflict.” Such extraordinary intraspecific violence seems to be unique to humans.
Strict economic losses from war exceed $1 trillion each year, and global military spending continues to rise, now approaching $3 trillion annually, compared to roughly $5 billion (0.2%) per year spent on peacekeeping. Global arms sales now exceed $150 billion each year, and there are over 500 million military assault weapons in circulation.
And often overlooked in assessing the toll of war is that, in addition to its humanitarian and economic cost, war often causes severe, long-lasting impacts on the natural environment.
War significantly impacts every part of the environment—air, water, land, habitat, biodiversity. This includes massive oil spills (e.g. enormous amounts of oil and other hazardous substances spilled from thousands of ships sunk in war, Iraqi forces during the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War intentionally releasing over 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf and setting wellheads ablaze, the 2006 Israeli bombing of fuel depots in Lebanon causing the large Eastern Mediterranean oil spill, and millions of barrels of oil spilled in the Niger Delta conflict); air pollution from explosive detonations and fires; land contamination; wildfires; deforestation (the loss of millions of hectares of forests in Vietnam from the spraying millions of gallons of the toxic defoliant “Agent Orange,” and vast areas burned by incendiary napalm); habitat destruction (thousands of hectares of mangroves lost in Vietnam); physical impacts to land (erosion, compaction) from war machinery; and mortality of wildlife (killing tens of thousands of Norwegian reindeer during WWII, and thousands of camels killed during the 1990-1991 Gulf war). Fuel use and carbon emissions during war, and in preparation for war, are enormous, and the US military is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum.
War and environment are reciprocal drivers of decline—environmental degradation leads to war, and war leads to environmental degradation.
But perhaps the most troubling aspect of modern civilization is the development and threatened use of nuclear weapons, now numbering roughly 14,000 across the world, with a combined explosive yield more than 360,000 times that of the Hiroshima detonation. This global nuclear weapons stockpile, many of which are on a hair-trigger ready to launch, creates significant risk of accidental launch, as well as unsecured weapons (“loose nukes”) being acquired and used by malevolent actors.
The environmental effects of full-scale nuclear war would put at risk much of human civilization and the planetary biosphere. Firestorms from a full-scale nuclear war would suspend millions of tons of black soot into the upper atmosphere, leading to abrupt and unprecedented climate impacts including “nuclear winter,” with global cooling and reduced photosynthesis, causing years of crop failures, famine, and ecological collapse.
As nuclear tensions have risen, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has now set its “Doomsday Clock” at 85 seconds to midnight, closer than ever in history to nuclear annihilation, a move it says “should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”
We are, and must be, better than this.
UN secretaries general have called the environmental consequences of war widespread, devastating, and debilitating, prompting the initiation of the United Nations’ International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict (November 6).
Theoretically, all nations are governed by international rules of war, and those rules specifically prohibit inflicting unnecessary environmental harm.
For instance, Paragraph 18 of the Geneva Conventions stipulates that:
All armed forces, whether regular or irregular, should continue to observe the principles and rules of international environmental and humanitarian law to which the parties to the conflict are bound in times of peace. Natural and cultural resources shall not be pillaged under any circumstances.
In Additional Protocol I, Article 35 states:
It is prohibited to employ methods or means of warfare which are intended, or may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment.
And Protocol I, Article 55—Protection of the Natural Environment—states:
1. Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term, and severe damage. This protection includes a prohibition of the use of methods or means of warfare which are intended or may be expected to cause such damage to the natural environment and thereby to prejudice the health or survival of the population.
2. Attacks against the natural environment by way of reprisals are prohibited.
It is notable that while the US has signed, but not ratified, Protocol I, it is generally felt that the Protocol has achieved status as Customary International Law that is to be abided by all nations, irrespective of ratification.
As well, the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the 1998 Rome Statute, stipulates in Article 8(2)(b)(iv) that the following constitutes a war crime:
Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such an attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.
While there are 129 nation-state members to the ICC-Rome Statute, several countries with significant military activities are not, and thus do not abide by its rules—e.g., the US, China, Russia, India, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
And unfortunately, the laudable provisions cited above are often ignored by both state actors and non-state actors, without consequence. The terms widespread, long-term, and severe are not specifically defined. And the ICC statute requires evidence of intent and knowledge in order to prosecute violators, as such, it has yet to be employed due to this high threshold. Perhaps most importantly, these rules of war lack clarity regarding accidental or collateral environmental damage, which is by far the largest environmental impact of war.
War and environment are reciprocal drivers of decline—environmental degradation leads to war, and war leads to environmental degradation. Put simply, war and environment don’t mix—war is hell on people and the natural environment.
Given the increasing violence across the world, it is essential that the international community more seriously address the environmental impacts of war as a persistent threat to the biosphere. The Geneva Conventions must be updated to specifically and unambiguously define their environmental protections; to establish an international legal mechanism—independent of nation-states—to arbitrate and prosecute claims of environmental damage from war and to impose sufficient consequences for violators; and to hold the perpetrators of conflict financially liable for environmental damage and restoration post conflict.
For now, all combatants, including those in the current Persian Gulf war, must abide by these agreed environmental protections during conflict.
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