Asking the Wrong Questions

Middle East scholar Phyllis Bennis weighs in on the recent attacks against Iran.

by

Magazine

From the beginning of Israel’s attack on Iran in June, through the aftermath of the United States having dropped 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs from B-2 bombers, and then President Donald Trump’s shaky ceasefire imposed twelve days later, a whole lot of people were asking the wrong questions and arguing about misguided issues.

Anyone relying on current or former U.S. officials, the White House, members of Congress, or virtually any of the mainstream media might be forgiven for thinking that Iran had the only nukes in the neighborhood, and that it was the reason for rising regional instability.

An entire set of facts was deemed irrelevant due to the hysteria generated by Israel’s unsubstantiated claim that Iran represented an escalating existential threat and therefore was a legitimate target, despite the lack of any actual imminent threat.

The world’s attention, for a brief moment, was focused on a shocking scenario: two powerful states armed with nuclear weapons attacking a country that did not have nuclear weapons or a program to produce any. We should have been reminded that the United States and Israel have nuclear weapons and Iran does not. But somehow that wasn’t the picture we were seeing.

Those questioners inside the Beltway focused breathlessly on whether Trump had given Israel a green light for its massive and unprovoked assault on Iran. They should have been asking why there are no limits or conditions to U.S. support for Israel, from its genocide in Gaza to its attack on Iran. Someone might have then pointed out that, regardless of whether the United States explicitly approved it, authorized it, or liked it or not, Washington was still complicit in the Israeli attack, because it could not have taken place without years of virtually unlimited U.S. money, international protection, and arms flowing to Israel.

After Washington’s B-2 bombers joined Israel in attacking Iran, the debate shifted to a different set of wrong questions. Was Trump right about Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities being “totally obliterated,” or were the experts right in saying they were only partially damaged? Had Iran’s limited amount of more highly enriched uranium been moved before its storage area was smashed by the Pentagon’s bombs? What no one was asking was why are we just talking about Iran’s nuclear bombs—when they don’t exist? And why aren’t we talking about Israel’s unacknowledged and uninspected nuclear weapons arsenal?

Then there was the question of the legality of Trump’s support for Israel’s assault and, of course, of his direct bombing of Iran. Trump ordered the bombing of Iran in secret, without consulting Congress, as required by the U.S. Constitution. There was a bit of questioning about that, and some members of Congress tried to invoke the War Powers Act to stop any further bombing. But those efforts failed in the Senate and never even came to a vote in the House.

It was also a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions to attack civilian nuclear facilities, and no one seemed very concerned about that, either.

Crucially, we weren’t hearing much about the history, or even the existence, of Israel’s arsenal of ninety or more nuclear weapons, which were exposed to the world in 1986 by an Israeli nuclear engineer turned whistleblower. Built with assistance from France and tested in collaboration with the apartheid government of South Africa, the weapons remain stashed at Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev desert, with no international inspectors allowed in and no Israeli officials allowed to mention their existence.

Israel refuses to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, which prohibits new nuclear weapons states from emerging and mandates international inspections of existing ones. Israel’s nukes fuel the ongoing arms race across the Middle East that continues to destabilize the entire region.

Israel’s recent demands for U.S. support primarily seek to enable its genocide against Gaza. “We need more bombs, we need more Hellfire missiles, we need it all.” And the United States responds: “Just tell us how much.”

In 2024, Washington gave Israel $17.9 billion, almost 40 percent of Israel’s entire military spending that year. The slaughter in Gaza—including babies, children, and elders—has been made possible by U.S. tax dollars and U.S.-produced weapons. Tank ammunition and armored bulldozers, especially useful in Gaza, were included in the multibillion-dollar U.S. weapons transfers to Israel in 2024 to 2025, along with F-35 fighter bombers and aerial refueling tankers, both of which Israel would find particularly useful in an attack on Iran.

It turned out the United States had sent enough weapons for Israel to simultaneously launch its massive assault on Iran, which killed almost 1,000 people, including scientists and military and political leaders, along with their families, and destroyed apartment blocks and science labs, even while continuing its genocide in Gaza.

Iran doesn’t have a single nuclear weapon and never did. A research weapons project initiated in 1989 was scrapped in 2003, when Iran’s leaders determined that possession or use of a nuclear weapon would violate the tenets of Islam. All intelligence agencies (except some of Israel’s) agree that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, has never had a nuclear weapon, and has not made a decision to try to create a nuclear weapon. And Iran, unlike Israel, is a party to the NPT and was under U.N.-mandated scrutiny until the Israeli and U.S. attacks resulted in the suspension of inspections.

We need to demand different questions and real answers. Whether or not Trump really is against war, as he sometimes claims, he chose to bomb Iran. And bombing Iran was an illegal act of war. War has consistently failed to resolve the so-called Iran nuclear crisis. What’s needed is real diplomacy, enforcement of the NPT, holding Israel accountable for its illegal nuclear weapons, and, yes, a new Iran-U.S. nuclear deal.