The Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently stated that it was the threat of a unilateral Israeli action that prompted the US to consider joining a war against Iran. ‘We knew that if Iran was attacked—and we believe that they would be attacked—that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded…We went proactively, in a defensive way, to prevent them from inflicting higher damage. Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life,’ Mr Rubio said.
This tracks with major newspapers arguing that it was after the Israeli threat of unilateral action that the US was forced to attack Iran. ‘In the briefing on Tuesday for the Gang of Eight, which consists of the leaders of the House, the Senate and each chamber’s intelligence committees, Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated to lawmakers that the mission’s timing and goals were shaped by the fact that Israel was going to attack with or without the United States, according to a person familiar with the administration’s outreach to lawmakers,’ The Washington Post reported. The New York Times agreed: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel walked into the Oval Office on the morning of 11 February, determined to keep the American president on the path to war.
At the time of writing this, six American service members are so far killed in action. It might only increase, as the conflict spreads. Unless otherwise, this is a classic, almost textbook example of what we call ‘chain-ganging’ in international relations, whereupon a small and paranoid or reckless protectorate essentially gives an ultimatum to the hegemon that they are joining a fray, and since the hegemon is committed to defend the protectorate, the hegemon might as well join the war. By that logic, the current conflict against Iran constitutes a discretionary war of choice, rather than a response to an acute, imminent threat.
‘By that logic, the current conflict against Iran constitutes a discretionary war of choice’
The administration has so far advanced multiple rationales for the campaign, encompassing Iran’s historical support for terrorism, aspirations for regime change and promotion of women’s rights, the promotion of internal political freedoms, and concerns regarding its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. The multiplicity of these justifications have contributed to an ambiguity concerning the ultimate strategic aims of the operation, but recent reports and statements from the Secretary of State suggest a simpler logic. The United States was dragged to another war in the Middle East.
The administration is beset by two rival instincts. One seeks to ‘burden-shift’ in Europe, push NATO to defend itself, consolidate fuel supply from Venezuela, and move troops out of Syria and Iraq. The other is an older faction that now suddenly calls itself MAGA but is qualitatively no different from the millenarians and Huntingtonians of 2004.
The President and the Vice President would be prudent to recognize who’s who. The President—and the Vice President, if he is serious about continuing his peace-building legacy—should think hard about 2028, take the win and walk away, and learn how to say no to actors trying to drag the United States into war.
The ongoing conflict yields several salient lessons of enduring analytical significance.
First, military intervention predicated primarily on the advocacy of a particular segment of the diaspora community entails profound destructive consequences for all parties involved. Consider the CNN article about an Iranian who lost everything. A poignant illustration emerges from recent reportage wherein a Tehran resident, previously an ardent proponent of external armed action to effect regime change, now describes himself as utterly devastated following the loss of a close friend, a physician killed when his vehicle was entombed beneath debris during an airstrike on Enqelab Square.
‘Military intervention predicated primarily on the advocacy of a particular segment of the diaspora community entails profound destructive consequences’
Such episodes underscore a fundamental asymmetry: while foreign military engagements exert negligible impact on the hegemonic position of distant powers such as the United States, they possess substantial capacity to devastate the targeted region. This dynamic finds historical resonance in Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (Book II, Chapter 31), where he cautions against placing undue trust in exiled individuals who agitate for war to reclaim their homeland: their promises are often vacuous and their assurances unreliable, driven by desperation rather than sober assessment. As Machiavelli observes, such exiles ‘fill [one] with hopes that if you attempt to act upon them, you will incur a fruitless expense or engage in an undertaking that will involve you in ruin.’ This admonition retains pertinence for diaspora communities associated with protracted conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, among others.
Second, social media platforms constitute an unreliable barometer for gauging the viability or desirability of armed conflict. The former American military officers as well as Israeli analysts now understand that getting out of this war will prove to be more difficult than bombing Tehran, and increasingly recognize that extrication from the present engagement may prove far more arduous. This realization, though foreseeable in principle, highlights the propensity of digitally mediated discourse to mobilize public sentiment in favour of interventions whose complexities and human costs remain poorly comprehended by those unlikely to bear direct participation.
Finally, Huntingtonianism is a simple crusading ideological impulse and stands in direct opposition to classical realist thought—in effect, the exact inverse—which prioritizes geopolitical considerations, territorial imperatives, and the distribution of material capabilities. A realist orientation would accord primacy to Asia and Western Europe over the Middle East in strategic hierarchies. Official US strategic documents, including the National Security Strategy (NSS) and the National Defense Strategy (NDS), have advocated a comparable posture: emphasizing the Western Hemisphere, Asia-Pacific priorities, and a ‘burden-shifting’ approach that places greater responsibility on Western European allies and regional actors in the Middle East. The persistent failure to fully operationalize this framework warrants extensive scholarly examination to elucidate the underlying political, institutional, and ideational impediments.
The views expressed by our guest authors are theirs and do not necessarily represent the views of Hungarian Conservative.
Related articles: