FREE PRESS
This Isn’t Israel’s War. It’s America’s.
Haviv Rettig Gur
March 3, 2026
The debate about the U.S.’s war in Iran is everywhere. It is threatening to split the conservative movement, dividing it between those who see it as Donald Trump’s breaking of a promise against new wars and those who see it as a necessary confrontation long overdue. Progressives, predictably, frame it as another Middle Eastern adventure dragged out of Washington by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Anti-war libertarians call it regime change in a new dress. And across the world, from Brazil to Beijing, London to Karachi, the argument is the same: America is fighting Israel’s war. But this isn’t true. And the confusion matters, because if you misread what this war is actually about, you will misread everything that follows. READ MORE
BEYOND THE IDEOLOGICAL The Iran Question Is All About China Iran is most often discussed as a nonproliferation problem, a sponsor of terrorism, a regional spoiler. Each of these framings captures a real problem, but none captures what matters most. The nuclear file, the militia archipelago stretching from Lebanon to Yemen, the question of Gulf security architecture: these only acquire their full meaning when read against the backdrop of Chinese grand strategy. In fact, Beijing has spent years and billions of dollars building Iran into a structural asset. Everything that follows in the Middle East flows from this fact. Which is why Operation Epic Fury is the first American military campaign that threatens to sever that asset. By striking Iran directly, the Trump administration is dismantling, whether by design or by consequence, a pillar of China’s regional architecture.
ArchitectGuy on Israel 