ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Israel and Iran are now firing direct hits at each other across borders like some kind of militarized pickleball tournament. As the volleys escalate and every side rushes to spin the chaos, you might be wondering if there’s an umpire anywhere in sight. Spoiler: Nope!

It certainly isn’t the U.S., which recently handed Israel a pile of turbocharged high-tech graphite paddles and said, “Smash away, champ!” That’s essentially what happened when President Donald Trump greenlit more than$12 billion in weapons sales to Israel since taking office in January, undoing a Biden-era partial arms embargo like he was tossing out a parking ticket.

“Another sign that Israel has no greater ally in the White House than President Trump,” bragged Secretary of State Marco Rubio on March 1. Right. And it’s not hard to guess why Rubio might feel that way. OpenSecrets reports that Rubio has raked in more than a million bucks from pro-Israel donors since 2007. Trump himself scored $100 million from Israel First megadonor Miriam Adelson in 2024.

Are you guys doing foreign policy right now, or just issuing Israel cash back rewards?

With allies like these, it’s no surprise Washington’s support flows so freely. But while the political donations keep rolling in, what does the intelligence actually say?

Days after Israel learned of its latest American military goodies, Trump’s own director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, sat in a Senate hearing and essentially said that the intelligence community has assessed that Iran isn’t building a nuke, adding that the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hadn’t reversed the suspension of the program that he iced back in 2003.

The uranium stockpile may be at the “highest levels ever,” she concedes, but unless you’re the International Atomic Energy Agency tasked to handle such things, or a Bond villain, that’s still not a valid excuse for unilaterally launching an invasion of a sovereign country.

The urgency that Israel claims is more smoke than fire – that Iran could possibly, someday, maybe enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, if it wanted to. But after years of Netanyahu screeching about Tehran being “days away” from the bomb, you’d think by now he’d at least have been right once. Instead, Iran has spent decades proving its restraint.

And let’s not pretend Israel can’t control its aim. When it strikes Iran, it’s suddenly capable of precision so surgical that it can take out one guy watching TV in his apartment without even knocking over the lamp. Meanwhile in Gaza, Netanyahu’s version of “self-defense” looks more like flattening entire city blocks, with civilian homes, hospitals, aid convoys, all turned to rubble in airstrikes that look less like military operations and more like collective punishment. So when he demands backing for more war, which version is he even asking Washington to support?

Remember, there actually was a nuclear deal, internationally brokered and functional, until Trump scrapped it during his first term, calling it a lousy “Obama deal.”

Maybe because it was one of the few smart things Obama did. Trump couldn’t stop whining about how the deal was so bad that it “gave Iran billions,” leaving out the minor detail that it was Iran’s own frozen oil money, locked up in Western banks under sanctions.

Now Trump wants Iran to crawl back to the table for a new deal, and pretend that he didn’t personally burn the old one. “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60- day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance,” he posted online, right as U.S.-made, Israeli-modified F-35Is were bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf. Nice mobster tactics. What’s next, a horse head in the bed?

Does Trump actually expect Iran to believe that America is some neutral referee here? Please. At this point, he might want to ask his buddy, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to play peacemaker. Hey, at least Trump had the foresight to restore U.S.-Russia relations, if only to be able to outsource the diplomacy he’s on the verge of blowing up right now.

Israel hasn’t wasted any time in asking Washington to join in its airstrikes, Axios reports.

Why? Because Israel lacks the bunker busters and bombers needed to finish the job themselves. In other words: “Can you come bomb some Iranian targets with us? We can’t quite reach the top shelf on our tippy toes.” Trump should kick the legs out from under that particular ladder, pronto.

Thankfully, Vice President JD Vance exists to serve as the adult in the room. He didn’t even want to bomb the Houthis in Yemen when American shipping was under threat from Houthis and Israel scrapping with each other around the Suez Canal. “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” Vance texted in a leaked chat.

The public would understand a new U.S.-led hot forever war in the Middle East against Iran, and potentially its allies like China and Russia, even less.

If Netanyahu wants regime change in Iran, then let him face the blowback, from Iran, and from Israelis who may not be thrilled about waking up to retaliatory missile strikes. He called on Iranians to rise up right after bombing them. That’s not statesmanship, it’s trolling.

We learned in April that Trump is reportedly fed up with Netanyahu for trying to suck him into a war with Iran. But then he told Time magazine he might go anyway if he can’t cut a deal. Why not just say, “Convince me with a believable enough false flag,” while you’re at it? Netanyahu would probably be happy to deliver.

Look, the appetite for yet another pointless U.S.-led war in the Middle East is dead. Everyone’s tired of paying way too much for gas already. Anyone still hungry for it is either deranged, corrupt, on a defense contract, or on Netanyahu’s PR team.

If Trump wants to prove he’s not a pawn, a pushover, or a plaything for foreign interests, then he needs to slam the door on any more war hype in the Middle East, and make it clear: America is out.