Iran-Israel war could pull in the United States, offering no good choices | Opinion

Editor’s note: Welcome to Double Take, a regular conversation from opinion writers Melinda Henneberger and David Mastio tackling news with differing perspectives and respectful debate.

DAVID: If Donald Trump has a superpower it is in being a disrupter. With two keystrokes, — “W E” — on Tuesday, he sent the whole foreign policy establishment into a tizzy. “We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran. Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA,” Trump said on his social platform, Truth Social.

I thought it was Israel that was controlling the skies over Iran and bombing the country back into the pre-nuclear age, but apparently it is “U S,” that stands for us and United States, I guess.

I had been enjoying the irony of our proxy, Israel, taking the war to Iran’s terror-supporting government after their years of supporting terrorist proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Gaza (Hamas) and Yemen (Houthis) who threaten U.S. interests while Iran can proclaim it doesn’t know anything about it.

Remember when the embryonic Hezbollah carried out the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut that killed more than a dozen American Marines?

MELINDA: Sure I do. You are right about Iran’s horrible history and bad intentions.

DAVID: If Trump has been consistent in one thing so far in his presidency it is that he is going to keep us out of foreign “forever” wars, especially ones that smell like the one in Iraq, right next door to Iran. Is that all in the rearview mirror? I hope not.

MELINDA: I have a big job on my hands here, because I’m going to have to argue with not only you, but also with myself, since I don’t know the right answer.

I do know a few things: Iranians have been putting up with repressive and rapacious leaders longer than I’ve been alive. Trump should never have backed us out of the Iran nuclear deal that was working; we used to have inspectors with eyes on at least some sites.

Trump also said no new wars would start on his watch. And wasn’t one of his biggest selling points that he and Bibi Netanyahu were so tight that Israel would do whatever he said? Yet here we are and off we go. What’s that saying again? Fool me 1000 times, and I guess it’s because we wanted to be fooled?

I think the only time I have supported a military intervention was to end ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and of course what we did not do in Rwanda was shameful. Like you, I very definitely do not want us in another war.

Yet even I, who barely even believe in bombs and certainly do not believe in this president or his team, have to admit that I am a little bit torn over whether a man with the impulse control of a squirrel should do the world a favor and drop some bunker-busters on the Fordow plant. Why? Because no one wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

DAVID: I, too, am tempted by the idea that Trump could drop a few of those 30,000-pound bombs from a flight of B-2 Spirits on that cave full of uranium centrifuges. Maybe in a few hours we could wash our hands of the whole thing.

MELINDA: The counterargument is that we have no idea where that one act would end. Remember how quick Iraq was going to be? We have 40,000 troops in the region, and I do wish Trump hadn’t run off so many capable diplomats.

Last Sunday, I attended Mass at Our Lady and St. Rose in KCK, and in his terrific homily, Monsignor Stuart Swetland, the pastor and president of Donnelly College, who is a Navy vet, noted that the doomsday clock now stands at 89 seconds to midnight. Tick, tick, tick.

First the parade, then the war? Again, like you, I really hope not.

DAVID: I sure understand where the Israelis are coming from. For far longer than a quarter-century, Iranian leaders have been saying they want to “wipe Israel off the map.” And that’s not even really what they say because they hate Israel so much they can’t even say Israel. State media in Iran calls it the “Zionist regime.”

And with the murderous baby-killing, teen-raping ways of Iran’s proxies like Hamas, the Israelis have no reason not to take Iran literally. A nuclear bomb is the last step to the Final Solution.

But do we always have to join Israel in the fight? Isn’t it enough that while the rest of the world has turned their backs, we have given Israel everything it needs to defeat those who threaten it?

The more I think about it, the more I think we do, whatever Trump’s campaign promises. I don’t want to be viewed in history like the generation of Americans who turned away Jews fleeing the Holocaust.

Do I want Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard to lead this affair? Do I trust them to make the right choices to minimize our involvement and to not start another generational occupation of a broken nation? No, I do not, but I don’t think we have a choice.

MELINDA: We always have a choice, and I trust neither Trump and Co. nor Bibi.

But oh, God, you know I will never get over some of our World War II-era decisions. In 1941, the U.S. made it even harder for those trying to flee the Nazis to make it to America. FDR did so much good, yet I will never understand how he could have turned away the German ocean liner St. Louis in 1939, and refused to save those 937 Jewish refugees on that boat who were close enough to safety to see the lights of Miami.

On this, the 100th anniversary of “The Great Gatsby,” I admit that the last couple of times I have reread what to me is the Great American Novel, I couldn’t help thinking at some moments of those aboard the St. Louis looking with true yearning at those Miami lights and feeling, oh boohoo you, Jay Gatsby, staring at that green light at the end of Daisy’s dock and searching for the impossible American dream of reconnecting two people who, even within the world created by Fitzgerald, really only ever existed in your own mind.

Our government said little to nothing about the Nazi concentration camps well after we knew about them, and why did we not go in sooner to save more Jews imprisoned there? So are you banging on a bruise here in saying we need to stand with Israel? Yes.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think the risks of a wider war are too great. I’m still not sure that I know the right answer, but Iran is so weak right now, and I hope that diplomatic efforts work.

“We’re strong, we’re prepared, we’re defensive and present,” said our historically underprepared but always defensive defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. I don’t know if that scared Iran, but it did worry me.

This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Iran-Israel war could pull in the United States, offering no good choices | Opinion."