Translated from GegenStandpunkt 3-25
Chronicle of an announced peace
Trump’s 12-day war in the Middle East
On June 2025, the time has come – the world gets to witness a double premiere: For the first time ever, the Iranian nuclear program, long contested by the West and its Middle Eastern outposts, becomes the target of an open air war by the Israeli Air Force; and for the first time, Trump orders the long threatened deployment of the US Air Force directly against the Islamic Republic in case the nuclear diplomacy he has initiated with the Iranian leadership fails.
From “finally!” to “oh my God, oh my God!”, the usual commentaries are delivered by the usual parties, and after the deed is done, the usual experts get to express their unconditional satisfaction with its military-technical quality and weigh a few problematic aspects of its international legal dimensions. Trump celebrates his military, i.e. himself, in his familiar way, and his great victory can’t be denied even by those who begrudge him his success and so are once again seeking and finding some flies in an essentially delectable ointment.
What remains somewhat overlooked is the real progress made in terms of Trump’s programmatic realignment of American foreign policy, i.e., the world according to America’s newly defined interests and imperatives – and the accompanying lesson about the beautiful thing called peace in America’s world.
1. A long-term, heartfelt hostility: The USA, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its nuclear program
What Trump inherits for the second time since taking office in early 2025 is the disturbance that Iran represents for America and its world order.
Since the removal of the Shah, a close ally of the USA who was upgraded to a major partner in America’s global anti-communist front, Tehran has been ruled by theocrats with a programmatic anti-American agenda: They demand something much better and decidedly different for their great nation and their pious people than an existence as a political vassal state of Western imperialism which settles into total economic dependence on its role as a supplier to the American world oil market, makes a small ruling clique obscenely rich and lets the whole great nation of Iran remain obscenely poor. That’s why their main and doggedly pursued agenda item is a truly autonomous Iran that does not have its sovereignty conceded by the USA, but rather conquers and preserves it in opposition to the USA’s claim to assign states in the Middle East, like in the rest of the world, their roles in a system of American world usage and domination. Consequently, the leadership in Tehran seeks allies in the region for its pious anti-imperialism among those who are striving in their countries, as rulers or as opposition figures, to rid their countries of the hated American hegemony.
The USA has never been able to simply accept that many hostile aspirations for autonomy in this “region of vital interest,” let alone their success, even if that success may only consist of the long time period in which they have held their ground. It certainly can’t accept that the hostile power is autonomously acquiring a means by which it intends to make decisive progress in terms of sovereignty: the mastery of modern nuclear technology. This not only enables a state to make a great leap forward in terms of its freedom vis-à-vis the civilian strategic asset par excellence which every modern nation depends on: the technically available energy for all aspects of a nation’s material life. Rather, this also opens up the prospect of using this technology for military purposes. Together with the appropriate delivery systems, depending on their size, design, and number, it provides a military power that can be used to threaten any enemy with a scale of conventional destruction that makes even a conventional victory disproportionately expensive or ultimately pointless due to the extent of the unconventional damage inflicted.
The USA can’t tolerate such a deterrent in the hands of this adversarial power because it violates the USA’s claim to a monopoly not only on waging a nuclear war, but even on the possession of this weapon, a claim it refuses to give up even in view of the fact that half a dozen other nuclear powers have long disputed it. As the ultimate means of destruction against which there is no effective defense, the nuclear bomb is the necessary and appropriate means for the political status of the USA as a power that stands above the state powers of the world, which relates their conflicts, which are fraught with violence and again and again become violent, to itself as the global manager of violence, and puts them under its own restrictions in the form of a deterrence exercised by the USA from which no one escapes. In principle, this is incompatible with the existence of other nuclear powers – a nuisance that the USA has found various ways of dealing with and that has sharpened the American determination vis-à-vis the rest of the world not to allow the development of any more nuclear powers in the first place. Iran’s nuclear program is, for this global American standpoint and claim, an accident that has to be contained and eliminated. The prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb along with the means to deliver it represents the intolerable prospect that it will at least have the condition of possibility to extract a price from the USA for any scenario involving military action, a price that the USA will have to calculate with, and which will relativize the total superiority and thus the freedom that the USA insists on in this region and demands be protected against any attempt to undermine it.
American administrations have always been appropriately radical in defining which parts of Iran’s civilian nuclear program pose an unacceptable danger to the USA, and that has always meant that Iran can do nothing with nuclear tech that isn’t under the control of the USA or the international agencies it assigns. With this goal in mind, the USA under Obama concluded the JCPOA[1]: The agreement gave the US full control over every single component and sub-process of Iran’s nuclear program, thus ensuring total predictability in the event of a possible transition to military usage; even though only for a limited time – namely, the contractually agreed duration of the agreement – it was, however, used to initiate the next steps in full American superiority; of course, at the price that the Iranian state was formally and internationally guaranteed the legal right to use its nuclear technology for civilian purposes, including in cooperation with Russia in particular.
At the same time, American administrations have never left any doubt that, despite all the temporary concessions, effectively curbing Iran’s nuclear capabilities is only one part of a much larger program aimed at completely eradicating this country’s anti-American reason of state and its ambitions for regional power. This also includes expunging the religious morality with which the leadership in Tehran unites its people under its rule and behind its program – in other words, mercilessly oppresses them and deprives them of their human rights – and which it also uses to stir up the surrounding states against the blessings of Western democratic hegemony, which is, after all, a universal human need.
2. Trump’s now traditional criticism of his predecessors: wrong ends weakly pursued
Trump was already ranting and raving in his first term about how his predecessors had failed completely. For him, the undeniable fact that Iran is continuing to pursue its nuclear program is sufficient proof. According to Trump’s dialectical analysis, this is because US power is at the same time looking too weak on the Iran issue and taking on too much or the wrong things.
For Trump, the handling of Iran’s nuclear program as enshrined in the multilateral JCPOA agreement was, on the one hand, an unnecessary and damaging kowtow to an insolent and by no means impotent, but nevertheless infinitely smaller power; this, incidentally, even enabled America’s so-called partners to enrich themselves at the expense of America’s security by making deals with Iran in dollars which were either released to Iran under the agreement or earned once again through oil exports, so in principle somehow belong to America. By contrast, after unilaterally terminating the JCPOA, Trump relied on the irresistible effectiveness of the blackmail weapon of the American economy, its money, and its credit, which at the time prompted even rather conservative German journalists to use the nasty term “dollar imperialism.” “Maximum pressure” via “the most crippling sanctions in history” – totally and demonstratively one-sided as far as their originator is concerned, yet totally and demonstratively universal with regard to those potentially affected by secondary and tertiary sanctions: this is Trump’s preferred means of achieving his goal – not to leverage a compromise that is useful and freely negotiable for America, one which already has the status of a generally recognized legal situation due to its multilateral format, but rather to blackmail Iran into a capitulation that would put no legal obligations on America’s part to Iran or to any third parties, and that would promise mercy as the only concession to Iran.
On the other hand, on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, Trump is not interested in the ambition cherished and practiced by his predecessors of imposing something like an education program in pro-American obedience alongside or in addition to capitulation. Of course, Trump does not tolerate Iran’s violent anti-American activities in the region either – but what business is it of America’s how power is exercised in Iran, how justice is administered and enforced in the name of the people or God? And that a national leadership that has its people under control wants to turn them, and itself, i.e. the nation as a whole, into something different than what it currently is, something that will definitely be ‘great’ – he considers that to be the most normal thing in the world, almost the natural task of every leadership and the self-evident right of all good patriots everywhere. The respective leaders just have to realize that their national ambition for advancement must not presume to mess with America, that is, put items on the national agenda – perhaps with reference to rights guaranteed under international law and all such things that are none of Trump’s business – that the world power forbids them: not with reference to international law, but simply because of America’s interests and with a view to its total superiority.
In this regard, for his extortion diplomacy – even before it has had its initial economic impact at the beginning of this year – he brandishes not only the military potential that the USA has at its disposal in general and has long been serving up specifically and currently in this region, but also that of its ally Israel. This is Trump’s way of referring to another crucial part of his regional legacy that he will be promoting for a second time in 2025.
3. The other half of a hostile three-way relationship: Israel’s hostility to Iran and its (anti)nuclear alliance with the USA[2]
In his familiar direct and very cordial manner, Trump threatens the rulers in Tehran, as he did Hamas, with giving Israel the green light to launch an air war against Iran and its nuclear program. There are two reasons why he can include Israeli military power in the credible threat of force he deems sufficient for his extortion diplomacy:
First, Israel cultivates a genuine enmity of its own toward Iran. This is justified with periodically revived evidence of an Iranian plan to carry out a holocaust against Israel, the validity of which is a subject of democratic debate in the rest of the world. One reason for this is that Iran, as constituted by its anti-Israel rationale – that Israel is “the little Satan” next to the big American one, in official Tehran terminology – and in view of its potential to put this into practice, is incompatible with what Israel claims to be and demands of the region: Israel defines its security, its very existence, as endangered if and so long as it has not conquered the status that can strike throughout the entire Middle East region not only with superior force – it has long been able to do that anyway – but rather has eliminated its declared state and non-state enemies and forced all other states with its deterrent military might into “normalization agreements.” These already exist with a number of states, and Israel has always demonstrated how it understands them: they oblige the contracting parties to refrain from any denials of Israel’s existence, either on their own behalf or through their support, and thus allow Israel to define what this existence actually consists of. This is therefore not merely a rhetorical matter for this state aired to legitimize its extensive use of violence, but rather a truly important issue, because it has established itself in this position and at the same time pursues it as a political mission in that it has not yet arrived at any kind of final definition of its statehood, either in terms of its territory or in terms of the people living there – who are defined as either its own people or as foreigners. This may seem to contradict the fact that Israel, as a capitalist nation state with all the trappings that entails, has long been functioning perfectly – but this contradiction has long since been translated into the Israeli version of forward-looking imperialist ambition: The territorial and demographic “questions” that Israel is grappling with – and over which it allows itself many internal disputes – always include the claim to undisturbed freedom to define the “answer” on its own authority; and, as mentioned, it will only be guaranteed this freedom when, as a regional superpower, it has bombed every power in its vicinity into capitulation through its autonomously exercised military force, or has forced them to preempt a similar fate through proactive good behavior. That is the question of Israel’s existence.
This is opposed by the power of Iran, which represents a threat to Israel’s existence that, according to Israel’s leadership, must be eliminated at all costs. This state has the program and the potential to challenge Israel’s claim by effectively limiting it – or, conversely: With the Shiite Islamic revolution’s seizure of power 45 years ago, the fight against Iran and its elimination as an obstacle to Israel’s indivisible status as a regional superpower became the linchpin, in principle: the actual content of Israel’s regional imperialism. This nation’s ambition is to combat Iran’s allies in the region and to turn all others into components of an anti-Iranian regional front; it also wants to teach all other states the untenability of a regional situation in which the Islamic Republic still plays an autonomously defined role. This is why Israel’s hostility toward Iran culminates in the issue of Iran’s nuclear program: even the prospect of effectively relativizing Israel’s nuclear deterrence capability, which serves as the permanent basis for every Israeli strike and counterstrike, contradicts its self-imposed existential necessity of total freedom from war and its escalation.
Israel is using the attack by Hamas, a close ally of Iran, as an opportunity not only to destroy this enemy, but also to use its destruction as a starting point for the simultaneous and vigorous elimination of all others who belong to the anti-Israel coalition led by Iran in the region. Israel is thus taking seriously the slogan that Netanyahu has been promoting for years, namely that Iran is behind 95% of all threats: it is now clearing these threats on multiple fronts, one after the other and simultaneously, which, following this imperialist logic, ultimately makes the big bad mastermind itself the main danger to be fought and ready for elimination. Under the slogan of a “fundamental restructuring of the region,” Netanyahu defines his wars of annihilation against Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., as secondary fronts to the main front against Iran, where decisive victory is now finally within reach and must be seized.
Based on all of this, Trump can rightly count on Israel’s indigenous anti-Iranian hostility.
Secondly, he is certain that Israel’s militancy will reliably serve as his tool because Iran’s power as a civil and military force, which Israel must eliminate at all costs, makes it impossible for Israel to undertake military action without American help. Joint military coordination and planning has always existed at the level of military strategists who periodically adapt to new situations and new means of warfare. From the outset, this has been the basis for both powers’ struggle to define, contain, and eliminate the threat posed by Iran.
The innovation that Trump introduces into this beautiful friendship is the rejection of any hint of America’s obligation to fulfill Israel’s legal claims in matters of its anti-Iranian existential security. He terminates anything that strikes him as aligning the relationship between the USA and Iran with the alliance with Israel and replaces it with the reverse imperative: that the US alliance with Israel against Iran must be based exclusively on how the USA defines its hostility toward Iran. He does not condemn Israeli fanaticism, which believes that Iran can’t exist alongside it as a power, but rather subsumes it under his own fanaticism, which believes that his great nation has, due to the clear dependencies within this alliance, a right to full cooperation regardless of its partner’s demands, a right that it can exercise as soon as it seriously decides to do so.
On this basis, Trump begins his nuclear diplomacy with Iran fairly soon after officially taking office.
4. A fine piece of diplomacy: bilateral negotiations on issues that are non-negotiable for both sides
Iran’s leadership seems impressed: on the one hand, by Israel’s successes in destroying its regional partners, from Hamas and Hezbollah to Assad who fled to Russia and whose removal from power Israel actively contributed to in various ways; on the other, by Trump’s stance of open blackmail, which threatens them with a qualitative tightening of the sanctions and going to war. And at the same time, by Trump’s freedom from all inherited enmities, as demonstrated in relations with, among other places, great Russia and little Syria: before world public opinion, he is subjecting them all to a revision based on the dogmatic MAGA standpoint. The key question of whether these enmities are truly worthwhile for America is often answered in the negative: the formerly in office Washington ‘establishment’ with its anti-American world order and human rights policies committed Trump’s beloved country to an ideology – “Marxists!” – or – even worse! – to the legal rights of other nations, enemies as well as “partners,” instead of imposing subordination to American power on them as the elementary condition of their own national endeavors. Trump announces to Iran, too, that its unconditional surrender to America does not have to mean an end to all of Iran’s national aspirations as a rising power, but can be merely the prerequisite that must be fulfilled for their much better and, for the first time ever, realistic realization. So Iran’s leadership engages in negotiations in Oman and thus in a diplomacy that is hard to beat in terms of contradictions.
Because both sides enter the talks with a standpoint that is a minimum requirement and non-negotiable, the objective quality of their subject matter finds its appropriate diplomatic expression in the mutual ‘lack of flexibility’. Ultimately, what’s at issue is nothing less and nothing other than what both sides define as the crucial means of Iran's sovereignty – that is, it’s about Iran’s sovereignty itself. Trump demands that the Iranian leaders admit that they can only hang on to their nuclear program at the price of total destruction, thus with the foreseeable result that they will have to abandon it. He demands capitulation, i.e. nothing less than recognition of their own powerlessness in the face of America’s superior power as a prerequisite and thus outcome of any negotiations and agreements that might be reached. Conversely, Iran’s government demands that America recognize that it is sovereign enough to assert its nuclear program – precisely because of its advanced stage bordering on a nuclear weapons program – and the threat connected with it of an absolute strategic asset, thereby protecting its existence as a regionally significant power against any attack. For Iran, this recognition represents the absolute minimum threshold for engaging in negotiations and agreements on anything that might be negotiated and agreed upon.
Of course, this contradiction is as asymmetrical for both sides as their enmity generally is.
The Iranian side has been forced into a unique dilemma by almost a year and a half of Israel’s US-backed war of annihilation against its allies, along with tougher US sanctions and vague prospects of a deal. The nuclear program is now the last resort of its sovereignty in two senses: Iran has lost the asymmetric regional war on crucial fronts – first and foremost, against Israel, secondarily against the American presence in the region, which it could only wage at all with its allies – despite its motivation slogans and vows of revenge; in particular, it has lost Lebanon and Syria. Iran is now largely reliant on its own military resources – and thus on its ability to transition to a military expansion of its nuclear program, which would provide the Iranian leadership with a deterrent weapon of new impact. On the other hand, it wants to use the credible threat of obtaining this nuclear ultimate insurance for its own sovereign existence as the decisive lever for its diplomacy. This means nothing less than considering the prospect of allowing this means of sovereignty to be taken out of its hands at the price of credible alternatives for guaranteeing Iran’s existence as a power. Both aspects are inseparable in this policy: the possibility of using the current and future status of its own nuclear capabilities as a bargaining chip is based on a credible ability to stick to the program against the will of the US and to expand it only at its own discretion. Conversely, all practical measures in this regard are calculated to achieve a diplomatic exchange that will spare the country from the ever-increasing and increasingly unbearable costs of the nuclear program and the accompanying hostility of the USA, and to replace the autonomous guarantee of its own sovereignty with reliable guarantees – of all things! – from the other side.
No wonder that Iran’s political class openly discusses how best to respond to the mixture of increasingly massive threats and vague offers from Washington: on the one hand, this back-and-forth is an expression of this very objective contradiction and at the same time it is an appropriate piece of diplomacy. It signals to Iran’s opponents that Iran is not entering into negotiations because it lacks alternatives, but precisely because it is certain that alternatives exist and that it can therefore demand the price it wants in return for its concessions. But the fact remains that the only alternatives Tehran really has involve extreme self-assertion in the face of damages to its power which have long since occurred, are constantly being inflicted, and are threatened, meaning that an agreement with its superior opponent is its only option.
For America, the same diplomatic absurdity also presents a contradiction: American negotiators are confronted with the fact that Iran’s willingness to engage in negotiations over the core element of its self-assertion program is not identical with its willingness to accept every demand presented to it as a prerequisite for constructive progress in talks and a possible agreement; they must learn that the offer their boss sent them to Oman to make is unacceptable, indeed they are demanding that their counterpart renounce everything it could possibly negotiate with as a precondition for America even considering its demands. But the US and its diplomats can live with this quite well, because they have options on hand that are very different from the dilemmas facing Iran: Their Israeli ally is stronger than ever against its opponents; it is pushing harder than ever for the elimination of its last major and true enemy; and the US itself is on the scene with a massive troop presence, ready for anything and yet declared sacrosanct in relation to Iran. The deployment of American superiority, which Iran has long been struggling against as an existential threat – that is their alternative, and they confront Iran with it in all calmness as the very same, in the event that...
5. Trump can get serious: Israel’s “Rising Lion” and America’s position and contribution to it
This is exactly what happens, or more precisely, what Trump proclaims. After several ultimatums and the expiration of an officially announced 60-day deadline, the point is reached where he “can no longer hold Israel back.” So Israel strikes. It has two good reasons for doing so:
One is Iran itself, that is, Israel’s hostility towards it, its definition of existential security which is so intolerably threatened by Iran, and the progress it has made on all the secondary fronts of this main front in recent months in such an impressive manner that its leader constantly talks enthusiastically about the “new Middle East” he is currently having his army create.
The other is the great ally, or more precisely, the new line that a re-elected Trump is pursuing with regard to the Middle East, its opponents, and America’s allies there. Israel has had to notice with much chagrin that Trump and his team have not only made several diplomatic barbs against the Israeli government – including some nitpicking about conditions in the slaughterhouse that is Gaza – but that Trump’s bilateral blackmail diplomacy with Iran also explicitly excludes Israel, and is intended to do so. And that this diplomacy does not aim to destroy Iran as a functioning state internally, but rather, on the contrary, to allow it to act as powerfully as possible externally, as far as the resources generated by its society allow – as long as it recognizes the unconditional superiority of America and its inviolable interests and aligns itself with them. Israel must recognize that Trump is serious not only about dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, but also about the categorical difference between this American concern and the ambition to disempower Iran that Israel is pursuing against Iran in the interests of its regional power.
Trump’s dissatisfaction with the current diplomatic situation therefore presents Israel with a major opportunity that it must seize in order to advance its anti-Iranian agenda. It mobilizes its formidable air power and demands that it carry out a war scenario that will by no means be limited to the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. The destruction of the remaining components of Iran’s air defense system after last year’s attacks, attacks on missile launchers insofar as they have been spied on, attacks on economically important facilities, and finally, attacks on central institutions of Iranian state power: all of this precedes attacks on nuclear facilities, accompanies them, or follows them – for Israel, these are simply part of the comprehensive program of destruction that must be carried out. What this entails is made clear by the name of the operation – “Rising Lion” – as does the accompanying war propaganda: with a mixture of evacuation calls to the population of Tehran in particular – Tehran will burn!” – which are well known from Gaza – and encouragements to finally overthrow the regime in Tehran, Israel’s leadership makes it clear that its goal is to break Iran’s regional power ambitions that are aimed against Israel, not least and possibly most sustainably through a popular uprising provoked by destruction and war that eliminates Iran’s sovereignty from within.
To this end, Israel’s leadership not only strains its offensive military potential to such an extent that the military leadership even de-escalates the Gaza war, which it has also declared to be a final battle for the existence or non-existence of the Jewish state, and declares the already completely devastated strip of land to be a front of lesser importance. The brave leaders gathered in Netanyahu’s war cabinet also expose their nation to Iranian counterattacks, which for the first time inflict a level of destruction on Israeli soil that Israel’s war doctrines actually only envisage for its enemies. But what must be done must be done: an orgy of destruction that damages Iran so comprehensively that it is defenseless against any possible expansion in Israel’s interests. And it proceeds so quickly and efficiently that it impresses Trump as an alternative to the diplomacy he had previously favored, rather than disappointing him as an abortive entry into the next uncalled-for “dumb war.” And indeed, Trump takes Israel’s “Rising Lion” as Israel intended and as it was jointly planned beforehand – this will be made public afterwards. For the US, too, things are going according to plan and to the satisfaction of its president:
In fact, Americans are involved every step of the way: from joint war planning, providing Israel with the results of American satellite espionage and aerial reconnaissance, to intensive assistance intercepting Iranian rockets, cruise missiles, and drones, to refueling Israeli fighter jets with American Air Force tanker planes[3], Israel’s air war is a joint effort from the very beginning. In this respect, the claims made by both the Israeli and American governments that the capable Jewish state has once again demonstrated what it can do on its own are largely propaganda.
But that’s not all: first, it is exclusively Israeli fighter jets that wreak the destruction of the first ten days; in this respect, this is indeed proof of Israel’s enormous and autonomous air war capabilities. With these, it does a good portion of the “dirty work” for Trump’s America, which makes the first phase of the war, while not free of cost, worthwhile for America: In particular, Israel’s air force destroys Iran’s air defenses so comprehensively that after just a few days, the Israeli Defense Minister can proudly announce that Israel has achieved complete air superiority over the western part of Iran’s territory all the way to Tehran – and this represents the most practical preparatory work for the US Air Force to use the Israeli-conquered air superiority as its own. And secondly – and more importantly – the staging of a completely autonomous Israeli strike is politically more than just a propaganda lie; it is American practice. During Israel’s ongoing attacks, Trump repeatedly states that Iran can return to the negotiating table at any time, and his Secretary of State emphasizes along the same lines that America will only enter into the war with Iran if it attacks American troops in the region, but that it will then do so with all its might. In this complementary way, they make it clear to Iran that it should not view Israel’s war as a shift away from America’s new strategic guideline, which consists ‘merely’ of eliminating Iran as an autonomous nuclear power. Iran’s leadership actually goes along with this: it refrains from ordering attacks on US facilities because it wants to avoid the costs of a direct confrontation with the US. In this way, it effectively complies with the US definition that the air war is merely an Israeli-Iranian affair, even if it links this to the demand that America bring its small ally to heel before it considers resuming nuclear talks.
Trump is even up for this. However, only after the completion of the war, as he defines it and Israel wages it under American guidance and assistance.
6. Trump takes the gloves off himself – and it’s over: America’s “Midnight Hammer” comes down on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Israel’s ambition to destroy Iran.
On June 22, the US Air Force then intervenes after all and uses its monopoly on bunker buster bombs to destroy or damage parts of Iran’s nuclear program which are particularly important due to their technical nature – primarily facilities where radioactive material is enriched to a purity level suitable for military use and represent targets which, due to their location deep underground, are beyond the reach of Israel’s conventional destructive capabilities. The immediate practical achievement is the decisive decimation of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, whereupon it is confidently left to Trump’s associates and fans on the one hand and his envious opponents in the US on the other to argue about how many months or years Iran’s nuclear program has actually been set back. The broader practical achievement of “Midnight Hammer” consists of what the US in this way makes abundantly clear to all sides:
Iran has not only effectively lost a large part of its expensively acquired nuclear capabilities, been damaged economically and weakened in terms of its military program, but it has had to learn that it is unable to effectively protect these capabilities if America decides it does not want to live with them. This has more far-reaching political significance in that, even if Iran manages to rebuild its nuclear facilities, it has been deprived of the credible threat of a nuclear program that would make it invulnerable to external attacks and in that respect truly autonomous – precisely the decisive, if not the only real bargaining chip that Tehran wanted to use to turn the nuclear talks with the US into something other than a diplomatic staging of its surrender. Conversely, Trump has demonstrated – not only to the Iranian leadership – that he pursues, and even prefers, diplomacy – not only – in this case solely because he wants to spare his superior nation the costs of going to war, but that he won’t hesitate to accept this alternative if he deems it necessary and worthwhile. And in this case, too, the fact that America can definitely make it worthwhile is ensured by the fact that, based on its unique power, it can use allies without being dependent on them.
Trump shows Israel how he defines the blessings of this unique alliance: he has his military help Israel engage in a war with Iran that is beyond its capabilities and damages it in unprecedented ways, and this is so rewarding for the USA not least because it reduces the cost side of the American balance sheet in the most pleasing way possible. He shows Israel not only the limits of the protective shield provided by the USA, but also the limits of Israel’s own war capabilities, and he does this in two ways: Trump’s USA first allows the Israeli army to push the limits of its capabilities and then strikes itself, thus making clear what Israel does not have, but the US very much does. It is precisely the orchestrated sequence of “Rising Lion” and “Midnight Hammer” that practically demonstrates to Israel – and not only to Israel – how far its qualitative superiority over all other states in the region reaches, where it ends – and where America’s very different kind of superiority actually begins. Trump has repeatedly issued diplomatic rejections of Israel’s long-standing claim to autonomy which it uses to compel its major ally to provide the help it needs for its extensive violent actions. He is now reinforcing this rejection not by refusing to provide support, but by providing it in a way that achieves the opposite effect: America’s attack is clearly not assistance in a war that is otherwise initiated and staged in every respect as an Israeli action, but rather a usurpation of sovereignty over the events of the war, which in retrospect makes the Israeli war what it always was for Trump during the entire first ten days, which were very long and very expensive for Israel: the work of an assistant dealing with America’s issue with Iran. Trump snubs Israel’s attempt to take advantage of the result of the American attacks as a good opportunity to prolong the war without authorization – and he does not shy away from humiliating Netanyahu by ordering his military to abort the already begun air assaults.
Iran and Israel are thus confronted with the fact that the US is escalating the war to a level at which neither of them have anything to offer. For Iran, any resistance is impossible, and for Israel, any offensive escalation is impossible. This means that Trump has achieved his war aims. So the war must also be over for the other two. And it is.
7. Trump’s peace turns the Israel-Iran war into America’s 12-day war: “CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE!”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wounded down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED! Officially, Iran wants to start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th hour, Israel wants to start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th hour, an Official END to THE 12TH DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remember PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called ‚THE 12 DAY WAR.‘ This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn't, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!” (Trump via social media, June 23, 2025)
With this action, America has gained such complete control over the war that it can freely decree its end. Just how freely is demonstrated not only by the casualness with which Trump grants permission via social media for the planned conclusion of the tactical operations already underway between the two sides, but also by the generosity with which he concedes that the Iranian leadership cannot leave the USA’s official entry into the war unanswered and attacks the American Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. He expressly thanks the Iranians for providing him with advance notice of the attack, thus wanting to see not foul play, but rather an understandable attempt to stage an admission of defeat in a way that saves face, and is not particularly angered. On the contrary: Trump congratulates himself, Iran, Israel, and the rest of the world for treating the conflict of the previous two weeks for what his military has made of it: the 12-day war.
This is a prime example of how Trump defines and practices the principle of American global power and thus the relationship between war and peace in the MAGA era.
Under his leadership, America is explicitly returning to the not-at-all-new or newly established basis of all American relations and dealings with the international community: the overwhelming superiority of America’s means of violence over every other state. He has his Air Force demonstrate this by joining an ongoing armed conflict, which is indeed for its part a quite large scale use of modern military means of destruction, and escalating the war from one moment to the next in such a way that the two original warring parties are completely overwhelmed. This is practical proof that no ‘state of relations’ brought about by force between anyone can last if America does not want to live with it, and that, conversely, it can sanction any such state if its president deems it good and useful. On the basis of the recognition of the unique military blow carried out by the US Air Force as the war’s end and thereby the outcome of the war produced in this way, America demands the two warring parties’ submission to its supremacy. For the Israeli side, this means being forced to refrain from further attacks, even though it is far from finished with its war program. And the team in Tehran has to come to terms with the damage done, especially to its nuclear program, as a new, totally deteriorated basis for its further efforts to reach some kind of deal with the US that will ensure their survival.
So: with his overwhelming victory, Trump puts an end to the Iranian nuclear program and all the wrangling surrounding it, thereby proving it wrong; and it is precisely this powerful action that proves the wrongness of Israel’s ambition to continue the regime change war – the flip side of which is that it is the same action that in practice has, until now, legitimized the Israeli military strikes. With the superior force of the American military, Trump executes and celebrates his standpoint in which power and law are totally merged: in no way and in no sense does he understand the American military intervention as the restoration of an orderly supranational legal order between states which would have been violated by their violent conflict. America’s intervention is not punishment for the illegal aggression of both sides against each other and thus against an overarching regime of order with its central provision of a prohibition of violence, which America, as the power responsible for its global validity, enforces in the sense of a judge over orderly, quasi-lawful relations between states. This doesn’t affect Israel’s achievement anyway: Trump uses them as a nice contribution to his insistence on the denuclearization of Iran. But even the rather powerful Iranian counterattacks unleashed on Israel are not viewed by him in retrospect as criminal aggression on the part of Tehran’s political and military commanders; he does not even do that in relation to the Iranian attack on the US military base in Qatar.
The fact that relations between states are permanently antagonistic affairs in which only those which have sufficient means of violence as a potential threat are qualified; that these antagonisms periodically culminate in the means of violence being used in warfare; that strength is therefore what counts in peacetime and even more so in wartime – Trump assumes this as a natural and fundamental fact about the relations between states and their peoples; he does not judge this, nor does he find anything to correct. At the same time, he demands – following strictly the same logic – that they all, in their antagonisms, recognize America’s total superiority, i.e., take it into account in practice. They will find out exactly what this means, at the latest, when the American president decides that they have gone too far, that is, have miscalculated, and America effectively forces them into the submission they carelessly dared to refuse. Trump makes this clear to himself and the rest of the world at his own discretion, citing beautiful prospects that are being ruined or some potential benefit that America is being deprived of because the local powers are getting carried away in their mutual antagonisms, and then – if they consider themselves allies of America – demanding his help in achieving war aims that are beyond their own capabilities.
But these are merely examples, sometimes illustrations of Trump’s much more fundamental standpoint: submission to America is the sole, but irrevocable, ‘rule’ of the all-sided and perpetual struggle of nations for enrichment and power against each other. This and only this is what Trump asserts: under his leadership, America neither provides nor stands in the way of the right of the lesser states, i.e., all the others, to a higher-level system of laws and norms that legitimize the proper use of violence and prohibits its improper use.
For Trump, therefore, the fact that Israel and Iran are clearly not backing down from their agendas takes nothing away from the glorious American peace victory – which is a pleonasm – on which he congratulates everyone: The Israeli foreign minister announces an “enforcement plan” that amounts to pushing forward in one form or another with Israel’s program of overthrowing the Iranian government. Trump positions himself as usual: he waves it as a threat scenario against Iran in view of the fact that Iran’s leadership, for its part, takes the forced end of the war as a prelude to never backing down. The fact that the Iranian Foreign Minister responds to the Israeli threats by declaring, “Iran is not Lebanon,” is of no concern to Trump, or rather only to this extent: this should not be a motive for Iran to defy the American ban on an Iranian nuclear program. Otherwise, he will simply strike Iran again – and even more fiercely.
This ”region plagued by conflict” (Trump) has therefore not come any closer to ending its violent conflicts, which of course is not on the agenda of any of the players involved. But Trump might be closer to winning the Nobel Peace Prize, at least if Netanyahu has his way. And yet that’s also beautiful. And definitely quite fair.
[1] The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was concluded in 2015 between Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and Germany. For more on this, and in particular on the position and consequences of its termination by Trump during his first term in office, see the article ”Comments on D. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran” from 2018.
[2] For more on the logic and history of the wonderful American-Israeli friendship between states and peoples, see, among other things, the article “‘Iron Swords’ and ‘The Danger of a Regional Conflagration’: Emergency for the friendship between the regional and global superpowers” in GegenStandpunkt 1-24 [untranslated] and chapter III in the article ”An exemplary imperialist democracy with a Zionist mission” from 2019.
[3] Although Israel does have its own air refueling aircraft, their quality and, above all, quantity are suitable for 'normal' limited air command operations, and were acquired for this purpose, not for a massive, weeks-long air war campaign, for which the US has shipped dozens of air refueling aircraft to the region. Of course, this in turn proves the other side’s point: it should be the Israeli aircraft that fly the few thousand kilometers eastward from Israel, thus necessitating the large-scale air refueling maneuvers.