Should the U.S. join Israel in bombing Iran? The timing is off.
Trump should not join Netanyahu's folly.
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As Americans debate whether the U.S, should join Israel in bombing Iran, one factor has escaped attention: The timing is off.
There is no urgent need to bomb Iran now.
There is plenty of time to allow diplomacy to run its course.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a master of sabotaging agreements, as the history of ceasefire and hostage negotiations demonstrates. At multiple points when agreement with Hamas for a ceasefire seemed close, Netanyahu brilliantly sabotaged the negotiations. There is a pattern.
It now appears that as press reports indicated the U.S. and Iran were nearing agreement on a nuclear deal, hardliners in the Trump administration succeeded in hardening the U.S. position, throwing a poison pill into the mix by demanding Iran give up all enrichment of Uranium, even for peaceful purposes. This was a condition they must have known Iran could never accept, as it has a right to enrichment for peaceful purposes under the terms of the 1968 U.N.Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
At the same time, Netanyahu launched a war of aggression against Iran, which he surely knew would derail the U.S.-Iranian negotiations and prevent agreement on a nuclear deal. That deal was reported to be taking shape as very similar to the 2015 NCPOA, which Trump withdrew from in 2018. Had he not done so we would not be standing now on the brink of war with Iran.
Netanyahu is manipulating Trump in pursuit of yet another illusory goal, destroying Iran’s nuclear program, or indeed a bigger illusory long-term goal, overthrowing the dictatorship of the ayatollahs in Tehran.
Trump would be ill-advised to let Netanyahu pull his strings in this manner.
Moreover, there is no urgency for action at this point in time. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded thatTehran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon.
International law is a repository of diplomatic experience and international norms agreed upon by leading and other nations, which have stood the test of time.
One need not reach the ultimate question of when and whether anticipatory self defense is ever allowed under international law (e.g., when a nuclear weapon has been placed on a rocket) to grasp the wisdom of the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, established in Article 2 paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter.
The Israeli attack on Iran on June 14, 2025 was not even a close case.
The attack was clearly a violation of Artice 2 paragraph 4 of the U.N. Charter and appears to have been a clear case of commission of the international crime of aggression. The international crime of aggression, then known under the rubric of “crimes against peace”, was one of the grounds on which the Nazi war criminals were convicted at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 and for which they were condemned to death by hanging.
There is no reason for Trump to join Netanyahu in committing the international crime of aggression.
It is conceivable that a point may come when U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities might be justified. But this would be only after Iran had developed a nuclear weapon and taken steps to deploy it on a delivery vehicle.
We are very far removed from that point in time at the moment, particularly when successful negotiations for a new nuclear agreement with Iran, like the JCPOA, would give us ample warning of any attempt by Iran to develop and deploy a nuclear weapon.
President Trump should insist on placing America’s interests first, and not the purported interests of Israel as represented in the delusions of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s goal of eliminating Hamas from Gaza, after 50,000 Palestinian deaths, remains delusional. As does his real goal of overthrowing the ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran.
Trump and America will be best served by not joining in Netanyahu’s folly.
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About the Author
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in anumber of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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