How U.S. and Israeli leaders advanced toward war despite clear, long-standing public opposition.

When the United States and Israel carried out coordinated strikes on Iran in 2026, including an attempt to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the public was told it was a necessary act of deterrence. A decade of evidence shows something different. The path to this conflict was laid long before the first missiles launched, built through strategic choices, energy incentives, political ambition, and the dismantling of a diplomatic framework that had successfully prevented war.

Most Americans do not want another Middle Eastern conflict. Yet the architecture for this one was constructed slowly, deliberately, and in plain sight.

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I. A Diplomatic Framework That Prevented War

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) represented one of the most effective nonproliferation agreements ever implemented. The deal dismantled ninety-eight percent of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, shut down thousands of centrifuges, imposed the most intrusive inspection regime in the history of nuclear diplomacy, and placed Iran under continuous IAEA monitoring¹.

Diplomacy worked. Verification worked. Multilateral enforcement worked.

For the first time in decades, a durable system existed that prevented a conflict no one wanted.

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II. The Break: A Deliberate Act With Predictable Consequences

The stability created by the JCPOA collapsed when the United States withdrew unilaterally in 2018, without evidence of Iranian violations. The decision shattered allied trust, destabilized the region, and ruptured a functioning agreement².

Europe attempted to keep the deal alive, but U.S. secondary sanctions rendered their workaround mechanism, INSTEX, effectively unusable³.

With the agreement structurally intact but politically crippled, Iran and the West entered a period of deep mistrust that made renewed diplomacy nearly impossible.

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III. Maximum Pressure Was an Energy Strategy Disguised as Diplomacy

After withdrawing from the JCPOA, the United States initiated the maximum pressure campaign. It was publicly framed as a path to negotiate a stronger deal but engineered to collapse Iran’s economy and force strategic capitulation.

Sanctions were designed to remove Iranian crude from global markets, strengthen U.S. and Saudi leverage over energy pricing, and reshape regional supply routes⁴.

This was not diplomacy. It was economic warfare.

And once diplomacy was replaced with coercion, escalation became the most likely outcome.

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IV. Israel’s Strategic Window Opens

Israel had long identified Iran’s regional influence as an existential threat, but previous U.S. administrations restrained escalation. A combination of factors changed that calculus by 2025. Years of sanctions, cyberattacks, targeted assassinations, and regional attrition had weakened Iran’s defenses, economy, and political networks.

At the same time, Israel gained something it had never been given before. It gained a U.S. president willing to escalate militarily².

A rare alignment emerged, consisting of strategic vulnerability in Iran and political opportunity in Washington.

This was the window Israel had been waiting for, and it moved decisively.

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V. Oil Markets Saw the War Coming

Energy markets often detect geopolitical shifts earlier than governments admit. Analysts warned that the Israel–Iran confrontation placed energy clearly in the crosshairs⁵, signaling that oil and gas infrastructure would become early targets.

Within days, those warnings proved accurate.

Israeli officials openly discussed options that included Kharg Island, which handles roughly ninety percent of Iran’s exports, a strike that would trigger global shockwaves.

The United States publicly encouraged restraint while privately modeling the economic consequences of escalation⁵.

When U.S. forces ultimately led a strike, the action did not contradict earlier caution. It confirmed that the timing, not the principle, was the only constraint.

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VI. The Collapse of the Humanitarian Narrative

Claims that U.S. policy was motivated by concern for the Iranian people collapse under documented evidence. The administration threatened Iranian cultural sites, an act widely considered a war crime and a direct assault on Iranian identity⁶.

Even Iran’s hardliners have historically avoided such targets to prevent public backlash.

Combined with anti-Iran policies, immigration restrictions, and rhetoric rooted in collective punishment, humanitarian framing was never credible.

The strategic objectives, not moral considerations, shaped the escalation.

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VII. A More Nuclear, Less Stable Region

The long-term consequence of abandoning the JCPOA and escalating militarily is a Middle East that is more unstable, more volatile, and more nuclear-capable.

Iran retains the knowledge and material capacity to achieve nuclear breakout and now has every incentive to accelerate its program².

The attacks that followed did not eliminate this capability. They virtually ensured its expansion.

The region is now locked into a cycle of short, intense confrontations with a substantially higher risk of nuclearization.

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VIII. Public Preference vs. Political Incentive

Polling for more than a decade has shown that Americans overwhelmingly oppose another Middle Eastern war. A 2026 national survey found that a clear majority opposes any U.S. military action against Iran without congressional authorization, and most voters across party lines believe escalation will make the United States less safe⁷.

Additional polling from 2025 reinforces this: most Americans disapprove of U.S. involvement in an Iran–Israel conflict and believe such interventions will widen the war and destabilize the economy⁸⁹.

Yet public preference carries little weight when political incentives, energy dynamics, allied ambitions, and the collapse of diplomatic infrastructure converge.

Wars are not always the product of public will. Sometimes they are the product of opportunity, institutional inertia, and the absence of constraints.

The war of 2026 is not what the American people asked for. It is the predictable descendant of a diplomatic system the United States dismantled itself.

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IX. This Was Not an Accident

Remove the slogans, the posturing, and the rhetoric, and the pattern becomes unmistakable.

Diplomacy prevented war¹.

Political decisions destroyed diplomacy².

Energy incentives filled the vacuum⁴.

Strategic alignment locked in escalation².

The result was inevitable.

And it reflects a deeper structural failure: American public opinion has almost no influence on national security outcomes when those outcomes are shaped by energy leverage, alliance politics, and executive authority.

This conflict was not an accident.

It was an outcome.

And it is an outcome the world will be living with for decades.

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Notes

1. Serim, Burak. “Analysis of JCPOA implementation and verification mechanisms.” Journal of Strategic Studies, 2022.
2. Allin, Dana H., and Jonathan Stevenson. “Predicates and Consequences of the Attack on Iran.” Survival 67, no. 4 (2025): 187–196.
3. Belal, S. “Evaluation of Europe’s efforts to preserve the JCPOA, including the limitations of INSTEX.” European Foreign Affairs Review, 2019.
4. Morteza, A., et al. “Assessment of the energy-geopolitical logic underlying the maximum pressure campaign.” Energy Policy and Security Quarterly, 2025.
5. Chin, Yongchang. “Oil ‘In the Crosshairs’ as Israel–Iran Conflict Drags On, RBC Warns.” Bloomberg, 2025.
6. Rezaian, Jason. “Trump’s Threats against Cultural Sites Show He Doesn’t Care about the Iranian People.” The Washington Post, 2020.
7. “Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose War on Iran Without Congressional Approval.” Arab News Releases, January 16, 2026. Gale OneFile: News. 
8. The Independent. “Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose War with Iran and Say the Trump ‘Hammer’ Strikes Made the US Less Safe.” June 23, 2025. EBSCOhost. 
9. Axios. “Americans Largely Disapprove of U.S. Involvement in Israel and Iran War.” June 19, 2025. EBSCOhost.

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Sources

Allin, Dana H., and Jonathan Stevenson. “Predicates and Consequences of the Attack on Iran.” Survival 67, no. 4 (2025): 187–196.

Belal, S. “Evaluation of Europe’s efforts to preserve the JCPOA.” European Foreign Affairs Review, 2019.

Chin, Yongchang. “Oil ‘In the Crosshairs’ as Israel–Iran Conflict Drags On, RBC Warns.” Bloomberg, 2025.

Morteza, A., et al. “Energy-geopolitical logic and the maximum pressure campaign.” Energy Policy and Security Quarterly, 2025.

Rezaian, Jason. “Trump’s Threats against Cultural Sites Show He Doesn’t Care about the Iranian People.” The Washington Post, 2020.

Serim, Burak. “JCPOA implementation and verification mechanisms.” Journal of Strategic Studies, 2022.

Arab News Releases. “Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose War on Iran Without Congressional Approval.” January 16, 2026. Gale OneFile: News.