Israel and the Iraq War: A Lie That Won't Die

Iran’s foreign minister revived this week the claim that Israel drives America’s wars — and what Ariel Sharon told me on a flight back from Washington before Iraq

This week, in a lengthy opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Iran’s foreign minister offered yet another conspiracy theory, manufactured to explain the massacre of unarmed civilians in Iran. According to him, “plotters” sent by Israel were shooting at peace-loving Islamic Republic security forces in order “to drag the U.S. into fighting another war on behalf of Israel.” Whether “another war on behalf of Israel” referred to Iraq or to the recent limited U.S. strike on the Fordow nuclear facility is unclear. What is clear is the ancient line of thought animating all of this — the one that has sustained antisemites for centuries: the Jews instigate wars.

My Conversation with Ariel Sharon

It was 2002, and the world was bracing for an American invasion of Iraq. I was flying back from Washington, D.C., aboard the prime minister’s plane, traveling with Ariel Sharon after one of his meetings with President George W. Bush. As was the custom, Sharon invited two journalists at a time into his cabin for an off-the-record briefing. He sat behind the aircraft’s desk and spoke with the confidence of a man who believed — probably correctly — that he understood the Middle East better than anyone in the Western political class.

President George W. Bush hosted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the Oval Office in October of 2002, in the leadup to the Iraq War. Sharon’s position was against the invasion. (Photo: Avi Ohayon for GPO)

I remember his message with unusual clarity. Israel, Sharon said, was not lobbying for this war. He told us that he had made Israel’s position explicit in Washington: this was the wrong war. Iraq was not the central threat to the region. Iran was. His concern, as he framed it, was that an American fixation on Iraq would come at the expense of confronting Iran’s growing regional ambitions.

By “wrong war,” he was not advocating the occupation of Iran or a campaign of regime change. At the time, Iran’s nuclear program was still in its early stages — and relatively unknown to the West and Israel. The Israeli preference was for crippling sanctions that would halt it before it matured.

Although the conversation was off the record, I feel comfortable sharing it now. I am confident Sharon would not have objected to recounting this episode at this point — especially if it helps dispel yet another conspiracy theory aimed against Israel.

The Conspiracy

The remark stayed with me not because it was dramatic, but because it flatly contradicted a narrative has become dogma on parts of both the American far-right and far-left: that Israel dragged the United States into the Iraq War, or even engineered it. A few months ago, Tucker Carlson, speaking with his new friend Glenn Greenwald, mentioned — almost in passing — that America began preparing for war with Iraq “immediately” after September 11th “at the behest of a foreign government — Israel.”

This revisionism has become fashionable again among some young, anti-Israel factions on the right. Back in October, Dave Smith debated Coleman Hughes, and once again pushed this line. Smith said that an unidentified “envoy” of Prime Minister Sharon told the Bush administration, “I want Saddam Hussein overthrown, but we got to overthrow the mullahs in Iran first.” He cited John Mearsheimer as his source.

The Facts

We have numerous first-hand accounts proving the falsehood of the claim the the U.S. invaded Iraq for Israel. I reported on U.S.-Israel relations closely back then, as a diplomatic reporter for Israel’s Channel 10. It is not that Israel believed the fall of Saddam Hussein would be harmful to its interests. But it was not a priority at all. The late Prime Minister Sharon was consumed by the military campaign against suicide-bombing terrorism and by the effort to isolate Yasser Arafat, whom Israeli intelligence had concluded was directing terror attacks while enjoying the privileges of a head of state. Israel was in a dire economic situation, struggling to contain the Second Intifada. Regionally, since Yitzhak Rabin’s term as Prime Minister in 1992, the strategic consensus had been that Iran was emerging as the principal long-term threat. In retrospect, we now know Tehran already had a military nuclear program called “AMAD” underway. It only halted it in 2003.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in February 2002. At the time, Sharon was focused mainly on the Second Intifada, isolating Yasser Arafat diplomatically, an economic crisis, and the budding threat of Iran. (Photo: Avi Ohayon for GPO)

This week, to make sure memory had not misled me, I spoke with two former senior officials who worked closely with Sharon. They confirmed the same point: Israel’s position on the Iraq War was consistently cautious. It did not promote the war; to some extent, it cautioned against it.

They added that Sharon understood Israel had to stay out of the invasion debate altogether, given how contentious the issue already was in American politics. Sharon — unlike Netanyahu — was meticulous about preserving bipartisan support in Washington. He believed Israel’s strategic relationship with the United States depended on it. For him, even if he had supported the war, lobbying for it would have amounted to a stupid mistake. So he didn’t.

You do not have to take my word for it. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, later recalled that senior Israeli officials warned Washington against focusing on Iraq. “The Israelis were telling us,” Wilkerson said, “Iraq is not the enemy — Iran is the enemy.” Indeed I have heard essentially the same words from Sharon himself. Danny Ayalon, his diplomatic adviser, has said the same. The former Undersecretary for Defense for the U.S. at the time, Douglas Feith, also attests that Israel never pushed for the Iraq invasion and was mainly focused on Iran. Contemporary headlines told the same story, including this reporting in The Washington Post.

Defenders of the “Israel pushed the war” thesis usually cite Benjamin Netanyahu’s infamous 2002 testimony before Congress, in which he forcefully supported regime change in Iraq. But this is a basic misreading of Israeli politics at the time. Netanyahu had been voted out of office in 1999, two years before 9/11. In 2002 he was a private citizen plotting a political comeback. Sharon had taken control of Likud and sidelined Netanyahu decisively. The two camps detested each other. Netanyahu had no contact with Sharon when he testified and did not speak on behalf of the Israeli government.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on April 7, 2003. Netanyahu only returned to government after his testimony to Congress in 2002, but never became part of Sharon’s inner circle. (Photo: Avi Ohayon for GPO)

To be sure, Israel did not view Saddam Hussein with indifference. Iraq was formally at war with Israel and had fired scud missiles at Tel Aviv in 1991. Israelis and the political system relished the idea that an archenemy would fall; but Israel was hardly alone in disliking Saddam, and his fall was not an Israeli plan.

The Resilience of This Lie

Texts like this one — disproving the claim that Israel pushed America to invade Iraq on its behalf — have been written many times before. The record is rich, and what I have just added is my own conversation with the then PM.

The real question, then, is why we are condemned to repeat this argument again and again. The answer is simple: The Iraq lie won’t die because the racist archetype of Jews pushing nations into war is so powerful, so emotionally satisfying, that many cannot resist deploying it — whether they are Iranian foreign ministers or online conspiracy theorists.

Final Note: Israel Paid Dearly for Bush’s Mistakes in Iraq

Part of Prime Minister Sharon’s concern about the US invasion was that “we Israelis will pay the check.” By this he meant that Israel would be pressured to make concessions to the Arab world and to the Palestinians in order to soften the impact of the U.S. entry into the region. He was absolutely right.

As part of its democracy-promotion agenda, the Bush administration pushed for new Palestinian elections after Arafat’s death and Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza. Those elections took place, and Hamas — under the banner of Middle East democracy — was allowed to participate, even though the entire framework for the election rested on the Oslo Accords. Oslo’s architects, including Yossi Beilin, warned in real time that Hamas should not be allowed to run, given its commitment to violence and its rejection of agreements that included recognition of Israel. The result was catastrophic. Hamas won. Fatah refused to relinquish control, with the quiet backing of both Israel and the United States. A year and a half later, in June 2007, Hamas carried out a coup in Gaza, shooting and throwing Fatah officials from rooftops.

What began as Operation Iraqi Freedom devolved in Gaza into Hamas in power — and it remained in power long after the U.S. left Iraq. Indeed, Across the Middle East, the war produced a surge of fundamentalism rather than democratic reform.

Where the Gaza story ultimately led, we now know all too well. It would be too simplistic to blame the Bush administration for the Hamas regime in Gaza; but they did initiate a series of events that helped manufacture this situation.

Israel did not lead the United States into the Iraq War. It did not push for it. But it was very much among those who paid a heavy price — one that is still being paid, many years later.