Israel blocks top Catholic leaders from Palm Sunday Mass at Holy Sepulchre

Church bodies in Jerusalem say move sets grave precedent and is 'tainted by improper considerations'

By MEE staff

Published date: 29 March 2026 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-blocks-top-catholic-leaders-palm-sunday-mass-holy-sepulchre

Israeli forces blocked two senior Catholic leaders from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in occupied East Jerusalem to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Custody of the Holy Land said Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch, and Father Francesco Ielpo, custos of the Holy Land, were stopped en route to the church.

The leaders had attempted to enter privately without any ceremonial procession or public gathering but were refused access.

The church bodies said this was the first time in centuries that the heads of the Catholic Church had been prevented from celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at the Holy Sepulchre.

“This incident is a grave precedent and disregards the sensibilities of billions of people around the world who, during this week, look to Jerusalem,” they said.

The move drew sharp criticism from several European countries.

Italy summoned Israel’s ambassador in Rome, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni calling the decision “an offence to the faithful”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said freedom of worship “for all religions” must be guaranteed in Jerusalem.

“I condemn this decision by the Israeli police,” he wrote on X, warning it adds to “a worrying series of violations” affecting holy sites.

Following the backlash, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said police would meet Cardinal Pizzaballa to “explore solutions that allow for as normal a routine as possible while ensuring public safety”.

Al-Aqsa and church closures 

Israeli authorities have closed Al-Aqsa Mosque and Christian churches in the Old City of East Jerusalem since launching the assault against Iran last month.

Police cited safety concerns, a justification rejected by Palestinians, who say the closures are intended to tighten control over the occupied city.

The church bodies said they had acted responsibly, complying with all restrictions for over a month, including cancelling public gatherings and prohibiting attendance during Easter, when “hundreds of millions of faithful worldwide… turn their eyes to Jerusalem and to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre”. 

“Preventing the entry of the Cardinal and the Custos, who bear the highest ecclesiastical responsibility for the Catholic Church and the Holy Places, constitutes a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure,” they added.

They criticised the decision as “tainted by improper considerations” and “an extreme departure from basic principles of reasonableness, freedom of worship, and respect for the Status Quo”.

The Status Quo refers to a set of long-standing, internationally recognised arrangements that guarantee Christian authority over churches in Jerusalem and Muslim authority over Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israel has for decades violated the status quo in favour of increased Jewish presence in the city. 

Israel’s control of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, is widely regarded as a violation of international law, which holds that an occupying power has no sovereignty over the territory it occupies and must not make permanent changes there.

Yemen enters war, launches ballistic missile at 'sensitive' sites in southern Israel

Sanaa reopened its war front against Israel a day after Washington and Tel Aviv significantly escalated attacks on Iran's nuclear and steel manufacturing facilities

News Desk

MAR 28, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/yemen-enters-war-launches-ballistic-missile-at-sensitive-sites-in-southern-israel

The Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) announced on 28 March the launch of a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting sensitive military sites in southern Israel.

Saturday's attack marked the first action by the YAF against Israel since Tel Aviv and Washington initiated a war on Iran on 28 February. Shortly afterward, the US and Israel also engaged in wars against the Resistance Axis in Lebanon and Iraq.

YAF spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree stated that the operation was carried out in response to Israel's crimes and massacres "against our brothers in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and Palestine."

Saree added that the operation successfully achieved its objectives and coincided with the "heroic operations" carried out by "our mujahideen brothers in Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon."

He also confirmed that Yemeni military operations will continue until the declared objectives are achieved and the aggression against all resistance fronts ceases.

The attack came one day after Sanaa urged the US and Israel to participate in international diplomatic efforts to end the war against Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.

“[Our] fingers are on the trigger for direct military intervention,” the YAF declared on Friday, warning other countries against joining the US and Israel in their war against the Axis of Resistance, including if the Red Sea is used to carry out "hostile operations against Iran or any Muslim country."

The Yemeni forces emphasized that Saturday's ballistic missile attack stems from a religious and moral responsibility to resist the US and Israel's effort to establish "Greater Israel."

The Israeli military announced on Saturday that it had identified a missile launched from Yemen.

"The IDF has identified the launch of a missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory; aerial defense systems are operating to intercept the threat," the Israeli military wrote via Telegram.

The YAF previously opened a war front against Israel in November 2023, launching drone and missile barrages for over a year in response to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Yemen also imposed a blockade on US and Israeli-linked vessels attempting to cross the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern outlet of the Red Sea.

The US and EU dispatched warships to respond, but they were forced to retreat by Yemeni missile and drone attacks.

Reuters observed earlier this week that if Yemen enters the conflict, one "obvious target" would be Bab al-Mandab, a key shipping chokepoint and narrow passageway that controls sea ​traffic towards the Suez Canal.

Targeting Bab al-Mandab could increase Iran's leverage after it has already effectively shut the critical Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20 percent of the world's oil and natural gas typically passes.

WILL IRAN BE DECEIVED AGAIN?

Will what remain of the Iranian leadership be deceived once again by the rogue governments of the United States and Israel?

Everything seems to indicate that it will. Trump insists that what remains of the Iranian leadership is desperately pleading for a peace agreement. The Iranians deny it, but everything seems to indicate that, with the mediation of the Pakistanis and Egyptians, there is indeed some kind of communication between the United States and Iran.

Of course, the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel want no agreement and wishes to continue attacking and destroying Iran. But Trump no longer knows how to escape this trap into which he fell, led by Netanyahu, with oil prices above $110 per barrel, stock markets mostly in negative territory, and gasoline and numerous other product prices rising in the West and almost everywhere else in the world.

The Israelis will try, and will surely succeed, in sabotaging this new round of indirect “negotiations” between the United States and Iran, as it is not in their interest for the war to end. Netanyahu and the Zionists want to destroy and balkanize Iran so that it cannot again compete with Israel for hegemony in the Middle East.

So, it doesn't matter that the incompetent JD Vance is leading the supposed negotiations to achieve, at least, a ceasefire between the United States and Iran; Israel will not respect whatever is negotiated and will surely convince/force its minions in Washington to break any agreement and continue the destruction and killing in Iran.

What guarantee can the United States and Israel give Iran that they will not attack it again? Trump's “word”? A signature on a piece of paper? Please. They respect none of that in Tel Aviv and Washington.

Iran's only guarantee is to continue arming itself as best it can, maintain its position for as long as possible, and hope that the United States will withdraw from the fight on its own, forcing Israel to do the same, given that the Zionists in Tel Aviv cannot sustain this war effort alone.

But I think the Iranians will once again fall for the false promises of the United States and Israel; once again they will be treacherously attacked, and once again dozens of Iranian leaders will be assassinated. They simply don't understand.

Today’s Handmaidens of War

They come in many shapes and sizes and with myriad conflicts of interest, but they share one agenda: perpetual war.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

Mar 25, 2026

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/todays-handmaidens-of-war/

This is not a partisan affair. Experts in military strategy, regional history, and current power dynamics in the Middle East—as well as American politics and geoeconomics—are struggling to make sense of the U.S.–Israel war launched on February 28 and warn that its escalatory spiral is spinning out of control.

But just like when the bloom was off the rose in late 2003, when the insurgencies and sectarian violence started emerging in Iraq and it was becoming clear that the Bush administration had no plan for “what’s next,” the cheerleaders and shills are rushing to battle stations today to do everything to maintain some sort of rationalization for the disaster unfolding right before our eyes.

This time, these messaging force-multipliers, tied directly or otherwise to the political and military machinery behind this war, shouldn’t get off so easily. Too many of them were around for the last big war when they lied and cajoled the American public into thinking we simply needed more “stomach” for the fight in Iraq. Many were called out. But apparently not enough.

Mixed in with the familiar figures are new voices lobbying for a big Mideast war. We have influencers paid in dark money from our “partners” in the Israeli government. They are mixed in with ideological diehards pervasive in conservative normie media and the fever swamps of X, Fox News, and talk radio. Then there are the national security “experts” who for professional reasons—establishment status or, more insidiously, ties to the defense industry or the think tanks funded by it—are rolled out onto major media to legitimize a cockeyed strategy pulling the country further into endless war.

Take note, because remembering what they say today will be important for the reckoning tomorrow.

Ideological Diehards

The loudest voices in this arena are also the most bloodthirsty and vicious when it comes to dissent. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Fox News host Mark Levin, podcaster Ben Shapiro, and social media influencer Laura Loomer are like the Red Guards trying to enforce order on the right, and they are becoming more shrill by the day as they see MAGA cohesion breaking down because of President Trump’s war.

“Just so you are aware, if you suspect someone you know in the US is working on behalf of Iran or any other adversary during a time of war, you can and should report them to the FBI and DOJ. It’s the America First thing to do,” said Loomer in a recent X post. “We need to bring back McCarthyism and start rooting out traitors.”

On March 15, Levin read out most of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1940 Fireside Chat, “Arsenal of Democracy”, which was an effort to conflate anti-war voices in America at the time with spies, enemy agents, and sympathizers. In FDR’s words, “these trouble-breeders have but one purpose. It is to divide our people, to divide them into hostile groups and to destroy our unity and shatter our will to defend ourselves.”

Levin said Trump “is doing what all great presidents do: taking on a government, an illegitimate terrorist regime, whose roots are in seventh-century barbarism… just like Franklin D. Roosevelt had to take out a barbaric Third Reich.”

He said opponents of this war, like those of 1940, “are giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Levin saves his real venom for dissidents on the right. “Shame on you… You will be remembered as anti-America, neo-fascist Jew haters.”

The political scientist Max Abrahms has long promoted war with Iran and often smears conservatives as antisemitic isolationists. Abrahms, who teaches counterterrorism at Northeastern University, last week joined Loomer in rage-posting against Tucker and Joe Kent, who resigned from his position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over the war with Iran. 

“My sense is Tucker served as a backchannel between Joe Kent and Iran. Joe leaked national security secrets to Tucker who was communicating with the Iranian regime,” Abrahms posted on X last week.

Abrahms chortled in July that “MAGA isolationists” were embarrassed because they had warned that the U.S.–Israel attacks on Iran in June would lead to a regional conflagration. Yet here we are. But he and others still cling to the notion that Trump is playing 4D chess and that America’s apparent strategic blunder is part of an elaborate plan that only really smart military experts can understand.

Other pro-war voices share that view. "You actually have to throw your enemies off their game," Ben Shapiro told Fox News last week, calling Trump’s war "the single bravest foreign policy move of my lifetime" and arguing that the Iranian regime is now in its "death throes."

Many think tankers seem to think the Iran war is going swimmingly for the U.S. “We are destroying Iran's ability to even produce more weapons after we've destroyed the missiles, the launchers, the drones, and so the Iranians at this point only have the ability to essentially terrorize, shooting a drone here, a drone there, at civilian targets against Gulf states,” said the Hudson Institute’s Rebeccah Heinrichs, a regular now on Fox News, last week. 

It was the same week in which “a drone here, a drone there,” plus Iran’s ballistic missiles, struck numerous oil and gas sites across the Gulf, emptied U.S. embassies, terrorized Israeli citizens, drove up gas prices, and raised the risks of a global recession. The neoconservative Hudson Institute has received $2.6 million from defense contractors in funding since 2019, according to the Think Tank Tracker.

The best sign that things are going sideways is when the cheerleaders just stop making sense, like when they say Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s announcement of lifting sanctions on some Iranian oil only hurts the Chinese, or that Iran’s launching Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean, is an ex-post facto “imminent threat” to the United States. “Basically every major development in the Iran War has vindicated Trump’s decision to strike,” says Will Chamberlain. Nice try.

Abrahms unironically says “the discrepancy between the war commentary and what’s actually happening in the war is the greatest the world has ever seen.” He doesn't realize how right he is.

Then there is the stray neoconservative Never Trumper who, despite their previous revulsion at anything the current president says or does, has given their blessing to his war aims today.

Eliot Cohen, who not only led the cheer sections for Iraq and Afghanistan two decades ago but has been shaming Americans into supporting the Ukraine war, now says the media is being too “negative” with regards to Operation Epic Fury.

“The [Iranians’] desire to destroy [Israel]... the failure to talk about that is driving me crazy. The truth is on [Trump’s] side,” Cohen said, noting that previous presidents just didn’t act against Iran decisively but that Trump “is actually trying to resolve it in a very direct violent way.” 

Retired four stars giving one-star analysis

When you see a retired four-star on the media, it’s best to follow the money and/or the professional affiliation to understand where their analysis is coming from. The producers and editors won’t do it for you: That way, Admiral High Hat can say whatever he wants and be afforded all sorts of authority without the viewers knowing what his conflicts of interest are. 

Take General Jack Keane. He has been shilling for war on Fox since Iraq. He’s been out of service since 2003 and in that time has worked in private equity investing in military tech and has ties with several defense contractors, including serving on the board of General Dynamics. 

Keane is probably the most prolific war supporter on Fox and stands to benefit financially the longer the war goes on. Each of his appearances show his aptitude for saying things that defy reality. He told Fox News viewers that “we aren’t going to go toe-to-toe” with Iran on the Strait of Hormuz (which days later the Pentagon said we were doing) and that we would instead escort shipping with Navy ships (which we are not doing). 

The Jewish Institute for National Security of America has scores of former American military officers in its stable, including Ret. Vice Adm. Robert Harward, a former Centcom deputy commander, who just a week ago was lauding Israeli assassinations and regime change operations.

Calling Tehran “the center of gravity,” he told CNN that “if the IRGC can be decimated so the people have that advantage, maybe arm the people. That's how this thing flips.” Harward retired in 2013 went to work for Lockheed Martin, heading up its UAE business for eight years. He is now a top executive for Shield AI, which currently holds major contracts with the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard.

In a later interview with NPR, he said the length of the war would be "irrelevant" if the end result was destroying the regime. “Only allow a regime that we support, and the people support, to come to power. Anyone else remains a target. So I think that's a very sound strategy.”

So does Ret. General H.R. McMaster, who works for the neoconservative  Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which we now know the White House cribbed from to make its case against Iran. He actually laughed when asked by CBS News last week about regional escalation. 

Ret. Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, who also works for FDD (which does not disclose its donors), warns that “China is watching” and that we just need patience to see the genius of Trump’s vision.

“If the United States can hold firm for the next few weeks, it can fully degrade Iran’s war-making apparatus,” he wrote for the New York Times on March 19. “This would usher in a multiyear interval of calm of the kind that neither sanctions nor diplomacy has been able to produce in over four decades. In that window, a better regional order could emerge.”

These manufacturers of consent are no different from their Iraq war counterparts. Calling them out will mean absolutely nothing, however, if they are not held accountable by the court of public opinion and whatever foreign policy establishment survives the wreckage of this catastrophic war.

Report: US Preparing Major Escalation Against Iran That Could Include Ground Troops and Intensified Bombing

by Dave DeCamp | March 26, 2026

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/03/26/report-us-preparing-major-escalation-against-iran-that-could-include-ground-troops-and-intensified-bombing/

The Pentagon is developing options for a potential major escalation against Iran that could involve ground troops and an intensified bombing campaign, Axios reported on Thursday.

US officials and other sources speaking to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, a former IDF intelligence officer, described the potential escalation as a “final blow” that would give Trump more leverage and room to “declare victory,” though all indications are that Iran is ready to face ground forces and that any such operation would prolong the war.

Ravid’s sources said the potential options for a “final blow” include:

1.   Invading or blockading Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub.

2.   Invading Larak, an island that helps Iran solidify its control of the Strait of Hormuz. The strategic outpost hosts Iranian bunkers, attack craft that can blow up cargo ships, and radars that monitor movements in the strait.

3.   Seizing the strategic island of Abu Musa and two smaller islands, which lie near the western entrance to the strait and are controlled by Iran but also claimed by the UAE.

4.   Blocking or seizing ships that are exporting Iranian oil on the eastern side of the Hormuz Strait.

Another operation being considered is sending troops deep inside Iran to secure Tehran’s stockpile of uranium enriched at 60%, though it’s believed to be buried under the rubble following the June 2025 airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, so it’s unclear if a team of US special operators would be able to access the material.

The report said that President Trump hasn’t made a decision, but that a major escalation was likely if negotiations made no progress, and there’s no sign that real diplomacy is underway despite Trump’s claims. Iranian officials have rejected a 15-point proposal that the US passed through mediators and have set their own conditions to end the war.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt threatened on Wednesday that President Trump was ready to “unleash hell” on Iran.

Thousands of US Marines and US Army Airborne appear to be on their way to the Middle East as the Pentagon prepares for ground attacks, operations that are fraught with risk and will likely result in major US casualties since any ground force would face significant and sustained Iranian missile and drone attacks.

In the meantime, US-Israeli strikes continue to pound Iran, and the Iranian military continues to launch successful attacks on Israel and US bases across the region. According to a report from The New York Times, the majority of US bases in the Middle East are now basically uninhabitable due to the Iranian strikes.

 

Iran trained in ‘asymmetrical warfare’ for two decades waiting for US troops: Defense official 

Tuesday, 24 March 2026 

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/03/24/765806/Iran-trained-in-asymmetrical-warfare-for-two-decades-waiting-for-US-troops-Defense-official

A senior Iranian defense official says the armed forces have “trained in asymmetrical warfare” for two decades in anticipation of American troops being deployed to “designated regions.”

“We have been waiting for the arrival of Americans to designated regions,” Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, a senior aide to Leader of the Islamic Revolution in the Defense Council, said in a post on his X account on Tuesday.

“For more than two decades, we have trained for this moment with the strategy of asymmetrical warfare,” he wrote.

Ahmadian said that Iran has only one message for American soldiers: “Come closer.”

The warning comes as Trump administration officials have hinted at the possibility of ground operations in certain regions of Iran.

US military planners have reportedly presented the White House with options for a potential ground operation, should the bombing campaign fail to achieve its objectives.

According to The Wall Street Journal, discussions have included scenarios involving “boots on the ground” to dismantle Iran's nuclear infrastructure and missile capabilities.

Pentagon officials have also acknowledged planning for "contingency operations" that could involve special operations forces or heliborne assaults on key Iranian facilities, though they stress such options remain a last resort.

The commander of the Ground Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) warned earlier in the day that any such threat or act of aggression would be met with a crushing response.

Speaking to IRGC ground troops in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, Brigadier General Mohammad Karami said his unit was prepared at the highest level.

The Israel Lobby’s Responsibility for the Iran War

Advocates for the U.S.-Israeli special relationship have played a special role.

By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

https://archive.is/20260320130945/https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/17/israel-lobby-iran-war-trump-responsibility

News flash: The war in Iran is not going as expected. I could say not going as “planned,” except that word seems completely inappropriate in this case. As Americans and others experience yet another Middle East debacle, they want to know who is responsible. It is vitally important to place blame where it belongs, but equally important that those who are not responsible not be wrongly accused.

Not surprisingly, some observers think this is a war being fought on Israel’s behalf. As evidence, they point to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement that the administration knew Israel was going to attack, anticipated that Iran might retaliate against U.S. forces in the region, and therefore chose to preempt. Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been pushing hard for another war for months, and there are plenty of pro-Israel pundits—like former Jerusalem Post editor in chief and current New York Times columnist Bret Stephens—who have repeatedly called for war on Iran in the past and are defending the current war even now.

This raises an obvious question: To what extent does the “Israel lobby” here in the United States also bear some responsibility for the war? Before I consider that question in detail, however, two notes of caution are in order.

First, it is still early days, and more evidence for how and why this happened is bound to come to light in the months ahead, along with the usual efforts to kick up dust and shift the blame if things go further south. Unlike the 2003 war in Iraq, this conflict was not preceded by a long campaign to sell the war to the American people, so it’s harder to know exactly who was pushing for it and who was raising doubts.

Second, in trying to gauge the impact of any lobbying effort, it is essential to define it properly. As John Mearsheimer and I made clear in our 2007 book on this topic, the Israel lobby is not defined by religion or ethnicity, but rather by the political positions its members try to advance. It is a loose coalition of groups and individuals whose common aim is maintaining a “special relationship” between the United States and Israel. In practice, this special relationship means providing Israel with generous military and diplomatic support no matter what it does. The lobby is comprised of both Jews and gentiles, and many American Jews are not part of the Israel lobby and do not support the special relationship. Moreover, some key parts of the lobby (such as Christian Zionists) are not Jewish.

It would therefore be both analytically wrong and dangerously divisive to blame the American Jewish community for the war, just as it was wrong to blame that community for the 2003 war in Iraq. Indeed, back in 2002-03, surveys showed that Jewish Americans were less supportive of going to war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein than the American population as a whole. Although Israel’s Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) recently released a poll purporting to show that a majority of Jewish Americans supports the current war against Iran, these results are from a carefully selected and decidedly unrepresentative group of respondents and are almost certainly bogus. (As a side note, it’s irresponsible for JPPI to release such dubious findings, as it risks fueling precisely the sort of antisemitism that all of us want to prevent.) It is also worth noting that J Street, the largest mainstream liberal pro-Israel group, and progressive groups like New Jewish Narrative and Jewish Voice for Peace have already issued public statements condemning the war.

So who is responsible?

First and most obviously, President Donald Trump, and his collection of feckless and incompetent loyalists. Like George W. Bush in 2003, he made the decision, and he bears the ultimate responsibility for the consequences. And, of course, Netanyahu, who is trying to establish Israeli hegemony over the entire region but has no chance of doing so without active U.S. support, bears direct responsibility as well.

But no president acts entirely alone—whatever Trump wants us to believe—and it is well established that Trump can be swayed by what he hears from those around him. And Trump’s inner circle includes many people who are staunch defenders of Israel, longtime beneficiaries of Israel-related campaign contributions, or both. Trump’s two Middle East envoys—Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—are both ardent supporters of Israel, as is U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Rubio, who also serves as national security advisor, was a reflexive proponent of the special relationship during his Senate career and one of the biggest recipients of pro-Israel campaign funding. Current White House chief of staff Susie Wiles worked as a consultant for Netanyahu’s 2020 reelection campaign. Except for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who questioned excessive U.S. support for Israel in her pre-MAGA career, it is hard to think of anyone in the upper reaches of the administration who publicly favors distancing the United States from Israel.

Second, Trump himself has acknowledged his own debt to ardent pro-Israel figures such as the late Sheldon Adelson and his widow, Miriam. As Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick recount in a recent article in the Nation (and a soon-to-be-published book), Trump singled out Miriam Adelson—the largest single contributor in recent U.S. elections—during his address to the Knesset in October 2025, and even speculated that she might love Israel more than the United States. Similar concerns may also explain why some Democratic Party leaders have been reluctant to criticize Israel for starting the war or the Trump administration for joining in and have focused instead on the failure to plan the war more carefully.

Third, this war did not come out of nowhere. To be sure, the United States and Iran have been at odds for decades, and neither Israel nor the lobby is solely responsible for the suspicion with which each country views the other. Nonetheless, lobby groups such as AIPAC, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Zionist Organization of America, and United Against Nuclear Iran have worked to demonize Iran over the years, prevent U.S. companies from doing business there, and derail prior attempts by former Iranian presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami to improve relations. (For evidence on the latter point, check out chapter 10 of our 2007 book.) Unlike J Street, these groups worked overtime to thwart the 2015 agreement that reduced Iran’s enrichment capacity and nuclear stockpile, and they eventually persuaded Trump to tear up the deal in 2018 even though Iran was in full compliance. Had Trump not done so, of course, there would be much less reason to worry about Iran’s nuclear program today.

Finally, by making it almost impossible for either Democratic or Republican presidents to put meaningful pressure on Israel, the lobby has enabled Netanyahu to engage in “reckless driving” all over the region, whether in Israel’s sustained efforts to oppress its Palestinian subjects or in its repeated attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and even Qatar. Although Steven Simon is correct to say that Israel did not “compel” the U.S. into this latest war—the Trump administration jumped in voluntarily and enthusiastically—the lobby’s role in defending the special relationship and enabling Israel to keep disturbing the peace helps us understand why Americans keep finding themselves embroiled in costly conflicts far from home.

The bottom line: As this latest disaster unfolds, Americans and others will rightly want to hold those responsible to account. They should focus on the specific groups and individuals—from the president on down—who embraced Israel’s approach to the region and managed to convince themselves that yet another orgy of violence would be in the U.S. interest. Until the lobby’s influence is reduced and the United States establishes a more normal relationship with Israel, such episodes are likely to be repeated, making the United States look like a heartless bully and leaving all of us worse off.