A Different Iran Perspective

I didn’t want to guess what Trump would do with his 8 p.m. April 7, 2026, Iran bombing-to-smithereens deadline. It was a fool’s errand to predict the behavior of an unpredictable, senile, sociopath who has a malignant, narcissistic personality disorder—though TACO Tuesday always was a possibility. And I don’t pretend to know what he’ll do in two weeks. So I want to focus on some things I do know.

I come to this not as a defender of Iran by any stretch. And I am Jewish and a Zionist who detests everything Benjamin Netanyahu thinks, says, and does. Supporting Israel’s right to exist, Israelis, and Jews does not mean supporting Netanyahu. Too many people conflate all these things. I firmly believe that Netanyahu’s ghastly policies have done more for antisemitism than anyone since Hitler.

I’m also a former journalist, so I look at facts. So let’s look at some to put the tensions with Iran in perspective.

1. When Zalmay Khalilzad was ambassador to Afghanistan in the George W. Bush administration, he used to say the Afghans told him the Americans had all the watches, they had all the time. That was true, and not only for Afghanistan. It was true in Vietnam. It is true for how we’re viewed as Israeli enablers in Gaza and the West Bank. And it will be true in Iran. That should inform policy—looking at things from the perspective of the other side. Alas, I doubt the Trump folks are capable of that. But readers, you should as you think about what policy should look like.

2. Israel has killed 19 Iranian scientists since 2010.[i] In June 2025, Israel killed 30 Iranian commanders,[ii] and in February 2026, Israel killed another 40. I couldn’t find any articles about Iran killing Israeli scientists or military commanders.

3. Benjamin Netanyahu said back in 1992 that Iran was three to five years away from developing nukes, which no doubt spawned his belief that military action was needed to address this alleged threat. Three years later, he said again that Iran was three to five years away. In 1996 he said the deadline was extremely close. In 2012, he said in a closed meeting that Iran was a few months away and in public at the U.N. that Iran could build a bomb in a year. (His never-ending deadlines look a lot like Trump’s, no?) Leaked Israeli intelligence cables that year said Iran wasn’t actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.

4. In 2015, when Netanyahu addressed Congress and opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities, it was in line with his longstanding view that military action, not diplomacy, was the only way to stop Iran.

5. The consensus was that Iran complied with the JCPOA until Trump pulled out of it. [iii] The bottom line: Trump was an idiot, and Netanyahu has been wrong every time he opened his mouth. Was he lying or misinformed? I can’t say, though the intelligence suggests he should have known better and was lying. I know only that he was wrong and time and again incorrectly demonized Iran on the nuclear issue.

6. One of the critiques of the JCPOA was that it didn’t deal with Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. That’s true. But let’s look at those groups.

7. Initially, Hamas’s military arm was a small part of what it did. It was mostly a social-service organization, providing safety-net services that feckless governments couldn’t deliver. During George W. Bush’s administration, a senior official told me that if the Palestinian Authority didn’t stop its corruption and ineptitude, Hamas would win the upcoming election because it actually delivered services. That’s exactly what happened.

8. Hezbollah was similar. Hezbollah has been linked to a number of terrorist attacks in Argentina, London, and Lebanon, but it also operates as a government—providing schools, healthcare, and other services--in the Lebanese areas it controls.[iv] Conservatives in the U.S. saw the bombings as evidence that Hezbollah was a global terrorist organization. Others (including an ex-intel friend) saw it as aimed mostly at Israel. Worried about Hezbollah’s reach, the U.S. started to spy on Hezbollah. When Hezbollah figured that out, it started to spy on the U.S. to see what Washington was up to and to protect itself. The conservatives used that behavior by Hezbollah as evidence it was indeed a global terrorist network with the U.S. as a target.

9. This gets us to analyzing cause and effect. Iran built up its military capability because it legitimately feared an attack by Israel, which Netanyahu has been threatening for more than three decades and acted on as far back as 2010. Hezbollah spied on the U.S. because the U.S. spied on Hezbollah.

10. Hezbollah and Hamas are at odds with Israel because Israel has occupied their territory in Lebanon and Gaza. Hezbollah and Hamas are just living where they’ve always lived, though Palestinians no doubt would like to return to where they lived before 1948. Good luck with that.

11. So who is the aggressor? Let’s go back even further to Washington’s involvement in Iranian politics in 1953, when Britain and the U.S. toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. That ultimately led to the 1979 Iranian revolution. Neither Pahlavi nor the ayatollahs are my idea of benevolent rulers. Those choices are horrible for the Iranian people. But Iran was not the aggressor. We were.

12. Since Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, Iran has tried to ramp up its nuclear capability since it no longer faces the constraints under the JCPOA. What would you do if you couldn’t trust the powerful U.S. government to abide by its agreements?

13. My ex-intel friend, who for years refused to demonize Iran and is a never Trumper, has come to the reluctant conclusion that regime change is necessary, partly because of Iran’s increased nuclear capability and the fact that direct attacks on Iran no longer are abstractions. Iran would be justified in moving offensively and preemptively.

14. I take a different view. The regime change that’s necessary is in Washington and Tel Aviv. For all these decades, Tehran has been in a defensive posture. It never attacked anyone. Its proxies did because of their localized issues involving Israeli occupations and wars. What if Israel stopped its apocalyptic rhetoric and ruinous attacks on Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon? What if the U.S. stopped its attacks on Iran, as it seems poised to do? What if we went back to the JCPOA in exchange for integrating Iran into the global economy (instead of sanctioning it)? Thomas P.M. Barnett, in his book, The Pentagon’s New Map, argued that globalization (network connectivity, financial transactions, and media flows) lead to stable governments and rising standards of living.[v] Countries not connected can be the source of terrorism and everything from political repression to disease. He supports nation building, which I’m not sure works (the watches vs. time issue), but his connectivity thesis makes sense. And if I recall, he cites a bunch of empirical studies to support it.

15. The bottom line: reverse everything Trump has done since his first term, including his rejection of the JCPOA. (As a general proposition, reversing anything Trump has done is a good idea.) Of course, Iran agreed to that deal before the devastating attacks. Will it agree to it now? Tehran no doubt would want to exact some significant sweeteners. I don’t know what they would be. I don’t know if Trump has diplomats capable of doing anything sensible. And I don’t know if Netanyahu or his cabinet would do anything sensible. But bombs away isn’t working. It’s crippling the world economy and making the world less safe. We need to look at this from Iran’s perspective and its legitimate feeling that it’s never trusted or believed and it’s constantly unfairly victimized. I don’t want to be naïve about Iran or the changed circumstances. But without a shift in perspective and adoption of the basic negotiating tactic of understanding the other side’s interests, there’s zero chance of a viable solution. And right now I see only blind and debilitating adherence to our historical—and wrong—view of Iran. That can’t end well.

16. Addendum: A good friend who is a subscriber and retired Foreign Service Officer told me Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had issued a fatwa against the use of nuclear weapons. That’s not quite right but close. While Iranian officials suggested a fatwa existed, Khamenei never wrote anything down. He did say the use of nuclear arms was forbidden as a religious matter, but he said nothing about their development, according to an Atlantic Council report. My friend also noted that Iran shares a border with Pakistan, the source of North Korea’s nuclear know-how, so Iran could easily have bought it if it wanted to. It never did. Finally, he pointed out that institutional opportunistic imperatives often determine the outcome of analyses. So, if the Pentagon and defense contractors can benefit budgetarily from concluding that Iran is a demon, it can torque their assessments. Would Pete Hegseth ask for $1.5 trillion if Trump were a peace monger and really deserved a Nobel Peace Prize? Doubt it.

Finally, a friend who is a retired finance guy says it’s all about money. If the U.S. could create an integrated regional economic accord that could benefit every country in the Middle East, could that bring peace? A lot of hostility would have to be put aside. And the countries would have to resolve the Palestinian issue. But make it attractive enough and maybe something could emerge.

Crock is an ink-stained wretch who was a journalist for three decades for The Associated Press, The Palm Beach Post, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Investopedia, TheStreet.com, and beststory.ca. His articles also have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, World Affairs Journal, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Court TV, CNNfn, CSPAN, Fox News, and National Public Radio’s To the Point, On Point, and Here and Now.

Crock holds a B.A. in political science and a J.D. from Columbia and an M.S.J. from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. After the golden era of journalism ended for him in 2005, he worked for several consulting firms as a writer, including Accenture, McKinsey, and Abt Global. He mentors local newspapers and joined The Resistance after he retired April 1, 2025.

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[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassinations_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists

[ii] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/hundreds-of-thousands-mourn-top-iranian-military-leaders-and-scientists-killed-by-israeli-strikes#:~:text=Over%2012%20days%20before%20a,than%20720%20military%20infrastructure%20sites.

[iii] Was Iran in compliance with the nuclear agreement when...

[iv] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/what-hezbollah

[v] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_P._M._Barnett#:~:text=Thomas%20P.%20M.%20Barnett%20(born%201962),developed%20a%20geopolitical%20theory%20that