There’s an argument flooding the media zone since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible for pushing U.S. President Donald Trump to attack Iran. This is not only silly but also pernicious, for the argument’s not-so-subtle subtext is the idea that Israel and Jews control American foreign policy. The truth is both simpler and more complex.

Netanyahu has been an ardent and very public advocate for unseating the Iranian regime for four decades. It might even be considered his life’s work. He has pursued this mission relentlessly with every U.S. president and with every member of Congress who visited Israel. During Trump’s first term and now again in the second term, Netanyahu has pressed hard for regime change in Iran. Although past presidents ignored or rejected Netanyahu’s appeals for any number of well-thought-out reasons, Trump offered him an open door.

To be sure, Netanyahu was not the only foreign leader pushing for Trump to attack Iran. Foremost among these was Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Other reports indicate Arab Gulf leaders have been urging Trump not to stop before further degrading Iranian military capabilities. The difference between Netanyahu and Arab leaders was that the latter told Trump quietly what they wanted but would not be honest with their own people. Still, Trump alone is responsible for the United States’ participation. 

Trump and Netanyahu are skilled politicians, and both are adept in the art of the con. In this case, however, there was no con. Trump proved to be a willing and full partner. He was risk-ready and caught up in a self-generated aura of military power and invincibility after taking President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela. He was poorly advised by a coterie of advisers unwilling to say anything to him other than yes— perhaps with the exception of Vice President JD Vance, who has backed Trump publicly but has expressed reservations in the past.

Netanyahu may have determined the timing of conflict, but Trump was likely already on his way to war. In January, during mass protests in Iran, Trump egged on demonstrators, calling on them to seize the institutions of governance and leading them to believe help was on the way. He backed that up by ordering what he called an “armada” of U.S. naval assets and airpower to the region—the largest deployment of American military assets since the second Iraq war. These moves took on some urgency when his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, told him there was no chance of reaching an agreement with Iran in the negotiations being held in Oman and Geneva. Trump listened to them, not the Omani Foreign Minister or the British senior adviser, who sat in on the final round of talks before the war and assessed there was a good chance of reaching agreement. Trump had already made up his mind.

As he had done in the runup to striking Iran’s nuclear sites last June, Trump continued the ruse and the deception in the following days. The administration announced technical talks would begin in Geneva and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would travel to Israel. Then, Netanyahu’s call on February 23 sharing intelligence of the time and place that Iran’s Supreme Leader and other senior leaders would be meeting opened the possibility of assassination.

Trump’s risk readiness on Iran was reinforced by his other Middle East experiences. Many had warned him of the risks of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, ordering the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Council General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, and attacking Iran’s nuclear sites in 2025. From Trump’s perspective, he had gotten away with these actions without great cost or consequence. This likely reinforced his feeling that the outcome of war with Iran would be a swift and decisive victory. 

By now it is clear that he did not have a plan for the day after U.S. and Israeli military strikes. Our best guess is that Trump somehow believed that U.S. military power could produce an Iranian Delcy Rodriguez willing to negotiate even if much of the regime remained in place. But as the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour has said, Trump got an Iranian Kim Jong-un instead.

What’s remarkable about this story, therefore, is not the canard that Netanyahu (or the Saudis, for that matter) pushed Trump to attack Iran. Rather, what stands out is the degree to which Trump decided to partner with Israel in this war. Until now, Israel has always said it did not want anyone else’s help fighting its wars, but rather sought the weapons it needed. The United States provided air defense for Israel during the 2024 Iranian-Israeli conflicts and coordinated with Israel in the 2025 bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. But until now, U.S. presidents have never offered to fight alongside Israel in such a major campaign. This war is different.

U.S.-Israeli military coordination has been intense and mostly seamless, with some friction on targets and diverging goals. But these pale before the strength of the partnership. And make no mistake: These aren’t equal partners. Trump has enormous leverage over Netanyahu, who needs the U.S. president’s support to win elections this year. When Trump says the war ends, Netanyahu will stand down too.

But the fact that Trump made the decision to go to war hardly lets Netanyahu off the hook. Netanyahu has been more wrong than right in almost all the advice he has imparted to American leaders in the past. Witness his “expert” 2002 testimony in Congress in which he argued that a new Iraq would emerge if only we killed Saddam Hussein. Or his confidence that killing the Iran nuclear deal was a good idea, when in fact it led to Iran’s headlong rush to enrich uranium to unprecedented levels. Or his decision throughout the past decade to allow Qatari money into Gaza to support Hamas, believing that was a way to forestall the demand for a Palestinian state. Or the way he prosecuted the war in Gaza after Hamas’s horrific attack in 2023, leaving tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians dead and Gaza’s housing and infrastructure in ruins. Or, perhaps, most consequentially, the degree to which his decisions and actions as prime minister since 2009 have contributed to a sea change in the American public’s support for Israel, a long-term trend that likely will have a dire impact on Israel’s security and well-being.

Whatever accountability Netanyahu should face for the Iran war, the fact is that the conflict the United States is now fighting against Iran is Trump’s doing. It is a war based on a false and unproven threat assessment of “imminent threats” to the United States. It is a war being waged without bipartisan support, congressional authorization, or the buy-in of allies or the majority of the American public. And it is a war being prosecuted without the president thinking through potential costs and consequences.

Trump has redefined the so-called Pottery Barn rule: He believes he can break it without owning it. But nothing could be further from the truth. Regardless of how the Iran war ends, it’s Trump’s, and he’ll own it—and its consequences—for the rest of his presidency and beyond.