Who pays for Israel’s nuclear dominance?
Since the start of the latest made-for-Israel war, Donald Trump and his surrogates have repeatedly promised Americans that it would be a matter of a few weeks before oil prices crashed below prewar levels. Instead, it was every promise that crashed. When those promises failed to materialise, the message shifted: the war is worth the price to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
But what if Iran did become a nuclear power? How would that pose a greater threat to the US than North Korea or Russia already do? Or is the real concern not a risk to America, but a challenge to the regional hegemony of a foreign nuclear power, Israel?
For more than thirty years, according to Israel's fiction, Iran has been on the verge of becoming a nuclear-armed state. That fictitious deadline has come and gone repeatedly, yet Benjamin Netanyahu has been recycling the same claim since 1992. The Israeli claims and deception persisted even though, unlike Israel, Iran's nuclear programme was subject to strict international monitoring.
Still, Trump, at Netanyahu's urging, walked away from an agreement that imposed some of the most stringent and verifiable restrictions ever placed on a country's nuclear programme. Now Americans are being asked to pay in blood and billions of dollars for abandoning a diplomatic agreement that had kept Iran's nuclear programme under unprecedented international scrutiny and helped contain the very threat now being used to justify the war.
The hypocrisy is impossible to overlook. Iran has been subjected to relentless demands for transparency and inspections, while Israel’s own nuclear arsenal, built in part with materials stolen from the US, remains shielded from international inspection. Yet somehow Iran’s nuclear ambitions and know-how are the existential nuclear threat, not Israel’s nuclear bombs.
The hypocrisy is impossible to overlook. Iran has been subjected to relentless demands for transparency and inspections, while Israel’s own nuclear arsenal, built in part with materials stolen from the US, remains shielded from international inspection. Yet somehow Iran’s nuclear ambitions and know-how are the existential nuclear threat, not Israel’s nuclear bombs.
American consumers have long been the victims of a disinformation campaign, and now they are being forced to pay the price for a war sold to them on false pretences. The most recent misinformation is the claim that the Strait of Hormuz is open and oil is flowing. The president said it on Fox, and the outgoing White House press secretary told Fox & Friends that the US is essentially controlling the strait and that it remains open. These claims leave only two possibilities: either the statements are outright lies, or oil companies are gouging consumers.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported that commercial traffic through the strait remains about 75 percent below pre-conflict levels. It also tallied dozens of projectile strikes on vessels in just the past two months. Three-quarters less traffic is not a sign of an open strait. Shipowners and insurers know this, traders know this, and so do consumers watching the climbing numbers at the petrol pump. The market has already made its judgement, and every American who fills a tank can see it. It is past time for Washington to stop misleading the public.
For the average consumer, the petrol pump is where the impact is felt. Regular gasoline was below $3 a gallon before the US was dragged into another one of the made-for-Israel wars. Families are paying more to get to work, truckers are paying more to move goods, and those costs show up in the price of groceries.
Meanwhile, American oil companies are pumping at record levels. Exxon and Chevron are producing record volumes from oilfields on American soil, thousands of miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Their production costs have not changed. What has changed is Israel’s war surcharge that consumers are being forced to pay.
Chevron reported the largest quarterly net profit in its history, $12.1 billion. Exxon made $14.5 billion in the same quarter, about $160 million a day. Refining has become more lucrative. Gross refining margins more than doubled, soaring from a typical $20 crack spread to as much as $60.
Meanwhile, Trump dangles a pie-in-the-sky deal with Venezuela as a distraction from consumers’ mounting anxiety, while his administration stands by as oil companies exploit an overseas crisis for record profits. These companies have no reason to lower prices when war has handed them a windfall. This is what a war of choice looks like on the ground: American consumers are forced to pay the price, while oil executives in Texas turn a crisis into a lucrative business opportunity.
American oil companies are pumping at record levels. Exxon and Chevron are producing record volumes from oilfields on American soil, thousands of miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Their production costs have not changed. What has changed is Israel’s war surcharge that consumers are being forced to pay.
American consumers deserve more than false promises. If the Strait is open, then oil prices should be coming down. If it is not, then stop treating consumers as an audience whose emotions must be managed rather than as citizens entitled to hear the truth. Since the war started, every week, like millions of Americans, I fill my petrol tank, and the Israeli war tax is higher than it was the week before.
No, Mr President, that is not “worth the price” of a war fabricated in Israel, a repeat of the made-for-Israel war in Iraq 23 years ago. This is not a war to end Iran's supposed nuclear threat. It is a war paid for with taxpayers’ money and American blood to ensure that Israel remains the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East.
Jamal Kanj is a commentator on Arab affairs whose work appears regularly in national and international publications. He is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America and several other books.
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