Netanyahu is Baiting America Into War With Iran

This story is so ridiculous, and as an Iranian-American who has watched this narrative play out over and over again, I can’t believe we are still pushing this trope.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat with far-right political commentator Ben Shapiro and “warned” that Iran currently has missiles with an 8,000-kilometer range that they can soon extend to 11,000 kilometers, allowing strikes to happen on U.S. soil in cities like New York and Washington, D.C.. Even though U.S. intelligence assesses no capability of missiles with a range of more than 2,000 kilometers in Iran, this is only a fearmongering tactic that may have worked in 2001, but not anymore.

There are multiple layers to the absurdity of this claim, and we will examine them one by one.

1. Israel reportedly has nuclear weapons and is the country that indiscriminately continues to bomb multiple countries in the Middle East with no discretion.

   • According to icanw.org, Israel currently has about 90 nuclear bombs. Although the total number of warheads is unconfirmed, it is professionally estimated that they have material for up to 200, with an estimated 90 existing warheads.

   • In 2025 alone, Israel has bombed Palestinian territory, Gaza, Iran, Qatar, Syria, and Yemen.

2. Netanyahu lied about Saddam Hussein and claimed that he was seeking/to develop nuclear weapons.

   • In a clip from 2002 that Mehdi Hasan posted on X, Benjamin Netanyahu sat before Congress and talked about Saddam’s ability to create nuclear weapons.

   • He lied and baited the American public into becoming convinced to go into a useless war.

3. There is literally no proof whatsoever that Iran has any nuclear weapons, and this comes from third-party organizations that have fully vetted their nuclear facilities.

   • The head of the leading intergovernmental watchdog for nuclear energy and atomic weapons has confirmed that they did not find “any proof of an effort to obtain a nuclear weapon by Iran”.

   • International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said, “While it is possible that operations are being kept secret from regulators, reports that Iran has not been actively pursuing a nuclear weapon since 2003 are accurate.”

4. Having nuclear energy DOES NOT mean you have nuclear weapons

   • International assessments and the US intelligence community have said that Iran’s nuclear program is not currently weaponized.

   • American spies even say that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.

This claim really brings me back to the 2001 war on terror propaganda, when the Pentagon just flat out made up lies about “weapons of mass destruction,” which justified the invasion of multiple countries in the Middle East.

This old recycled threat of Iran’s nuclear threat over the horizon is not only unsubstantiated, it’s perilous. We’ve been here before, and the film was a flop: decades of conflict, hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, and destabilization that continues to reverberate today.

Netanyahu’s fear-mongering, amplified by far-right media outlets, relies not on reputable intelligence or global assessments; it’s propaganda, plain and simple.

Iran is not building nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Israel, a nuclear power that has never admitted it and has a long history of aggressive military action across the Middle East, is not held equally to account.

If we wish for peace, security, and truth, we must stop believing the same old falsehoods and call everyone out, not just the easy ones to demonize.