By A group of anti-war US military veterans have slammed what they say are Israeli interests guiding US military policy, culminating in the current US-Israeli war on Iran that is putting American lives at risk.
To the public’s knowledge, 13 US military personnel have so far been killed since the war was launched on 28 February, but veterans said on Thursday that there are likely more casualties to be announced, given that the Pentagon’s three military hospitals in Germany “are full”.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly indicated that there may be many casualties and that it’s simply the cost of going to war.
After critics blasted the president for wearing a campaign hat while receiving the first batch of caskets that were returned to the US, the White House decided that the second dignified transfer ceremony would no longer be open to the press.
While the anti-war veterans took stock of Washington’s responsibility for starting the war, they pointed to deeply embedded Israeli operations that they say have become inextricable from the Pentagon’s decision-making. A key example, they said, is the US targeting of the elementary school in Minab, Iran, which killed 165 people, most of whom were children.
“The intelligence on the target itself was provided to us by Israel,” former Green Beret and contractor with the scandal-plagued Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Anthony Aguilar, told an audience at the National Press Club.
“They knew exactly what it was,” he said of the building, which had become a school in 2016.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this month that the Pentagon is investigating the attack, but that the US does not target civilians.
A New York Times analysis pointed to US culpability.
Ray McGovern, 86, a former CIA analyst, suggested that the Pentagon broadened its list of targets in Iran based on Israeli requests.
AfrikTimes has reached out to the Pentagon for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
‘They Were Fighting for Another Country’
In an interview on The Shawn Ryan Show, the recently resigned top US counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, himself a former soldier, espoused similar sentiments, saying only Israel stands to gain from the US bombing Iran, because Iran is not an imminent threat to the US, but it could become a significant counterweight to Israeli firepower in the region.
“We have always been part of the master plan in the taking over of the Middle East on behalf of Israel, [and] we started off with Iraq,” Dennis Fritz, a retired US Air Force chief master sergeant, said on the veterans panel on Thursday.
“It’s… on the backs of our men and women,” Fritz, who has spent more than a decade advocating for increased care for combat-wounded soldiers, said.
“They thought they were fighting for their country. But you know what? They were betrayed. They were fighting for another country known as Israel.”
Myles B Caggins III, a senior nonresident fellow with the New Lines Institute and retired US Army colonel, told reporters on Friday that two things can be true at once – that Washington has its own interests in destroying Iran’s military capability, but it also works in lockstep with Israel.
Caggins was not involved or affiliated with Thursday’s panel.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosts a bilateral exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2025. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Madelyn Keech)
“Congress has deemed that Israel is our best and strongest ally in that region, possibly, arguably, in the world. And so friends should help friends, right?” he said.
“The defence of Israel is among the highest priorities of this nation, and a key, critical place for us to spend money,” he added. But why?
“Well, the American political system, we have, of course, the influence of money. And through the influence of money, politicians can more effectively campaign. And under the threat of not supporting those with money, they avoid, they get campaigned against by well-funded special interest lobby groups.”
Chief among those lobbying groups is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has gone from a relatively undiscussed topic to a central campaign focus for candidates, both Republican and Democrat, who make a point of not taking money from the organisation.
This comes as many conservatives and hardline Trump supporters are questioning why the US singles out Israel as its favoured ally in the world, rather than countries within Nato, as an example.
“Israel has this mythic reputation among American officers of a certain rank,” Michael Vlahos, a war strategy expert and author, told the audience at Thursday’s event.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu give joint statements to the press in the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, March 9, 2016. (Debbie Hill/AFP via Getty Images)
“One of the things the Israelis do is they bring over American police departments, Swat teams, and train them. And I think over time, the effect of all of this has been to inculcate in America, in the American military, at a certain level, that they want to be just as cool and hip and tough as the Israelis,” he said.
Constant State of War
Israel has long been seen by its critics as an extension of US foreign policy in the Middle East, especially given its recent history of fighting what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a “seven-front” war.
“Remember what Joe Biden said,” Fritz recalled, referring to comments made by the then-senator in 1986. “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region,” Biden said.
“We require instability to be able to project that which we espouse,” former special operations officer in the US Marines, Ivan Ingraham, said on the panel.
“And so it is in our interest. It is in the interest, as we try to convince our allies to keep things unstable so that we can continually go after a bad guy.”
“The military men and women of our armed forces… are used as pawns in these illegal wars,” Fritz added.
Biden’s unconditional support for Israel during its genocide in Gaza likely cost his party the 2024 presidential election.
“Our country has been at war for so long that it doesn’t register with anyone anymore,” Ingraham said, as he discussed why many more former soldiers aren’t speaking out.
“It’s just the way it is. We fought wars, and have been at war for all of the 21st century, and I served in almost all of it,” he said.
“Now I find myself in a difficult space… this is not about a renouncement. It is about if we are really, truly serious about reevaluating how we approach things. We have got to get out of this constant cycle.”
