Image: Wikimedia Commons (Department of Defense Photo, 2 March 2026)
Many individuals and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are saying that President Donald Trump promised there would be no new wars. Yet, for the past two weeks, the U.S. and its ally Israel have targeted around 15,000 sites within Iran.
It is true that during his November 2024 election night victory speech, Trump stated, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” Two months later, during his inaugural speech, he reiterated, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
Then, on February 28, 2026, the U.S. launched a major military campaign against Iran known as Operation Epic Fury. This has stirred up quite a commotion among his MAGA supporters and Republican lawmakers. Even well-known podcaster Joe Rogan has chimed in, asserting that Trump supporters ‘feel betrayed’ by the ‘insane’ war in Iran.
Are they overlooking the underlying reasons, the rationale behind Trump’s decision-making, perhaps?
The Gateway Pundit spoke to Yoram Ettinger, a retired Israeli ambassador and former Minister for Congressional Affairs at Israel’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., who said, “Yes, they are.”
He explained, “The prerequisite to ending wars is the uprooting of the Ayatollah regime.”
Since 1979, he said, the Iranian regime has been “a chief epicenter of anti-U.S. terrorism, civil wars, drug trafficking and money laundering in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and U.S. soil.”
Ettinger argued that “refraining from regime change in Iran would severely erode the U.S. posture of deterrence.” However, a change in regime would dismantle and reject the Ayatollah’s ideology across educational, constitutional, political, and military domains.
Not achieving a comprehensive regime change would, in Ettenger’s opinion, encourage China in the Pacific Basin, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East; Russia in the Baltic region and Eastern Europe; and Turkey in pursuing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ambition to revive the Ottoman Empire. He contended that all these factors would “erode” the condition of the U.S. economy, as well as national and homeland security.
Furthermore, he believes that “Trump understands that abandoning the goal of overthrowing the regime would undermine the Abraham Accords, making Muslim nations less inclined to engage.”
These joint normalization agreements, which were established between Israel and a number of Arab countries—including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco—were facilitated by the Trump administration during his first term in office in 2020.
Most critically, Ettinger contended that “neglecting the U.S. commitment to dismantling the Iranian regime would lead to the emergence of the first- ever apocalyptic nuclear power, inflicting devastating consequences on humanity that would far exceed the highest costs previously associated with regime change.”
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