Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
Middle East news media are nervously covering the evacuation orders for Americans in Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain, which include some U.S. government personnel.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the Kennedy Center that Americans were advised to leave the region "because it could be a dangerous place, and we'll see what happens".
Iran’s defense minister, Aziz Nasirzadeh, has said his country would target U.S. military bases in the region if conflict breaks out with the United States.
On June 15, the US-Iran negotiations concerning a possible new deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program are set to resume in Muscat, Oman, between US envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Analysts suggest the evacuation orders might be a tactic employed by Trump to exert pressure on Iran to accept the U.S. terms in the upcoming meeting.
Another camp of analysts worry that this is not a scare tactic, but the prelude to an Israeli attack on Iran for regime change. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israel lobby, AIPAC, have been putting pressure on Trump to attack Iran. Trump has consistently said his goal is to end wars, not make new ones.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said, “We have announced and the supreme leader has a belief that we will not build nuclear weapons. Come and evaluate it however you want. We will not build a nuclear bomb.”
In 2006, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government wrote a paper on AIPAC. The U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is bound and shackled to the interests of Israel, which at times are divergent from US interests.
On June 9, Trump and Netanyahu had a tense 40-minute phone call. Sources have said Trump asked Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza and stop the bloodshed there. He also told Netanyahu not to attack Iran.
Netanyahu and Trump have a strained relationship. Trump has never forgotten that Netanyahu asked Israeli-American dual citizens to vote for Biden in 2020. Even though Trump had done more for Israel than any previous president, Netanyahu had betrayed Trump.
In 1996, during Netanyahu’s first term as Prime Minister, Richard Perle was an advisor to Netanyahu, despite being an American. Perle and fellow American Douglas Feith wrote a foreign policy paper for Netanyahu named “Clean Break”.
The paper called for regime change in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran in the interests of Israeli national security. Perle presented the paper to then-President Bill Clinton, but Clinton chose to dismiss it.
On September 11, 2001, Perle saw his chance to advance the Netanyahu plan. Perle began to claim, without a basis in reality, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. General Colin Powell later admitted it was a fantasy, but President George W. Bush fell for Perle’s lies.
Perle was appointed the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board and was the chief architect of the 2003 US war on Iraq for regime change, despite the fact he had been overheard by the FBI in 1970 passing classified information to the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Perle was an American government official serving for many years, in various capacities, but he was working for Israeli interests at the expense of America.
The 2003 attack, destruction, and occupation of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of innocent and unarmed Iraqis in their own homes. The country and infrastructure have still not recovered after 22 years.
In March 2011, an armed uprising in Syria began for regime change, while being supported by the Obama administration. It was finally successful when in December 2024 the armed group that the US had supported overthrew President Assad.
In September 2012, Netanyahu used a visual aid while delivering a speech to the UN General Assembly. He held up a cartoon graphic of a bomb, and railed on about the threat to Israel should Iran develop a nuclear bomb.
On July 14, 2015, an agreement was signed by Iran, China, France, Russia, the UK, Germany, the EU and the US. It became known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, which aimed to limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Netanyahu hated the deal and set out to lobby Trump to break it.
On May 8, 2018, Trump declared the US would break the Iran nuclear deal, which had been a crowning achievement of Obama, and part of the Obama legacy including starting two wars for regime change in Libya and Syria.
Trump's decision to break the Iran nuclear deal was made after pressure from Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby group, AIPAC. While the other signatories to the agreement, and Western democratic allies of the US all uniformly denounced Trump's decision, Netanyahu and AIPAC praised Trump’s move.
On May 8, 2024, Tom Collina wrote in ‘Responsible Statecraft’ that breaking the Iran nuclear deal was one of Trump's biggest failures. In November 2024, Trump won a second chance to run the Oval Office and announced he would seek to make a new Iran nuclear deal.
Netanyahu and AIPAC began pressuring Trump to forget a new deal and instead attack Iran. Netanyahu felt the time was right to hit Iran and destroy their capability of a nuclear weapon, and at the same time destroy their ballistic missiles stockpile.
In April 2025, Trump announced his administration would begin fresh negotiations with Iran in the hopes of a deal to prevent Iran from making a nuclear bomb. AIPAC started a heavy campaign of pressure on Trump concerning a new deal.
During the Israeli attack on Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel had severely degraded the military capability of Hamas and destroyed most of the military stockpiles across, and underneath, Lebanon. Hezbollah's top leadership was eliminated, and the Iranian-backed group is now in talks with the Lebanese government to disarm.
Syria had been a second home to many Iranian officials who oversaw the weapons storages, and the transit route from Tehran to Damascus and Beirut. However, on December 8, 2024, Assad and every Iranian in Syria left. Within hours of their mass exodus, Israel had bombed all weapon warehouses in Syria and eventually destroyed all military assets across Syria.
"Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which Americans can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon,” wrote Perle to Netanyahu in 1996.
It took Netanyahu 29 years to achieve the goals set out in his first term in office in 1996. Netanyahu has won the war in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Iran is in a weak position and has lost their support and influence in the Middle East.
Netanyahu may see the time is right to finish off Iran and its constant threat against Israel. He may decide to attack alone, despite Trump saying he is not in favor of violence but prefers diplomacy. According to Israeli Channel 12, Netanyahu did not receive a direct response on Monday as to whether the US would lead, or participate in an attack on Iran.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.