What do we actually know about the intent of any of these lunatics?

At that level of decision making and power this is not something that is ever going to be clear.

You can only go based on material effect.

Going to war with Iran has been the unambiguous goal of Israel for decades. In absence of strong evidence to the contrary, the default assumption should be that that was the motivation.

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cmrdporcupine 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Both things can be true -- but why is it so hard to absorb that when you have heavy stock market investors and people connected to the energy sector literally running the largest military on earth that they'd be working on behalf of their own financial interests and those of their patrons, rather than on some vague ideological or religious motivations?

We are not dealing with detached neo-liberal political bureaucrats from 20 years ago. The American people explicitly elected the foxes to run the hen house. This is the result.

Also, I am an opponent of the Israeli state and its domestic and foreign policy. But seeing its wishes as some sort of puppet master over the United States verges into anti-Semitic conspiracy theory territory.

I prefer material, economic explanations. It's just as likely that elites in Israel have the same economic interests as well.

	▲	dgellow 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t think the claim is puppet mastering, more the fact that Trump is very easy to manipulate by inflating his ego, something Netanyahu has been doing publicly since a while. Though the reporting is pretty confusing, it’s not clear if Trump is the one who convinced Netanyahu to go in or the other way. The various leaked meetings are all from anonymous sources. The result is the same though, at least for now. Might as well focus on the economic aspects you mentioned. In any case the global economy is fucked for a while