Paul Pillar: America Should Not Fight Israel's War

A veteran CIA analyst says Israel's attack on Iran was unjustified and that America should not support its war on the latest Just Asking Questions episode.

Zach Weissmueller | 6.19.2025 5:00 PM

(Illustration: Edward Marshall)

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Paul Pillar: America Should Not Fight Israel's War

What's America's role in Israel's war with Iran? Just asking questions.

U.S. forces aren't directly involved in the war with Iran…yet. But those of us who remember the 2003 Iraq invasion can't help but be struck by some of the unsettling similarities: A terrorist attack acting as an inciting event a year and a half earlier, sensational but unverified claims of weapons of mass destruction imminently falling into the wrong hands, the promise of a swift and decisive victory over a cruel and corrupt regime.

There are hugely important differences between then and now, but today's guest will offer the long view. He's someone who understands first-hand how military intelligence is used and abused to justify war.

Paul Pillar was a CIA analyst for 28 years, serving as the executive assistant to the CIA director from 1989 to 1991 amid the Gulf War and later rising to become the chief analyst and deputy director of the agency's Counterterrorist Center. Today he's a nonresident senior fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security Studies and a nonresident senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

We discuss what the Trump administration knew and when about the Israeli strike on Iran, why Pillar urged President Donald Trump to "condemn" the strike, whether or not regime change is the primary goal of this war, what Trump's likely next steps are, and how the dissent of Trump supporters like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon is likely to affect the outcome.