Israel First. America Last.
We’re paying for a war we didn’t vote for. Meet the foreign lobby that made it happen.
You might be sitting there wondering, What does war with Iran have to do with me? I’m not in the military. I’m not in Washington. I’m just trying to pay my bills and make ends meet.
Well, if you pay taxes, then it has everything to do with you. And if you’ve ever wondered why your paycheck doesn’t stretch as far as it used to, why your city’s potholes never get fixed, or why you’re buying groceries on credit, the answer is blowing up schoolgirls half a world away.
This isn't a war for America; it's a war bought by a foreign government, paid for with American tax dollars, and fought against the express will of the American people.
Grab your coffee and let’s get into it.
The $38 Trillion Elephant in the Room
Let’s start with the numbers, because they are too big to ignore and too important to leave to the pundits.
Our national debt is currently at $38 trillion dollars. Yes—trillion, with a “t.”
To make that number mean something, let’s break it down. We are spending at a rate of roughly $6.43 billion dollars a day. In the time it took you to read that sentence, we spent another $2.23 million dollars.
But the most galling part is the interest. The annual interest on that debt now exceeds $1 trillion. It is one of the fastest-growing expenses in the entire federal budget. For the average taxpayer, that means your share of federal income taxes going toward interest alone—not paying down the debt, just the interest—is between $6,000 and $7,000 per year.
You are working the first few months of every year just to pay the bankers for the money Washington already spent.
Against this backdrop of staggering debt, the Pentagon’s budget sits at $901 billion. President Trump wants to increase it next year to $1.5 trillion. Let that sink in. That’s an extra $600 billion. It is such a ridiculously unnecessary sum that even the Pentagon—an institution that wrote the book on wasteful spending—is reportedly unsure how to waste that much money.
We have already spent $3.7 trillion on the regime-change war in Iraq, and nearly $21 trillion on the post-9/11 “War on Terror.” Now, we are turning our sights on Iran which is four times the size of Iraq and has a better equipped and more modern military than Iraq did in 2003.
So, will a war with Iran cost Americans four times the blood and treasure it did in Iraq?
All I can say is that so far, in the first 24 hours, the U.S. spent $779 million and we have lost six service members.
The Opportunity Cost
While we initiate another “forever war” in the Middle East, over 650,000 Americans are homeless. Families are avoiding going to the doctor because they’re terrified of the medical bill. Wages are flat, inflation is eating away at savings, and people are relying on credit cards just to afford groceries.
This brings us to the concept of opportunity cost. Every dollar spent on a bomb in Iran is a dollar not spent here at home.
Think about what we could build with the money we are burning. Healthcare, childcare, free school breakfasts and lunches, universal pre-k, tuition-free college, high-speed rail, the list goes on and on. We could invest in building quality, affordable housing across the country using union labor, putting Americans back to work fixing their own communities.
Instead, we get to watch our current infrastructure crumble while our tax dollars pay for the bombs that will turn apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals in Gaza and Iran into dust.
So Why is America at War?
Majority of Americans do not support a war with Iran. So why are we in one?
Follow. The. Money.
Israel wants America to fight its war. Israel wants to weaken Iran by destabilizing the regime’s leadership—the same playbook they ran in Syria and Lebanon—so they can achieve regional hegemony. The Israeli government has been planning the Greater Israel project for a long time and Netanyahu views the current moment to be a once in a lifetime opportunity that he must seize on. And all of this is out in the open, all one has to do is pay attention to Israeli media.
As the drumbeat of war continues to echo, a less binary reality is becoming increasingly clear: Israel is not truly striving to topple the Iranian regime. Instead, it is pursuing a less ambitious yet more practical goal of weakening the regime and rendering it non-threatening, to the point where its ability to harm Israel nears zero.
This is the reality Israel is striving for: to create operational dominance in Iran similar to what has been established in Lebanon. This would allow the Jewish state to carry out strikes there, on a regular basis, to thwart any attempts at reconstruction without Iran having the ability to react, and without the world holding its breath every time Israeli jets head toward Tehran.
And they have successfully lobbied the United States to do their bidding…
[Enter the Pro-Israel Lobby]
Thanks to our complete and utter lack of campaign finance reform laws along with an Israel-sized carve-out in the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a foreign government has built a machine that owns Washington.
FARA requires people working on behalf of a foreign government to register as foreign agents. It’s designed for transparency. But according to leaked emails and legal memos from the Israeli Justice Ministry, Israel has figured out how to bypass it entirely.
The legal advisers suggested channeling funds through third-party American nonprofits to prevent FARA registration and the “stigma” associated with it. One legal adviser, Liat Glazer, wrote that even though the nonprofit would not be formally managed from Israel, “we will have means of supervision and management” through informal coordination.
Enter the pro-Israel lobby. AIPAC, Christians United for Israel, JStreet, the Republican Jewish Coalition, Preserve America PAC, Democratic Majority for Israel, the United Democracy Project, Friends of Israel PAC—and so, SO many more.
The lobby, as described by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, is a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction." They spend millions to elect politicians who do their bidding and, more importantly, to destroy anyone who doesn’t.
In Chicago, AIPAC is funneling money into shell PACs with innocent-sounding names like “Affordability Chicago Now” and “Elect Chicago Women.” It’s a campaign finance network specifically designed to hide the source of the money and the intent behind it.
And would you look at that, dear reader, the money flows all the way to the top.
The Price of a President
The pro-Israel lobby effectively bought the President of the United States for a little more than $230 million.
Take the late Sheldon Adelson and his widow, Miriam Adelson—Israeli-American billionaires. They have donated over $600 million to Trump’s three presidential campaigns. Currently, Miriam Adelson is funding the East Wing ballroom renovation at the White House and has allegedly offered Trump $250 million to run for an unconstitutional third term.
When a foreign national can renovate the White House and fund a president’s campaigns to the tune of nearly a billion dollars, the line between American sovereignty and foreign influence ceases to exist.
Where is Congress? Out to Lunch.
You might ask, “Where is Congress in all of this?” The answer is: Out to lunch. On Israel’s dime.
In the first six months of 2025 alone, AIPAC spent $1.8 million on lobbying. The entire pro-Israel lobby complex spent $12.8 million. And that’s just the lobbying—the figure doesn’t include the exorbitant campaign donations at every level.
Sure, Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) have sponsored a war powers resolution to reassert Congress’ constitutional authority to declare war. And House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) gave a speech saying the administration “must seek authorization” for an act of war.
But listen closely to what Jeffries said.
He affirmed that Iran is a “bad actor and must be aggressively confronted.”
He isn’t mad that America is at war with Iran; he’s mad that the administration didn’t go through the proper procedure. When you affirm the need for “aggressive” confrontation with a country, and then quibble about the process, you’re not opposing the war. You’re just upset they didn’t manufacture consent first.
So What Now?
We should tell our politicians and prospective candidates: Not another dollar. Not another dollar from the pro-Israel lobby. Not another tax dollar spent on bombs and bloodshed. Not another tax dollar spent on human rights abuses or to fund governments who carry them out.
American sons and daughters are being called upon to risk their lives while taxpayers are expected to foot the bill—not for our safety, but to serve the strategic goals of another nation.
Reaching this point without a vote, consent, or consideration of American interests highlights an unsettling reality about our democracy: as long as money equates to speech, American foreign policy will remain open to influence.
And I am deeply concerned.