‘Don’t be surprised if the New York Times at some point runs an affirmative story on how kitchen knives in Iran are seen as an existential threat by the Israeli security establishment,’ he writes
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, penned a column on Saturday warning President Donald Trump against allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convince him to go to war with Iran again after a new report by NBC News that has been on the top of the Drudge Report all day Saturday.
The report, citing a “person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans,” said Israelis have grown concerned about Tehran’s expanding ballistic missile program, and “are preparing to brief President Donald Trump about options for attacking it again.”
The report said:
Israeli officials also are concerned that Iran is reconstituting nuclear enrichment sites the U.S. bombed in June, the sources said. But, they added, the officials view Iran’s efforts to rebuild facilities where they produce the ballistic missiles and to repair its crippled air defense systems as more immediate concerns.
Parsi wrote on his personal Substack page that the June war essentially resulted in a stalemate, which Iran was able to accept. But he noted that such conditions are “intolerable” for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “and his legacy.”
Parsi wrote:
It is precisely this balance of terror that prompts Israel to seek a new round – Israel’s military doctrine does not allow for any of its regional foes to deter it or challenge its military dominance. Iran’s missile program currently does exactly that.
According to NBC News, Israel’s messaging is no longer focused on the nuclear program but rather on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
And this is precisely why Trump must say no to Netanyahu. Because Israel’s objective is not security in the conventional sense, but rather absolute dominance. Israel insists on having total security and freedom to maneuver, while denying its neighbors any minimum level of certainty and forcing the region into a state of complete insecurity.
Parsi wrote: “Don’t be surprised if the New York Times at some point runs an affirmative story on how kitchen knives in Iran are seen as an existential threat by the Israeli security establishment. Panic-stricken pundits on mainstream networks will then inevitably pose the question: “Will America tolerate Iran operating secret cutlery factories?”
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Last month, Iran’s top diplomat called on the UN to hold the U.S. accountable for the destruction and casualties that resulted from its June war with Israel, and Washington after Trump came out and said he played a leading role in that effort.
Abbas Araghchi, Tehran’s foreign minister, wrote a formal letter to the UN Security Council calling attention to Trump’s recent comments about the war.
Earlier this month, Trump told reporters that he played a larger role in Israel’s sneak attack on Iran last June and confirmed that he was “very much in charge of that,” prompting Tehran to seize on the comment as proof of the White House’s complicity in the illegal strike that killed over 1,100 civilians.
Trump said, “Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that. When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together.”
The Iranian Embassy in Japan responded shortly after Trump’s remark and called it a “criminal confession that he was fully responsible for Israel’s war of aggression against the Islamic Republic.”
Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN, penned a letter to the Security Council stating that Trump’s statement is “clear and irrefutable evidence” of U.S. “leadership, orchestration, and command responsibility in the attacks which killed many high-ranking military commanders, nuclear scientists, and ordinary civilians.”
The statement “clearly and unequivocally exposes the falsity of the earlier statement made by the United States Secretary of State [Marco Rubio] on 13 June 2025, in which he deceitfully claimed that ‘we are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.’”
Araghchi wrote in his letter that the attack was carried out against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iran, thus a “blatant violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.” He said it is based on these rules that the U.S. must “make full reparation for the injury caused by the said violations against Iran and its citizens, including any damage, material, and moral,” according to ISNA.
