Former US secretary of state John Kerry claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pitched a war with Iran to four Presidents of United States, but only Donald Trump agreed to it.While speaking as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Kerry said, “Obama said no. Bush said no. President Biden said no. I mean, I was part of those conversations.”The former secretary to state in Obama’s administration said that previous US presidents did not agree to go to war with Iran because they had not “exhausted all the remedies of peaceful process”He also drew parallels between the ongoing Iran war with Vietnam and Iraq war and warned against misleading the public and emphasised the human cost of military action. “And speaking as a veteran of the Vietnam War, where decisions like that were so critical, we were lied to about what that war was about, and the lesson of that war and of Iraq is don’t lie to the American people and then ask them to send their sons and daughters to fight,” he said.“The lesson of Vietnam and Iraq is: don’t lie to the American people. Don’t ask them to send their sons and daughters to fight,” he added.This comes as the New York Times reported that Netanyahu convinced Trump to attack Iran alongside Israel.“In the Situation Room on Feb. 11, Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell, suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic,” he said.According to the report, Trump said, “Sounds good to me,” and subsequently signalled a green light for the joint US-Israeli operation.Kerry said Netanyahu’s presentation was a “prediction” and that none of his claims about people rising up or regime change materialised.Last month, US Vice President JD Vance reportedly had a tense phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which he criticised what he saw as overly optimistic assumptions about the war in Iran.According to an Axios report, Vance questioned Netanyahu’s confidence about the likelihood of regime change. A US official told the outlet, “Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements,” referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
