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Pentagon Plan for Greater Israel's List of Wars

If you are here because you heard the United States is bombing Iran, start with this: Iran was the last name on a Pentagon list drawn up a few weeks after 9/11. A retired four-star general, Wesley Clark, former commander of NATO's forces in Europe, said on camera in 2007 that a general at the Pentagon told him about a memo from the Secretary of Defense's office describing "how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran" (Democracy Now, March 2, 2007).

Twenty-five years later, look at the list. The United States invaded Iraq (2003) and bombed Libya (2011). It has bombed Somalia since 2007 and struck Syria, whose government fell in December 2024. Israel fought in Lebanon in 2006 and 2024 and now occupies its south. Sudan was split in two and brought into a normalization deal with Israel. And Iran, the last name, was bombed in June 2025 and has been at war with the United States and Israel since February 28, 2026. The five-year timetable slipped. The list did not. For an American family the point is simple: the war now under way was on paper in Washington a generation ago, and the last country on the list is the one that would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to conquer.

Clark's memo has never been released, but the government's own records back him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's memo to President Bush of September 30, 2001, declassified in 2011, says: "If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim," and calls for "New regimes in Afghanistan and another key State (or two)," "Syria out of Lebanon," and allies to be made of "Iraqis, Lebanese, Sudanese" against their governments (National Security Archive). Asked in 2008 which of the six other regimes on Clark's list were in that Rumsfeld paper, Rumsfeld's policy chief Douglas Feith answered: "All of them" (Inter Press Service, May 5, 2008).

Why this section is called Greater Israel's list of wars: the same targets were written down for Israel before they were written down in the Pentagon. A 1982 Israeli strategy essay called the "dissolution of Syria and Iraq" "Israel's primary target on the Eastern front." A 1996 paper written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Americans who in 2001 ran Pentagon policy called removing Saddam Hussein "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right," and urged confronting Syria and Iran. In 2002 Netanyahu told the U.S. Congress under oath that toppling Saddam would bring "enormous positive reverberations on the region," with Iran and Libya expected to "implode" next (House hearing transcript, September 12, 2002). Israel's leaders told Washington that "Iraq is not the enemy — Iran is the enemy." The list begins inside the Greater Israel map and ends with Israel's top enemy. This section lays out the evidence.

In this section

Words you will see in this section

Greater Israel: the Hebrew Eretz Yisrael HaShlema, "the Whole Land of Israel": an Israel with borders larger than today's, in its widest form "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates" (Genesis 15:18). See Greater Israel.
The Pentagon, "upstairs," the Joint Staff: the Pentagon is the headquarters of the U.S. military. "Upstairs" is the civilian leadership: the Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld in 2001) and his deputies. The Joint Staff is the uniformed staff that serves the top general, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Regime change: overthrowing a country's government by force or pressure. "Take out" a country, in the memo's words.
Neoconservatives ("neocons"): the group of American officials and writers, many linked to the Project for the New American Century, who pushed after the Cold War for using U.S. military power to remake the Middle East. Clark called their takeover of policy after 9/11 "a policy coup."
Yinon Plan: a 1982 Hebrew essay by Oded Yinon arguing Israel should want its Arab neighbors broken into small states.
A Clean Break: a 1996 strategy paper for Netanyahu by a study group of Americans led by Richard Perle.
PNAC: the Project for the New American Century, a Washington think tank (1997–2006) that urged removing Saddam Hussein.
Office of Special Plans (OSP): a Pentagon policy unit under Douglas Feith that built its own case for the Iraq war.
AIPAC: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the main pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

The general's story

About ten days after 9/11, Clark visited the Pentagon, saw Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz upstairs, and went down to the Joint Staff. A general there told him, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq," with "nothing new" linking Iraq to al-Qaeda: "we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military, and we can take down governments." A few weeks later, while the U.S. was bombing Afghanistan, the same officer picked up a paper he had "just got ... down from upstairs" listing seven countries. Clark refused to read it because it was classified, and he has never named the officer. Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 hijackers, was not on the list; none of the seven had anything to do with 9/11.

Read more: The post-9/11 Pentagon country list, and the full scene on The Democracy Now interview.

He has told it for 23 years

Clark first put the story in print in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars ("a five-year campaign plan ... a total of seven countries"), defended it on NBC's Meet the Press ("They wanted to use the conventional power of the United States armed forces to take down states"), told it at the University of Alabama in 2006, on Democracy Now and CNN in 2007, and at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club in October 2007, where he called it "a policy coup" by "Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld and ... a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for a New American Century." He says he first heard the idea in 1991 from Wolfowitz: "We've got five, maybe 10, years to clean up these old Soviet surrogate regimes like Iraq and Syria." In 2025 he praised the U.S. strikes on Iran, and in September 2026 he retold the story to Mehdi Hasan: "I also knew that we'd been scheming to find a reason to invade and finish off Saddam Hussein." The witness changed sides on Iran; his story never changed.

When, where, and who

The first conversation was "on or about the 20th of September" 2001, the same day the Project for the New American Century urged President Bush to remove Saddam "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack." The second came after the bombing of Afghanistan began on October 7, in November by Clark's book. By then Rumsfeld had already written, on the afternoon of 9/11, "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not," and sent the President his "new regimes" memo. The officer was "a man with three stars who used to work for me," on the Joint Staff, whose director, Gen. John Abizaid, had just called Rumsfeld's regime-change paper "an exceptionally important memo." Upstairs, the policy office was run by Douglas Feith and staffed by men who had written Israel's 1996 strategy paper.

What the plan was called

No code name has been released. Clark called it "a five-year campaign plan" and "a policy coup"; his book tied it to what officials called "draining the swamp." Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who says he saw the planning, calls it "the clean break strategy," after the 1996 paper for Netanyahu. On X it is simply "the Greater Israel project."

The records that back him up

Rumsfeld's own September 30, 2001 memo sought "new regimes" and named four of the seven countries; Feith said all six were in it. Wilkerson: "I had a security clearance and I did see it and what he said is basically correct." A retired colonel at U.S. Central Command says the command's intelligence staff "was given a list of 5 countries as candidates on where to go after AFG almost immediately," five countries that were on Clark's list. The White House said the June 2025 strikes on Iran came from "15+ years of meticulous planning." No Pentagon or White House denial of the memo has ever been found.

The clip seen by millions

The 2007 clip resurfaces every time a country on the list is hit. WikiLeaks' repost drew about 2.6 million views; a post on the day Syria fell ("NEXT UP: IRAN") about 1.7 million; a Jeffrey Sachs monologue on the list 800,000. China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Theo Von, and Mehdi Hasan have all brought it to large audiences.

What happened to each country

Iraq was invaded in 2003 on claims that proved false. Syria's regime was attacked for thirteen years and fell in 2024; Israel now holds Mount Hermon and a "security zone." Lebanon has been hit by Israel again and again and is occupied in the south. Libya's government was destroyed by a U.S. and NATO air war in 2011. Somalia has been bombed by the United States since January 2007. Sudan was split in 2011 and normalized with Israel in 2020. Iran, last, is at war. The country pages go deeper on each.

Was it Israel's plan?

Clark named Americans. The Americans he named had written Israel's strategy first. Israel's leaders publicly pushed the Iraq war in 2002 (Sharon called Iraq Israel's "greatest danger"), told Washington the real enemy was Iran, and wanted Syria to "bleed." An Iran analyst in the very office the memo came from pleaded guilty to passing classified Iran policy to AIPAC officials. Economist Jeffrey Sachs: "Israel has run American foreign policy in the Middle East for 30 years ... We've had six of those seven wars."

The map and the ring

The seven are not a border map; they are a security map. Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the first three, sit inside every Nile-to-Euphrates map of Greater Israel; Jordan and Egypt, also inside it, are left off because they had already made peace with Israel. Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran are the hostile ring beyond the map, ending with Israel's top enemy. As Jeremy Scahill put it in 2026: "The Iran war is the apex of the Israeli agenda to build a Greater Israel."

Soldiers for the last country

Iran cannot be taken from the air. Wilkerson has estimated for years that overthrowing its government would take 500,000 to a million American troops and "a draft in other words." An August 2026 column in the Jerusalem Post put the figure at "between 750 thousand and 1.5 million American troops." Israel does not send its infantry. In 2026 the Pentagon drew up ground options for a "final blow," moved 82nd Airborne paratroopers toward Iran, and sent a company to Israel to plan "seizing Iranian-controlled Kharg Island ... and carving out coastal territory inside Iran."

The documents behind the list

Four documents written before 9/11 lay out the same targets. They are gathered in the documents cluster, with a page for each.

The Yinon essay (1982). Oded Yinon, a journalist formerly attached to Israel's Foreign Ministry, wrote in a World Zionist Organization journal that the "dissolution of Syria and Iraq" was "Israel's primary target on the Eastern front," and expected Libya and Sudan to break apart too: five of the seven countries on the Pentagon list, nineteen years before it. Read more: The Yinon Plan (1982)

A Clean Break (1996). A study group led by Richard Perle, with David Wurmser as principal author and Douglas Feith as a participant, wrote "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" for Netanyahu's new government: remove Saddam, "an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right"; roll back Syria; confront Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran in Lebanon. Five years later Perle chaired the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, Feith ran its policy office, and Wurmser worked for him. Read more: A Clean Break (1996)

PNAC (1998–2001). The Project for the New American Century asked President Clinton in 1998 to make removing Saddam "the aim of American foreign policy"; Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz signed. Its 2000 report said transformation would be slow "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." On September 20, 2001 it told President Bush to remove Saddam "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack." Read more: PNAC and the new Pearl Harbor

The Office of Special Plans (2002–2003). Feith's policy office built its own case linking Iraq to al-Qaeda, which the Pentagon's Inspector General later found "inappropriate." The Guardian reported the office had close ties to an intelligence cell in Ariel Sharon's office, and Israelis were "waved in on Mr Feith's authority." Read more: The Office of Special Plans

How strong is the evidence?

Claim	Rating	Page
Clark said on camera in 2007, and in print in 2003, that a Pentagon memo listed seven countries ending with Iran	CONFIRMED	Country list
Rumsfeld's office sought "new regimes" beyond Afghanistan in September 2001	CONFIRMED	Rumsfeld's memo
Rumsfeld's September 30, 2001 paper covered all six other countries on Clark's list (Feith: "All of them")	STRONG	Rumsfeld's memo
A seven-country memo existed in the Secretary of Defense's office in late 2001	STRONG	Other witnesses
Lawrence Wilkerson saw the same planning and calls it "the clean break strategy"	STRONG	Wilkerson
The Iraq decision was made in September 2001 with no evidence linking Iraq to 9/11	CONFIRMED	When and where
Six of the seven countries were later attacked by the U.S. or Israel; the seventh was split and normalized with Israel	CONFIRMED	Scorecard
U.S. war planning against Iran has run for "15+ years"	CONFIRMED	Iran planning
Israeli strategy papers of 1982 and 1996 named the core countries on the list	CONFIRMED	Documents
Netanyahu urged Congress under oath to topple Saddam, with Iran and Libya next	CONFIRMED	Netanyahu 2002
Israeli leaders pushed the Iraq war and named Iran the real enemy	CONFIRMED	Iraq first, Iran always
An Iran analyst in the office the memo came from passed Iran policy to AIPAC officials	CONFIRMED (guilty plea)	Israel inside the Pentagon
The list served Israel's strategic goal: the Greater Israel map plus its hostile ring, ending with Iran	STRONG	Map match
A ground war for the last country would require a draft	STRONG	Soldiers
Clark heard the same idea from Wolfowitz in 1991	MODERATE	Wolfowitz 1991
Israeli officers directed Pentagon staff during the June 2025 war (Carlson)	MODERATE	Israel inside the Pentagon

Status: Wesley Clark is alive. Benjamin Netanyahu is alive. Paul Wolfowitz is alive. Douglas Feith is alive. Richard Perle is alive. David Wurmser is alive. Lawrence Wilkerson is alive. Donald Rumsfeld is deceased (2021). Dick Cheney is deceased (2025). Nothing in this section states that any living person committed a crime beyond what a court has established.

Research captures: twitter/t01__v001.md through t08__v096.md (topics t01–t08, 99 files); twitter/t30__v349.md through t40__v480.md for the document and country pages.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

In this section​

Words you will see in this section​

The general's story​

He has told it for 23 years​

When, where, and who​

What the plan was called​

The records that back him up​

The clip seen by millions​

What happened to each country​

Was it Israel's plan?​

The map and the ring​

Soldiers for the last country​

The documents behind the list​

How strong is the evidence?​

Related Areas​