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The Iraq-War Veterans, the Clean Break, and the Road to Iran

Many Americans remember the Iraq war: the promise of weapons of mass destruction that were never found, of a quick war that lasted eight years, of a grateful region that became a disaster. About 4,500 American service members died. What fewer people know is that the Iraq war and the Iran war were planned by overlapping people, from overlapping documents, and that Iran was named as a target from the start. This page traces that line.

1996: "A Clean Break," written for Netanyahu​

In 1996, when Benjamin Netanyahu first became Israel's prime minister, a group of American neoconservatives wrote him a strategy paper titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. Its lead author was Richard Perle, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense; Douglas Feith, who would become the Pentagon's Under Secretary for Policy, was a co-author. As one summary puts it, the document called for Israel to "Abandon Oslo Peace Process," "Destabilize Syria," "Remove Saddam Hussein," and "Roll back Iran" — and then checked off the list: "Iraq invaded 2003. Syria destabilized 2011. Assad fell December 2024. Iran bombed today" (@danksterintel on X, March 5, 2026). The New York Times summarized the paper in 2003: "Douglas Feith advised Netanyahu, who was prime minister in 1996, to make 'a clean break' from the Oslo accords with the Palestinians. They also argued that Israeli security would be served best by regime change in surrounding countries" (Ian Buruma, as quoted by Veiled Empire on X, June 25, 2024). A forum summary makes the obvious point: "two former high-level DoD officials advised a leader of a FOREIGN COUNTRY with a plan for the US to invade ANOTHER country. Then one of those people became a DoD official again, and the US promptly invaded that country a couple years later" (Kotaku In Action 2 forum). See also Deep State: the Clean Break memo.

1997 to 1998: the Project for the New American Century​

The Clean Break "foreshadowed the intentions developed by the 'Project for the New American Century' (PNAC)," founded in 1997 by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, which advocated "benevolent global hegemony" and regime changes in the Middle East (Veiled Empire). On January 26, 1998, PNAC sent a letter urging President Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein. John Bolton signed it. See Deep State: Neoconservatives and PNAC.

2002: Netanyahu names Iran next​

On September 12, 2002, Netanyahu, then a private citizen, testified to a House committee: "If you take out Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." And: "we're benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq. Obviously, we'd like to see a regime change. At least I would in Iran, just as I would like to see in Iraq." (see Netanyahu's 2002 testimony).

Inside the Pentagon, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson says, the officials pushing for Iraq, Feith and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, received Mossad officers who "did not need any identification" (see Wilkerson). An unnamed speaker in a widely shared 2023 video put the sequence bluntly: "Wolfowitz as undersecretary of defense manipulated President Bush, number two, back into Iraq. They pushed definitely, definitely to try and get Bush before he left to move into Iran" (Wall Street Apes on X, October 13, 2023). General Wesley Clark later described a Pentagon memo listing seven countries to take out in five years, ending with Iran (see the Pentagon's list of wars).

2025 and 2026: the same roster​

  • John Bolton, who signed the 1998 letter and backed the 2003 war, wrote on June 22, 2025: "President Trump did the right thing for America in striking Iran's nuclear-weapons program. Now, on to regime change." (Bolton on X). Before the 2026 war he told NPR about "the risks of Iran regime change" while still backing it (NPR, February 26, 2026).
  • Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading supporter of the Iraq war, introduced a 2024 resolution, S.J.Res.106, "specifically authorizing force if Iran possessed weapons-grade uranium or a warhead" (@sith_lord_bane on X, September 22, 2026), and said of the 2026 war, "We're going to make a ton of money" (see Lindsey Graham).
  • The same institutions. John Cusack listed the network he said sold both wars: the American Enterprise Institute (Richard Perle, John Bolton, Michael Ledeen); FDD; the Washington Institute; PNAC (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams); AIPAC; United Against Nuclear Iran (Bolton, Joseph Lieberman); and Christians United for Israel. He quoted Ledeen's doctrine: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." His verdict: "The blood lust to attack Iran has never been about nuclear weapons... The same players who sold the Iraq war." (Cusack on X, June 19, 2025).

What the scholars concluded​

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy that pro-Israel advocacy "played a major role in dragging the U.S. into the Iraq war" (as summarized by Brandon Aceto, @apocalypseos on X, July 5, 2025). Aceto: "The same playbook is being used with Iran today." In March 2025, Mearsheimer detailed "the efforts of the Zionist lobby to start a war with Iran" (Reddit video post, March 11, 2025), and after the war began he described "how Israeli influence and the Israel lobby pushed the U.S. into their war with Iran" (If Americans Knew on X, March 25, 2026).

The Iraq war took the first name off the list. The Iran war is the last.

Status: Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, John Bolton, Benjamin Netanyahu, Michael Ledeen, Elliott Abrams, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, and John Cusack are alive. Donald Rumsfeld — Deceased (2021). Dick Cheney — Deceased (2025). Joseph Lieberman — Deceased (2024). Their advocacy is legal. Lindsey Graham: Unknown (several July 2026 posts and one Tablet Magazine column report his death; not confirmed by a primary source in this record).

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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