The Iran War has nothing to do with Epstein

With war comes conspiracy. Back in 1991, those claiming to be in the know argued that the first Gulf War was all about oil. ‘If Iraq grew carrots, America would not be interested’, they told anyone who cared to listen. Yet this simplistic reasoning seems positively intellectual when compared to the popular explanation for the current war in the Middle East. ‘Iran has been bombed to distract us all from the Epstein files’, is the line now being delivered with a conspiratorial wink.

Saturday Night Live, the popular American sketch show, kicked off last weekend’s episode with a skit featuring President Trump, played by comedian James Austin Johnson. ‘As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for like the last 15 years or something, so we had to act now’, Johnson deadpans. Then he concludes: ‘War, what is it good for? Distracting from the Epstein files!’ Funny? Perhaps. Yet it is not just comedians who hold this view.

Republican representative Thomas Massie has taken to X with his own public-service announcement: ‘Bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files go away.’ Massie is echoing Christopher S Chivvis, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has claimed in the Guardian that Trump is gambling on attention-grabbing explosions shifting the news agenda away from Epstein and tariffs. ‘The strikes function as a classic “diversionary war”’, he wrote, ‘an attempt to hijack the global narrative and drown out domestic scandal with the thunder of cruise missiles’. British American journalist Mehdi Hasan concurs: ‘It’s 100 per cent true that Epstein is a factor in all this.’ Is it ‘Operation Epic Fury [the American military’s codename for its attack on Iran] or Operation Epstein Distraction?’, ponders an Australian publication.

It’s easy to see the attraction of the Epstein explanation. Those propagating this theory can forget about understanding geopolitical tensions and instead point the finger at today’s devil incarnate. As the Epstein files have dominated news coverage, the financier has moved from being a wealthy and influential paedophile to an omnipotent monster sitting atop a global network of power and perversion. Mere mention in the Epstein files is enough for people to be, at a stroke, tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion. As far as Trump is concerned, a lack of damning pictures or messages is not evidence of his innocence but of cover-ups and corruption. And, by this logic, Trump is now desperate to make the world look the other way so no questions are asked about his (non-incriminating) relationship with Epstein.

As a distraction strategy, bombing Iran is quite the dead cat. But, according to today’s conspiracy theorists, this is exactly why the world now totters on the brink of global conflict. There are just a few flaws in this explanation for war.

First off, the need for Israel to defend itself against Iran is overlooked. Rallying around the slogan ‘Death to Israel’, the Iranian theocracy has not only launched its own military attacks on the world’s only Jewish State, but also funded and trained proxy terrorist organisations, including Hamas and Hezbollah, to wage the murderous insurgency that began on 7 October 2023. The war in Gaza may have come to an end, but Israel cannot be at peace while the Iranian government is intent on its annihilation. It is not a surprise that America should come to the aid of Israel, and nor is it simply convenient timing for Trump. Suggesting war on Iran is all about Trump distracting US citizens from his own woes overlooks Israel’s fight for survival against hostile Iranian forces.

Second, presenting the war in the Middle East as a massive Trump tantrum writes brave Iranian protesters out of the story. Over the past few months, tens of thousands of Iranian citizens have been slaughtered at the hands of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, including women who have been killed just for showing their hair in public. Whether Iranians will be successful in bringing about regime change remains to be seen, but it would be terrible for their role in undermining the rule of the ayatollahs to be ignored.

Third, the focus on Trump ignores the global context of America’s decision to bomb Iran. For all the talk of multipolarity, the US remains the world’s military hegemon. As a display of strength, the attack on Iran sends a warning shot not just to Russia and China but also to insurgent Islamist powers. And it pushes reticent European nations to pick a side and wake up to the reality of modern conflict.

It is fanciful to think that the war in the Middle East is simply a distraction from the Epstein files. The conspiracy theorists might like an easy explanation for the conflict, but in making it all about Trump’s emotions, they erase geopolitical tensions, repeated attacks on Israel and the bravery of the Iranian protesters. They cannot be allowed to get away with this.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. Follow her on Substack: cieo.substack.com.