The U.S. and Israel’s attack on Iran has formed a new “axis of evil,” according to Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf.
Rothkopf, a foreign policy analyst, said that when judged by the number of innocent deaths, illegal wars, and “war crimes” committed, the three men in this new axis are Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Vladimir Putin.
“There was a time, 20 odd years ago, when George W. Bush, in making his case for his war, got on television and said the United States faces...an ‘axis of evil’ in this world,” Rothkopf told The Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles.
Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union address, singled out Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as countries that were “arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
Rothkopf said that in 2026, amid Trump’s airstrikes on Iran, Putin’s four-plus-year war against Ukraine, and the destruction of Gaza under Netanyahu’s watch, there’s an argument that three of them are doing the same.
“I think a case can be made, if you’re looking at the number of innocent deaths, and the number of wars of choice that shouldn’t have been undertaken, the number of illegal wars, and the number of war crimes committed, that the new axis of evil contains Vladimir Putin, but it’s now also Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu,” Rothkopf said.
In Iran, for instance, a strike on a girls’ school killed at least 175 people, health officials and Iranian state media said, the New York Times reported. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the U.S. or Israel was responsible.
In Gaza, the Palestinian death toll as of last July was over 60,000, Palestinian health authorities said, with nearly one-third of victims under 18. The Israel Defense Forces also killed journalists and first responders. Multiple scholars have alleged genocide, and the International Criminal Court in 2024 issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in part for his alleged war crime of “starvation as a weapon of war.”
Meanwhile, Russian troops have attacked civilian targets like hospitals, spurring the ICC to issue arrest warrants for top Russian military officers. In 2023, the court did the same for Putin regarding child abductions. As of last January, the United Nations put the civilian death toll at over 12,300.
Rothkopf explained his reasoning further.
“If these are the countries that are attacking other countries illegally, producing deaths as a consequence of their policies, both in war and also policies like withholding food and aid from people around the world, are doing this recklessly, are doing this not to advance peace or national interests, but to advance the very, very narrow interests of the leaders of those countries, what they’re doing is fundamentally evil,” he said.
Trump, he added, has been motivated by several such interests, as has Netanyahu.
The two are “in the middle of a scandal,” Rothkopf said, referring to the Jeffrey Epstein saga and Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
“[Netanyahu] is also facing an election at the end of this year, which could cause him great political harm, and he also feels that conducting war outside of his country is the best way for him to remain in power,” Rothkopf said. “He also doesn’t care about casualties. He doesn’t care about the consequences of these things.”
So far, six U.S. service members have been killed by Iranian strikes. Trump ordered the attack after weeks of lobbying from Netanyahu, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported.
“And so this is the new axis of evil. It should be chilling for every American that we’re part of it,” Rothkopf said.
“Am I saying the U.S. military is part of that? Only because they are following the orders of the president of the United States, because they are waging this illegal war on behalf of the president. Am I saying the Congress, the enablers in Congress are part of it? Yes. Yeah, they are. They’re letting him get away with this.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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