Trump’s Iran War Revives Israeli Plan to Remake Middle East that Drove Post-9/11 Invasions

President Donald Trump’s war on Iran resurrects a 30-year-old Israeli-American regime change doctrine that drove the post-9/11 invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and is part of a wider strategy to destabilise seven countries across the Middle East.

Byline Times can reveal that the network behind the 1996 ‘Clean Break’ strategy — originally drafted for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and subsequently executed through the Bush administration’s wars — has reorganised under a Washington-based organisation called the Vandenberg Coalition.

The latter holds ties to the Trump Cabinet and National Security Council, and has seen its policy recommendations translated into binding presidential executive orders.

The Vandenberg Coalition is a neoconservative foreign policy organisation founded by Elliott Abrams, Trump’s former Special Envoy for Iran and Venezuela.

The Coalition’s advisory board reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of individuals that have driven the case for regime change in Iran across three decades.

In its 2025 annual report, the Coalition claimed credit for shaping Trump’s Middle East policy, stating that it was “pleased to see some of our policy recommendations set as the course of action for US policy in the Middle East, including President Trump’s Executive Order ending funding to certain United Nations Organisations, including UNRWA”.

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The 1996 Israeli Policy Paper

The origins of the current confrontation with Iran can be traced to a single document. In 1996, a study group led by American neoconservatives — including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser — drafted a policy paper for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.

Prepared for the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS), the paper advocated a radical departure from the “land for peace” diplomatic frameworks of the post-Oslo Accords era. Instead it proposed that Israel, operating with unconditional US backing, should achieve permanent security by aggressively reshaping Middle East order through military interventions.

The strategy called for “regime change” starting with the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq as a vital Israeli strategic objective, followed by containment, destabilisation and rollback of Syria, Iran and potentially Lebanon through strategic alliances with countries like Turkey and Jordan.

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The PNAC Pipeline

Following the publication of ‘Clean Break’, its core arguments were adopted and amplified by a neoconservative think-tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

PNAC’s 1997 founding Statement of Principles — which called for the United States to “shape a new century favourable to American principles and interests” through pre-emptive war — was signed by both Elliott Abrams and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, alongside Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Paula Dobriansky, all of whom would become senior officials in the George W. Bush administration.

Abrams, Libby and Dobriansky now all sit within the Vandenberg Coalition’s leadership or advisory structure.

In 1998, PNAC sent an open letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The letter was co-signed by ‘Clean Break’ author Richard Perle alongside Abrams and Dobriansky, representing the convergence of the personnel who authored the original Israeli strategy with those who now lead the network advising Trump.

After 11 September 2001, the ‘Clean Break’ architects and PNAC principals moved into positions of direct power in the Bush administration. Douglas Feith served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where a Pentagon Inspector General report later found his office had produced false intelligence assessments on an Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship.

David Wurmser became Middle East Adviser to Vice President Cheney. Abrams served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs at the NSC. Libby served as Cheney’s Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President, attending nearly all NSC and Homeland Security Council meetings.

Eric Edelman — now a Vandenberg Coalition board member — succeeded Feith as Under Secretary of Defence for Policy in 2005.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was viewed by PNAC adherents not as an isolated counter-terrorism operation but as the first domino in a sequence intended to destabilise Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.

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The Vandenberg Coalition: A Generational Pipeline

When Trump left office in January 2021, Abrams established the Vandenberg Coalition as a hub to keep hawkish, pro-Israel foreign policy experts organised and prepared to reintegrate their strategies — and their personnel — into a second Trump term. The organisation’s executive director, Carrie Filipetti, had also served in the first Trump administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Cuba and Venezuela.

An examination of its advisory board by Byline Times reveals that the connections to the original ‘Clean Break’ network are extensive.

David Feith, the son of Douglas Feith — one of the principal “Clean Break” authors — serves on the Vandenberg Coalition’s advisory board. The younger Feith had also served in Trump’s first administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and in January 2025 was appointed as a senior director on Trump’s NSC, where he oversees national security and technology issues.

His father, Douglas Feith, continues to publish on Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, where he has co-authored work with fellow Vandenberg advisory board member Lewis Libby.

Libby — widely known as “Scooter” Libby — is himself a founding signatory of PNAC’s Statement of Principles and co-author of the 1992 Defence Policy Guidance. He served as Cheney’s Chief of Staff until his 2005 indictment on five felony counts relating to the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity; he was convicted on four counts before being pardoned by Trump in 2018. Libby is now a Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).

Jamieson Greer, confirmed by the Senate in February 2025 as the United States Trade Representative (USTR), is listed as an emeritus member of the Vandenberg Coalition’s advisory board after having moved to his cabinet-level position. Greer has emerged as the key architect of Trump’s tariff regime — economic instruments brought to bear as part of the maximum pressure strategy against Iran.

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The FDD and JINSA Nexus

The Vandenberg Coalition’s advisory board is interlocked with two of Washington’s most influential organisations advocating confrontation with Iran: the FDD and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a Vandenberg advisory board member and senior fellow at FDD, previously served as director of the Middle East Initiative at PNAC itself. A former CIA Directorate of Operations officer who targeted Iran, Gerecht has for more than two decades advocated regime change in Tehran.

John Hannah, another Vandenberg advisory board member, served as Cheney’s national security adviser from 2005 to 2009 — stepping directly into the role vacated by Libby after his indictment. Hannah holds simultaneous positions as a senior fellow at JINSA, where he sits on its Iran Task Force, and as senior counsellor at FDD. He has repeatedly called for regime change policy in Iran.

Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s chief executive who has advised the Trump administration on Iran, is also listed among the Vandenberg Coalition’s affiliated experts.

The Vandenberg Coalition, FDD and JINSA have also operated jointly on several anti-Iran initiatives.

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Direct Influence

In January 2025, precisely timed with the presidential transition, the Vandenberg Coalition released a 16-page framework titled “Deals of the Century: Solving the Middle East”. The report urged the incoming administration to “use all elements of national power” against Iran — framing the Islamic Republic as the greatest threat to American interests — while cementing Israel as the cornerstone regional ally.

The Coalition’s recommendations included the reinstatement of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, the maintenance of US troops in Iraq and Syria, the termination of funding to UNRWA and the expansion of the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. These proposals closely mirrored the administration’s immediate policy shifts upon taking office.

The Vandenberg Coalition is also running a targeted polling operation designed to reinforce hawkish foreign policy within Trump’s political coalition. Beginning in mid-2025, the organisation launched a series of monthly polls conducted by a Republican polling firm under the banner “Americans First Polling”.

The polls exclusively survey 2024 Trump voters to assess their attitudes toward national security and global affairs, and are aimed at providing a real-time feedback loop for the administration’s foreign policy messaging.

Polls conducted days after the US-Israeli bombing campaign, however, show that only 27% of Americans approve of Trump’s war.

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A Thirty-Year Doctrine Made Policy

The connection between the 1996 ‘Clean Break’ document and the current Trump administration suggests that the Israeli strategy taken up by Bush-era neoconservatives has had significant influence on the decision to launch a war with Iran.

The trajectory represents one of the most sustained and successful foreign policy influence operations in modern American history — and one that now appears to be driving the United States into a major regional war with no clear end in sight.

The Vandenberg Coalition and US State Department were contacted for comment.