Former Informal Trump Adviser Wants U.S. to Carry Out Preemptive Strikes on Iran

Says Israel may have to go it alone with its Samson Option, which a Fox News host promoted

Mike Evans, a former informal Evangelical adviser to President Donald Trump on Israel and founder of Friends of Zion, penned an op-ed calling on the U.S. to carry out preemptive strikes on Iran before it obtains a nuclear weapon — or Israel may have “to do the unthinkable and authorize the Samson Option.”

Evans’s column was titled “America Needs to Bomb Iran,” and was published in The Jerusalem Post. His argument sounds like it could have been written by Sens. Tom Cotton or Lindsey Graham, who have been begging for war with Iran.

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He imagined Iran with a nuclear bomb and compared it to Adolph Hitler obtaining a nuclear bomb during WWII.

“If the US continues to appease Iran with what they call a proportional response, Israel will be forced into an apocalyptic dilemma. How do you stop Iran from wiping Israel off the map with a nuclear bomb? It could be that Israel will be forced to do the unthinkable and authorize the Samson Option against Iran as a preemptive strike on Iran to save the State of Israel, in a decision similar to President Harry Truman's move to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, and three days later on Nagasaki, to help end World War II.” 

Fox News’s Mark Levin made similar comments earlier in the war.

Levin hinted that Israel may consider going nuclear during an interview on the cable channel if it finds itself on the losing end of a multi-front war with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. 

The Jewish conservative asked his colleagues what Israel should do since it would be unable to win a conventional war against these militaries. He repeated Ben Shapiro’s comment that Hezbollah has 100,000+ missiles pointed at Israel. Shapiro, who is also Jewish, has been on a war footing calling for Israel to smash Hamas at nearly all costs.   

Levin imagined a scenario where Israel faced defeat: “What are they going to do?” 

“I think I know what they’d do. I know what we [the U.S.] would do, we would destroy the enemy, because otherwise we’re exterminated. That’s all I have to say.”

Levin, who was heated during the interview, said, “If Israel is going to face annihilation, you think they have those nukes in there to collect dust?”

Israel does not have to play by the same rules as other countries in the region because of U.S. support. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has not signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In 2022, The UNGA voted 152-5 (24 abstentions) to call on Israel to get rid of the nuclear weapons it never officially recognized. Germany, France, and the U.K. abstained from voting. BRICs like Russia, South Africa, Brazil, China, all voted in favor of the resolution. So did Ukraine, which sparked some online backlash after Israelis took to social media noting how Kyiv has demanded aid from Israel “while at the same time voting against it at the UN.”

Evans, who The Times of Israel said was one of Trump’s informal group of evangelical advisers, imagined how to stop the risk of a nuclear Iran.

There's only one way this can be prevented, and that is if the US courageously has a preemptive strike on Iran itself, destroying all the oil refineries and ports for shipping. This could be done over a very short period. Iran would have minimal capability to confront the US. If they attempted to do so, the US has the power to bomb Iran into the Stone Age, and they know that.  

In essence, the US could, in 72 hours, bankrupt Iran by destroying its ports and oil refineries.

Evans evidently soured on Trump. In 2022, he sent an essay to the Washington Post, “"Donald Trump can't save America. He can't even save himself. He used us to win the White House. We had to close our mouths and eyes when he said things that horrified us. I cannot do that anymore”