Zero Motive: Dismantling the USS Liberty Myth
June 1967. Israel is surrounded by three armies. Why would they open fire on the only superpower that wasn't trying to destroy them? This is the question that dismantles the conspiracy surrounding the USS Liberty. Growing up in Iran, I was exposed to a lifetime’s worth of anti-Israel propaganda. I saw how narratives were engineered to fuel hatred rather than reflect reality. That experience gave me a distinct advantage: I know exactly what a manufactured conspiracy looks like. The story of the USS Liberty fits that pattern perfectly. The fiction suggests this was a deliberate act of war. The facts tell a different story. Let us look at the board. Israel was fighting an existential war on three fronts against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. These nations were backed by the Soviet Union. The United States was the only major power that stood as a potential counterweight to Soviet aggression in the region. To believe Israel attacked the Liberty on purpose, you must believe that the Israeli command made a conscious decision to attack their only ally while already outnumbered and outgunned. This is not strategy. It is national suicide. The deliberate attack theory suggests that Israel risked bringing the full military might of the United States down upon them in the middle of a war for survival. It implies they risked total diplomatic isolation and the end of US aid for a tactical objective that remains undefined to this day. In game theory, actors behave rationally to maximize their survival. There is no rational model where a tiny nation, fighting for its life, decides to provoke a superpower. Mistakes in war are common. Friendly fire is a statistical inevitability in high-speed mechanized conflict. Communications fail. People panic. Identities get confused. We see this in every major conflict. The reality of the USS Liberty is far more mundane than the conspiracy theorists want to admit. It was not a sinister plot. It was the fog of war. Israel had everything to lose and nothing to gain. When you remove the emotion and look at the calculus, the answer is clear. It was a terrible error, but it was an error.