Rhetorical Diffusion and Policy Latency: Tracing AIPAC Influence in US–Iran Relations (2010–2026)

ABSTRACT

How do domestic interest groups shape the transition from diplomatic agreements to kinetic warfare? This research article addresses the methodological stagnation in foreign policy analysis by introducing a computational text‐as‐data pipeline to systematically quantify lobbying influence. Analyzing a master corpus of more than 31,000 documents spanning January 2010 through early 2026, we track the diffusion of escalatory rhetoric from the pro‐Israel lobby into the United States government regarding Iran. Drawing on Dynamic Topic Modeling, N‐gram alignment, and periodized Granger causality, the study operationalizes lobbying influence as a measurable information subsidy. The empirical results reveal substantial institutional divergence: while the Executive Branch remains insulated from the lobby's lagged predictive influence, Congress operates as a permeable amplifier of escalatory framing. As geopolitical conditions deteriorate, the lobby emerges as a statistically robust leading indicator—in the Granger sense of temporal precedence—for legislative securitization. By supplying prepackaged, militarized vocabulary used to interpret the crisis, the lobby precedes the legislature in the rhetorical sequence and helps shape a permissive environment for the President's unilateral initiation of the February 2026 regional war. We are careful to distinguish temporal precedence from full structural causation and to discuss the role of concurrent exogenous shocks.