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Your guide to what Trump’s second term for Washington, business and world means
The author is the author of ‘Black Wave’ and an FT contribution editor
In the hours after October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu promised a war that would “change the Middle East”. Almost two years later, the region looks very different. Admittedly, Netanyahu can win in Lebanon, where Hisbollah was decimated. As a by-product, the case of Bashar al-Assad next door was a great relief for Syrians. But Gaza is a pile of rubble with more than 50,000 Palestinian deaths and 53 Israelis, which are still captured.
Now he’s on his Next goal: Iran. It has become clear since Friday that the Israeli military campaign goes far beyond the nuclear program and the military goals. Netanyahu undoubtedly works to convince Donald Trump, to get involved and to achieve a knockout strike to the country’s theocratic regime.
But the Israeli Prime Minister has a dark recording when it comes to transforming military victories into long -term diplomatic successes, and an even worse recording of understanding the region around it. In the past 20 months, Netanyahu has consciously refused to win – be it the murder of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the ceasefire in Lebanon or the overtures from the new leaders of Syria. Instead, he continued to beat Lebanon at will and hit Syria, while the rest of the region actively helps both governments to stabilize and rebuild their nations. For an indefinite period, Israel has confiscated a demilized buffer zone of 400 m² in Syria in Syria.
The cruelest irony of the current moment is that Netanyahu was an Israeli diplomat in the USA 40 years ago at the height of the Iran Irak War, where he campaigned to sell weapons to Iran to avoid a comprehensive Iraqi victory. This war ended in a stalemate and the Islamic Republic survived.
Netanyahu did not play a central role in the Iranian scandal during the Reagan government, but his attitude shows a consistent policy to build enemies that he can later destroy. Israel helped build Hamas in order to weaken the organization of the Palestine exemption in the 1980s and to undermine the Palestinian authority in recent times. Netanyahu helped millions of dollars to Hamas until shortly before October 7th. Now Israel provides weapons and cash for gangs in Gaza to weaken Hamas. This contributes to the fact that no sustainable Palestinian state ever arises.
Netanyahu also misunderstood the region of its inability to grasp the true nature of Iranian theocracy in the 1980s, right up to his advocacy for the US invasion in the USA in Iraq from 2003. to raise their leaders. The opposite happened: it was a costly strategic catastrophe that enabled Tehran and unleashed years of sectarian bloodshed.
Today, only a few tears for an Iranian regime would shed out life millions of times and is responsible for the death of tens of thousands in the region – but Iranians are not waiting to be freed from Israel’s bombs. In a stranger way, Israel now seems to imitate the role of Iran – to stay on a reason for war, to build forward bases and sow chaos that are fueled by hybris and a feeling of impunity.
Alan Eyre, a former US diplomat who took part in earlier atomic negotiations with Iran, summarized it best: “This is Israel’s world and we are currently looking at it.” But this is not the world that Israel’s neighbors – or indeed many Israelis – want. The VAE and Saudi Arabia have followed Tehran Détente. They are concerned about chaos and the economic consequences and frustrated attempts from Israel’s persistent attempts to converted the region.
It may not even be what Washington wants. Trump campaigned for a promise not to do wars and wanted his “Nixon to China moment” with Iran. He may have committed a clever campaign from illusiondistract Iran with conversations while Israel was preparing, but Trump does not seem to have the discipline that is necessary for such a step. It is more likely that he has gathered behind Netanyah’s fait success, hoping that Iran could occur in difficult concessions.
Here the two men will probably deviate: where Netanyahu wants the Iranian surrender and even the change of regime, Trump said that he wanted a nuclear deal with Iran. The US President should be extremely careful when Netanyahus Sirenen call to make Iran and the Middle East great again, with just a few more strikes and then a few more.
It has a lot of awe about Israel’s spectacular opening strokes against Iran, and Mossad may have more tricks. But wars are judged how to come to the conclusion – and Netanyahu has shown that he does not know how to get war.
