If no one drops a nuclear device on somebody soon, we’ll enter a new phase in global politics. You know it; as everybody rides their high horse and pontificates about what has happened, what will happen and why.
Was the leak in the international media that U.S. President Donald Trump shouting at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aimed to fool Iran into thinking the U.S. would not allow Israel to attack? Is Trump’s (ambivalent, hesitant and indecisive) reaction to the Israeli airstrike on Iran’s nuclear program an attempt to steal a role from Netanyahu, or a free ride to bring the beaten mullahs to a quick agreement on curbing their nuclear program?
Who was lying: the White House when it insisted that Trump was not involved in Israel's military operation or Trump, as he said he was fully aware of plans for that “excellent” operation and “a lot more of that to come”?
Trump might be thinking that he could play a good cop-bad cop game with Netanyahu, but the embattled Israeli prime minister, internationally accused of the gravest war crimes in Gaza and a suspect in a fraud investigation in his country, is not even responding to Trump’s praises of the operation. He said, “More is on the way,” without addressing the issue of the sixth round of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks to be held this week in Muscat.
Netanyahu must have had the scheduled U.S.-Iran nuclear talks for Sunday in mind when he started the operation on Friday, because he never wanted Trump to succeed in having “a better deal with Iran in nuclear talks than former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.” But after the Israeli strikes on military and civilian targets, Iranian officials said nuclear talks with the U.S. were now meaningless, just as Netanyahu hoped for. Netanyahu seems to have never trusted Trump to have a deal with Iran while Iran was playing for time, for it had already achieved important milestones in producing not one but 10 nuclear bombs. Netanyahu found the 2015 JCPOA deal highly flawed and had Trump withdraw from it.
Israel had all the plans ready to destroy Iran’s nuclear program; it had even had the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declare that Iran was not complying with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations. By the way, this so-called U.N. watchdog on nuclear issues has never passed a resolution against any country in 20 years; it never inspected Israel, which has nuclear capability and atomic bombs but never acknowledged them; only a day before Israeli strikes on Iran, IAEA conveniently provided support to Israel’s claims that Iran was close to enrich enough uranium for nuclear weapons.
Israel’s allies, like Dan McLaughlin of the National Review, Michael McCaul, a Republican member of the House, and many others say, "Iran is the weakest link" and the U.S. should use the tools at its disposal, including support for its Israeli allies in defanging the Iranian nuclear program, to further weaken it.
However, Trump’s embracing an Israeli strike after arguing against it was enough to divide his political base. “Drop Israel” was the common cry of many Make America Great Again units all over America. They said, Netanyahu was driving the U.S. into Netanyahu’s military escalation with Iran, which would make Iran even more determined to pursue its nuclear program. MAGA thinks that Israel's endgame is a regime change in Iran, and the U.S. should have nothing to do with the “reshaping the world” plans of neo-cons and globalists. As Israel's attack on Iran could backfire on Netanyahu, Trump’s supporting him would destroy his support among those who voted for him because he acted as if he believed in the “America First” narrative. Besides, it is unclear how long the strikes will continue within Iranian territory, and what Netanyahu’s ultimate objective is; supporting Israel completely and unreservedly could lead Trump to ask the neo-cons to take over the responsibility in the U.S. diplomatic and security apparatus.
The liberal front has also been fearful that Trump would declare martial law against the continuing protests against his domestic policies. “Why would police shoot an unarmed journalist in front of the entire world?” asks Jessica Wildfire and says, “What we are afraid of happening is happening again.” CBS anchor Scott Pelley tears into Trump in a fiery commencement speech and warns graduates that journalism, universities and freedom of speech are “under attack” from the Trump administration. Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on Twitter that Israel’s attack was clearly intended to sabotage the Trump administration's negotiations with Tehran, and said, “It is further evidence of how little respect world powers – including our own allies – have for President Trump.”
Netanyahu has always wanted a broader war. He spoke to a joint session of Congress on July 10, 1996, and warned then that the deadline for stopping the nuclearization of Iran was getting extremely close. Netanyahu has been keeping his shirts and pants on since then. He suggested the creation of a “Third State” in the Middle East to shield the “People of Faith from the Infidels,” after his deeply affecting and convincing words, the U.S. Navy and Air Force conducted joint strikes against targets in southern Iraq, which finally dismembered Iraq and created the Autonomous Kurdish Region.
Netanyahu didn’t stop there: he returned to the U.S. Congress to ask to do the same thing in Syria. He succeeded again. Luckily, he had the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), also known as Rojava, which was created only waiting to be united with its Iraqi counterpart. However, Türkiye put a spanner in the works at this time, Iraqi Kurds rejected separation from the mainland and Syrian patriots took power and exiled the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who was ready to negotiate to dismember the country in exchange for U.S. support for his regime.
It was a significant setback for Netanyahu, and he had to take the matter into his own hands. He had to: Trump refused to play along with the U.S. neo-cons and global interventionists in their “nation-building” games. In fact, Trump, in his recent Middle East Tour, said, “The so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”
By the way, you remember that Trump didn’t even stop over in Israel in his visit to the region, and warned Netanyahu to stop mentioning an attack on Iran. Only last Monday, CNN broadcast that Trump told Netanyahu, in a telephone conversation, to end the war in Gaza and stop interfering with his talks with Iran. According to a source familiar with the conversation, Trump later said the call went “very well, very smooth.” Two weeks ago, Trump fired his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who was seen as an advocate for launching preemptive strikes on Iran.
Well! Apparently, things were not going “very well, very smoothly” for Netanyahu. He ignored Trump and started his own war. However, it still seems to be in Trump’s hands to prevent this war from growing into World War III.
