At first I thought the fighting between Trump and Netanyahu was another ruse of the sort that was acted out right before Operation Midnight Hammer. Now I'm not too sure.
I voted for Trump 3 times, but I'm also firmly on Israel's side here. They don't need our permission to attack Iran after being attacked -- yet again -- by Hezbolleh.
Let's put Iran out of its misery. A "deal" we've waited weeks for can only be a bad one for Israel and for America.
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From The Times of Israel today, 6-8-26
Trump seeks to tie Netanyahu’s hands, as the partnership that went to war 100 days ago collapses.
Telling Israel it had better not respond to an Iranian missile attack, the US president — desperate for a deal with the devilish Tehran regime — presented the PM with a stark dilemma
By David Horovitz
One hundred days after they went to war together to thwart Iran’s
rogue nuclear weapons program, radically degrade its ballistic missile
industry, end its support for the Hezbollah and Hamas terror armies, and
create the conditions for the fall of the regime, the US-Israel
alliance against the Islamic Republic on Sunday reached its nadir.
With its north battered relentlessly by Hezbollah in recent weeks,
Israel resorted to a largely symbolic strike on the terror group’s
Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut, reportedly without telling the
disapproving Trump administration ahead of time that it was doing so.
And, as it had warned it would, Iran responded by firing about 10
missiles at northern Israel — again sending that sector of the country
rushing to bomb shelters, though causing no injuries or damage.
But as Israel prepared to “respond forcefully” against Iran, in the
words of an unnamed senior Israeli official, US President Donald Trump
ordered it to think again.
Before he had even spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his
partner of 100 days ago, the president was telling his favorite Israeli
journalist, Barak Ravid, that Israel had better not hit back: “I am
going to call Bibi right now and tell him not to retaliate,” Trump vouchsafed. “Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one.”
Trump has repeatedly denied claims that Netanyahu dragged him and the
United States into the war. But he has made it increasingly clear that
he is desperate to end the inadequately planned campaign, even with none
of the declared US-Israeli goals achieved. He’s still insisting that he
is holding out for terms that will ensure the regime never gets nuclear
weapons, but there’s no guarantee of that in the leaked drafts
of the memorandum of understanding he’s been working toward. And his
overriding priority is to get the Strait of Hormuz reliably open again
and alleviate the global energy chaos that Tehran has proved so adept at
creating.
Even as Iran was firing on the north, Trump was asserting for the
umpteenth time that he is days away from a deal with the manifestly
obdurate and duplicitous regime: “I would say an agreement would be
signed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of this coming week,” the US
president claimed. “And now this takes place,” he groused.
Trump’s “don’t retaliate” demand left Netanyahu with a stark choice. He
could indeed surrender to the presidential diktat and hold his fire,
destroying more of Israel’s deterrent capability against a gloating,
triumphant Tehran, rendering Israel weak in the eyes of the region,
sorely undermining its foundational independence, and enfeebling
himself politically a few months before elections. Or he could defy the
US president and embark on what would almost certainly turn into an
escalating war with Iran in which Israel could find itself quite alone.
But as Israel prepared to “respond forcefully” against Iran, in the
words of an unnamed senior Israeli official, US President Donald Trump
ordered it to think again.
Before he had even spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his
partner of 100 days ago, the president was telling his favorite Israeli
journalist, Barak Ravid, that Israel had better not hit back: “I am
going to call Bibi right now and tell him not to retaliate,” Trump vouchsafed. “Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one.”
Trump has repeatedly denied claims that Netanyahu dragged him and the
United States into the war. But he has made it increasingly clear that
he is desperate to end the inadequately planned campaign, even with none
of the declared US-Israeli goals achieved. He’s still insisting that he
is holding out for terms that will ensure the regime never gets nuclear
weapons, but there’s no guarantee of that in the leaked drafts
of the memorandum of understanding he’s been working toward. And his
overriding priority is to get the Strait of Hormuz reliably open again
and alleviate the global energy chaos that Tehran has proved so adept at
creating.
Even as Iran was firing on the north, Trump was asserting for the
umpteenth time that he is days away from a deal with the manifestly
obdurate and duplicitous regime: “I would say an agreement would be
signed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of this coming week,” the US
president claimed. “And now this takes place,” he groused.
Trump’s “don’t retaliate” demand left Netanyahu with a stark choice. He
could indeed surrender to the presidential diktat and hold his fire,
destroying more of Israel’s deterrent capability against a gloating,
triumphant Tehran, rendering Israel weak in the eyes of the region,
sorely undermining its foundational independence, and enfeebling
himself politically a few months before elections. Or he could defy the
US president and embark on what would almost certainly turn into an
escalating war with Iran in which Israel could find itself quite alone.
More than 35 years ago, under Netanyahu’s generally intransigent
Likud prime ministerial predecessor Yitzhak Shamir, Israel agreed to
hold fire when it came under missile attack — Scud missile attack by
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. But that was to avoid fracturing president George
H. Bush’s US-led coalition, including many Middle Eastern nations, bent
on taking down a tyrannical aggressor, not accommodating one.
First reports
on the Sunday night call, again from Ravid, suggested that Netanyahu
tried in vain to overcome Trump’s opposition to an Israeli
counterstrike, and that the US believed Netanyahu would not order a
retaliatory attack in the near future. First reports, it turned out soon
afterward, did not tell the full story.
Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States,
speculated that Netanyahu might also have sought Trump’s support for an
“under-the-radar” attack on Iran for which Israel would not claim credit
or, alternatively, some kind of tangible benefit for its restraint,
perhaps in the shape of America’s B-2 stealth bombers, uniquely capable
of pounding Iran’s underground nuclear facilities in a future hour of
need. The prime minister might also have sought to try, once again, to
talk Trump out of the kind of lousy deal he is working toward, under
which Iran can reliably expect to stave off any substantive compromise
on its nuclear weapons drive.
But all of that seemed unlikely. Netanyahu was facing a president who has not disputed calling him “fucking crazy”
last week and telling him that everybody hates him and hates Israel. A
president whose domestic political needs require anything but an
escalation. A president in a pretty bad mood
A key question now is whether the regime is feeling so bullish, so
emboldened, as to overplay its hand even against a US president so
blatantly desirous of a settlement. Could Iran, that is, so frustrate
Trump as to compel him, against his will, to do what he ordered
Netanyahu not to do, and revive the military campaign?
On past and current performance, the Islamic Republic is too canny to
make that mistake. Which leaves a frustrated American president playing
the supplicant to a duplicitous Iran, with Israel in the middle.
In another of his Sunday interviews, with the Financial Times,
Trump said that if he couldn’t reach a deal with Tehran, he might
either “go in and take care of the rest of the place that we didn’t take
care of militarily,” or maintain the current blockade.
But he was certain about one thing: Netanyahu would have to accept
any deal he agreed with the regime. “He won’t have any choice,” Trump
said of Netanyahu. “I call the shots. I call all the shots.”
Not in Iran, he doesn’t.
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