At first, I was furious that America seemed to be taking orders from Israel about attacking Iran. America and Israel have frequently worked together, but they are separate countries with different interests, and each should NEVER take orders from the other. Israel believes Iran poses an existential threat to it and will go to any length to attack Iran. America and Iran should be natural allies working together against Russia, Israel, and the Arab states (as was the case before the Iranian Revolution in 1979). For Netanyahu to leverage American money, arms, and especially American soldiers' lives against Iran - FOR FREE! - was an amazing, disturbing development.
But Netanyahu and the Israeli Right misjudged Trump. I suspect Trump decided to attack Iran for completely feral reasons: the Iranian regime was weak after last year's war. Following internal strife last January, the Iranian regime probably looked like it could be brutalized out of existence. Trump wanted a cheap, easy victory for Republicans to take to the American midterm elections in November.
Netanyahu and his people thought Trump was a true believer in their cause. Trump is a true believer, of course, but only in himself, and certainly not in any Israeli cause. As soon as Iran made the easy victory costly, Trump began looking for ways to discard the Israelis.
This war is a very-costly mistake for Netanyahu. Iran will emerge from the war strengthened, not weakened, and certainly not destroyed. Israeli elections are coming in October. These days, constant war is the only thing keeping prosecutors from putting Netanyahu in prison. Netanyahu has little time left to readjust.
The war will be costly for America. A peace deal comes too late to prevent a massive rise in the cost of gasoline. For the moment, Trump skates (although other Republicans may not).
In America, the neoconservatives are getting their asses handed to them. It makes me smile. They need to learn the hard truth. America and Israel are separate countries with different interests, and each should NEVER take orders from the other!:
The defining trait of neoconservative thought is a near-boundless faith in the efficacy of U.S. military power. This faith caused the neocons to recoil in from the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. A tougher president, they believed, would have used the threat of American might to make Iran accept much stricter terms.
...When Trump’s 2025 bombing campaign failed to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat, they decided a more extensive military campaign would force the country to make concessions. The campaign has come, but the concessions have not.
...Another mistake the neocons made was to misjudge Trump. The president may have appeared to share their goals, given his frequently expressed contempt for the Obama administration’s handling of the issue. But the reason Trump hated Obama’s nuclear deal is that it was made by Obama, a figure he regards with a pathological mix of envy and racial disgust.
...While the neoconservative impetus to prevent a nuclear Iran is rooted in a hatred and fear of its radical government, Trump has never held an ideological grudge against a foreign power. His geopolitical vision is personal. To the extent that a country’s authoritarian character factors into his assessment, it is generally a plus.
By suppressing mass protests and then outmaneuvering Trump at the negotiating table, the Iranian regime began to elevate itself into the same category as Russia, China, North Korea, and other “strong” dictatorships that he admires. “I never cared about regime change,” he said yesterday at the G7 summit. “We’re dealing with people that I think are very rational people,” Trump said of the Iranian leadership. “They were nice to deal with. They were strong people, smart people.”
If Iran’s rulers are so rational and nice, one wonders why their potential acquisition of a nuclear weapon would so concern the United States. Indeed, Trump floated the notion that seizing Iran’s nuclear material no longer mattered very much. “You could make the case, why even bother?” he mused, adding, “It’s not very valuable stuff.”
Despite his boasts, Trump has never been a brilliant dealmaker. His specialty is finding ways to strip out short-term value while foisting long-term costs on others, while manipulating public opinion so that he can always find a new round of suckers. Nothing about this skill set suggested an ability or even a willingness to tackle a problem such as Iran’s nuclear ambitions, especially if doing so imposed extended costs. As soon as it became clear that he would not enjoy a quick and cheap victory, Trump’s calculation was always going to be that expensive gasoline is his problem, and a future nuclear-armed Iran is somebody else’s.
No comments:
Post a Comment