Over the last 20 months, in quick succession, Israel has subdued its enemies on all sides. Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Putin-backed Assad regime in Syria, and now Iran’s revolutionary mullahs in Tehran have all been defeated if not obliterated. Not all this has been Benjamin Netanyahu’s own doing—Bashar al-Assad’s fall was a function of Vladimir Putin’s catastrophe in Ukraine—but it has all rebounded to his advantage
Donald Trump has not only given carte blanche to Netanyahu to use his newfound regional invulnerability to wreak havoc in Iran. He also sent bombers to reinforce the Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities, declaring a ceasefire between Israel and Iran only after massively aiding Israel to overwhelm Iran.
“It cannot be pretended that it was part of a longer-term strategy for the Middle East,” former foreign secretary William Hague wrote in the Times of the US assault on Iran. “It was an unintended consequence of letting Netanyahu go ahead with striking Iran.” On the contrary, it looks to me that a long-term strategy of hugely boosting Israel in the Middle East was the intended—not unintended—consequence of Trump allowing Netanyahu to bomb Iran and then intervening on his side to weaken the Khamenei regime still further.
Furthermore, this latest US intervention builds on the first Trump term and its Abraham Accords, which established a new US-backed economic and diplomatic regime between Israel and the economic giant of the United Arab Emirates, among other Arab states. This too was a deliberate strategy by Trump to boost Israel and back Netanyahu personally.
In the wake of Iran’s latest defeat, Trump will doubtless seek to reinforce US and Israeli engagement—and his family’s personal wheeling and dealing—with the UAE, Qatar and strongman Mohammed bin Salman’s regime in Saudi Arabia. The Abraham Accords will doubtless be expanded to strengthen Israel. And Netanyahu will feel emboldened to seek to eliminate Gaza entirely as a Palestinian-run territory, while expanding Israeli settlements and control in the West Bank.
All of which could give Israel still greater regional dominance, in concert with Trump Inc.
However, we still don’t know what has happened to the 400kg of uranium that Iran has enriched. Regime change has not—yet—been achieved in Iran, and this probably can’t be done by external military action. So Khamenei and his successors may soon be back as a serious terrorist force, especially if Syria descends into civil war and Putin is able to hold on to the naval and air bases gifted to him by Assad.
