Israel’s more focused fight against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon still has the power to disrupt broader American efforts to resolve its monthslong war with Iran.
It was the kind of attack that could have derailed the highly anticipated truce between the United States and Iran: Israel’s military said Sunday evening it was preparing for an incoming salvo of Iranian missiles.
But the attack never came and hours later, plans for the United States and Iran to sign a more permanent ceasefire deal in Geneva were being announced.
The white-knuckle diplomatic whiplash demonstrated once again how Israel’s more focused fight against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon still has the power to disrupt the broader American efforts to resolve its regionwide, monthslong war with Iran.
This is what… the third or fourth time orangeboi has just unilaterally announced something that’s clearly unworkable and that Bibi also subsequently threw a wrench into because Israel wants some nice ethnically-cleansed Lebensraum to move their fundie “settlers” into?
The joke looses its punch if you tell it again right after you told it the first time. And second. And third.
That’s the point.
Israel doesn’t want a deal. They want US boots on the ground in Iran. They want the entire country under a US run puppet government that will be friendly to their interests. Or, failing that, utterly eradicated.
Trump and Netanyahu have fundamentally different goals here. Trump went into this war to secure some kind of deal with Iran that he could tout as being better than Obama’s. The specifics weren’t important, it just had to be “better” by whatever nebulous definition his supporters would accept.
Netanyahu went into this war to eradicate a regional adversary. And right now what Trump wants to do is make that adversary stronger. So yes, of course Netanyahu is going to deliberately tank this deal, because it runs completely counter to Israel’s interests.
This is the trap that Trump put himself in the moment he started this war. He can’t get out of this without picking one of three politically devastating options:
- Begin a lengthy and costly ground war in Iran.
- Find a way to put Israel on a leash.
- Abandon Israel to fight Iran on their own.
