Despite the apparent success and tactical surprises of Israel’s strikes, what was true before remains the case: Israel cannot end Iran’s nuclear program by itself. Iran is vast, and nuclear enrichment can be done at multiple facilities and in secret. Unless the Iranian regime is overthrown—and there is really no precedent for air power alone accomplishing such a thing—Iran’s nuclear program will continue. Israel has thus started a war with no easy way to finish it.
It is possible the Iranian regime will strike back at American targets, more or less compelling the Trump administration to join Israel in its war, but it is not easy to see why a rational regime would do so. If Trump wanted to disengage from the Middle East, he probably needed to negotiate something along the lines of Obama’s JCPOA, where Iranian nuclear enrichment was monitored and limited. Such a deal would have been good for the United States and the region, and would probably have eroded the clerics’ hold over Iran in the medium term. Iran is desperate for sanctions relief and Western investment, and it is difficult to see how the clerical regime—quite unpopular among Iran’s educated young—would have survived a much-desired economic renaissance.
Now nothing of the sort is forthcoming, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has probably scuttled American and Iranian negotiations for a long time, which was certainly one of his goals. But it is really up to the Trump administration to see whether Netanyahu gets his way completely by drawing Trump into his war.
Netanyahu has leapt into the dark, starting a war with no obvious end to it. Iran is a huge country, with the brain power to develop their own nuclear engineers. It will probably respond with terror or low-key assaults and possibly with efforts to shut down oil shipping that would severely damage the world economy.
Israel is hugely unpopular in the world right now. To a great extent it is unfair to call what it has been doing in Gaza genocide, but most of the world sees Israel killing children with impunity and doesn’t like it. There has been little focus on Israel’s larger war aim, which is to ensure for itself a nuclear monopoly in the Mideast. But that too will increasingly be questioned, and not just by the global left.
The most logical thing Trump can do for the United States is to stay out of the war, which will probably be long-lasting and full of surprising twists and turns. It is natural to admire the tactical prowess of Israel’s military, which in this case seems to have done amazing things. But is mistaken to overlook Israel’s larger strategic failure: failing to be accepted as a somewhat normal country in its region. That goal may now be more remote than it was in 1948. Certainly Israel’s diplomatic currency with the West is lower than it has ever been, and its society is riven with internal political splits. Netanyahu has long shown he can master Israel’s domestic politics, but it is not clear his mastery will endure an irregular war with a large country with no end in sight. In any case, Trump would be wise not to tie the fate of his own administration to that of Netanyahu.
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