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| President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in April. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters) |
“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” That was President Donald Trump’s demand posted on social media Tuesday afternoon, amid a series of posts where the U.S. president seemed to signal that his country was preparing to enter Israel’s expanding conflict with Iran. The spiraling attacks that started at the end of last week when Israel unilaterally struck key Iranian targets threatens to convulse the Middle East in chaos, upset global oil markets and carve a new swath of death and destruction through both countries. Starting with his inauguration, Trump had cast himself as a man of “peace” and a “dealmaker” intent on stabilizing a febrile region and ending conflicts. But by Tuesday afternoon, after he cut short his appearance at a summit of the Group of Seven nations, Trump appeared set to join one. He proclaimed that the United States and Israel shared air superiority over Iranian skies. And he intimated that U.S. forces could, if they wished, target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran’s theocratic regime. Upping the ante the night before, Trump said the residents of Tehran — perhaps all 10 million people who live within the city limits of the Iranian capital — should evacuate. At the time of writing, it wasn’t clear whether Trump would commit U.S. airpower in the coming hours to hit certain targets in Iran and assist Israel’s strikes, or simply hope to leverage his threats into concessions from the Iranian regime. The developments mark a sharp turn away from Trump’s initial posture, where he had championed diplomacy in public and urged Israeli restraint in private. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies successfully pulled Trump into the conflict, convincing him of the imminent peril of Iran rushing to build a nuclear weapon — even though some U.S. officials did not share the same assessment regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions. “We’re doing something in the service of mankind, of humanity and it's a battle of good against evil. America does and should stand with the good,” Netanyahu said in an interview with ABC News. Israel insists that its operations are focused on the “existential” risks posed by Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. But in recent days since the war flared, it appears that Netanyahu’s goals may be more far-reaching. He also suggested killing Khamenei — that is, taking out the head of the regime — would bring a tidy end to the conflict. In a conversation with Iranian opposition media based abroad, he bluntly argued that now was the time for regime change. “A light has been lit, carry it to freedom,” Netanyahu told Iran International’s Pouria Zeraati. “This is the time, your hour of freedom is near, it’s happening now.” Even if Iran’s “hour of freedom” is not nigh — and one can expect the embattled regime to circle the wagons and desperately cling to power — Netanyahu’s moment of preeminence is here. He has built off Israel’s tactical victories over the past 20 months. The Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist strike by militant group Hamas on southern Israel triggered a wave of Israeli reprisals that has washed over much of the Middle East. Hamas is severely degraded as a fighting force and its base of operations in the Gaza Strip is a rubble-strewn ruin and site of a sprawling humanitarian catastrophe. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a key Iranian proxy, has been reduced to a shadow of itself after relentless Israeli bombardments and a clandestine assassination campaign of the group’s top ranks. And after Hezbollah was humbled, Syria’s pro-Iranian regime was ousted last year, wiping out yet another crucial platform for Iran’s strategic depth in the region. The right-wing Israeli leader spent decades calling out the Islamic Republic and urging partners in the West, especially in Washington, to confront it. Ten years ago, he agitated against U.S. efforts at the time to forge a deal with Iran that curbed its nuclear activities. Then, his persistence lay behind Trump’s decision in his first term to scrap the accord. After Trump broke the deal in 2018, Iran resumed uranium enrichment at levels previously thwarted. Mutual antipathy toward Tehran underlay Israel’s normalization deals with a handful of rich Arab monarchies, including the United Arab Emirates. In international forums, Netanyahu kept warning about the risks of an Iranian nuclear weapon and the dangers posed by its militant proxies. His foreign and domestic critics said he was distracting from Israel’s unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, millions of whom live under Israeli military occupation. But he never let Iran out of his crosshairs, even as the Israeli war machine tore through Gaza. The focus still pays political dividends. After narrowly surviving a parliamentary vote last week that could have collapsed his government, Netanyahu now has the backing of his most vocal domestic rivals in his sweeping campaign against Iran. In a Tuesday interview, Netanyahu said Israel’s military actions were paving the way for “a different Middle East.” It’s one where Israel, buoyed by ironclad U.S. support, has emerged as the paramount hegemon. Tiny in size and population, it nevertheless has been able to exert its superior capabilities across a wide sweep of countries and targets, at little to no political cost. What Trump and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, hoped to achieve through back-channel diplomacy with Tehran has been swept aside by the new status quo Netanyahu is forging. Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, argued that Netanyahu’s politicking is part of the reason why Iran’s nuclear capabilities are as advanced as they currently are. But the systematic degradation of key Iranian nuclear and military sites suggest an endgame that has little interest in compromise. “In line with his grand Churchillian ambition — and mirroring the perspective he has brought to his war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — Netanyahu is seeking ‘total victory’ over Iran,” Ben-Ami wrote. “This would render a nuclear deal unnecessary.” Following Israeli lobbying, Trump, too, seems determined to “end Iranian enrichment,” as Vice President JD Vance put it in a social media post. Given considerable public disapproval in the United States for further military entanglements in the Middle East, it’s unclear how sustained U.S. support for Israel’s campaign may be in the days to come. That uncertainty also underscores the implicit vulnerability of Israel’s position. “Israel remains critically dependent on its American patron, which supplies most of the aircraft, bombs, and missiles it needs to attack its neighbors along with constant diplomatic protection,” wrote Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University. “A true regional hegemon doesn’t have to rely on others to dominate its neighborhood, but Israel does.” | ||||||||||||||||||