TRUMP BREAKS WITH BIBIThe memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran marks a historic rupture
Last week President Donald Trump walked away from a postwar alliance dating back almost eight decades by telling Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that America’s romance with Israel is over. The bond between the two nations, officially dating back to 1948, when Israel was recognized by the United Nations, was shredded. Perhaps forever. Trump has told the New York Times and its columnists who bemoan what they fear will be a bereft and vulnerable Israel, in constant peril from a potential Iranian nuclear weapon, that Israel is on its own. It had been an American political ritual, like kissing babies when campaigning, to support Israel in all things, as did President Joe Biden after the horrific Hamas attack inside Israel on October 7, 2023. There was no second guessing then from Washington, only a commitment of US arms, as Netanyahu initiated what would become years of bombing in Gaza, a campaign that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children, leading to public censure of Israel around the world. Trump has done little in his second term to push Israel to stop either its bombing or the constant encroachment of the Israeli military into Gaza, where it now controls as much as 70 percent of the territory. Nor has he raised significant opposition to the steadily increasing Israeli settler violence and plundering of long-held Palestinian property in the West Bank. But such support no longer provides solace to the now shell shocked and frightened Israeli public because a US president has finally drawn the line as Netanyahu, defying Washington and the terms of the recent memorandum of understanding with Tehran, has continued to bomb in the south of Lebanon. Israel, which has no reserves of oil, was daring to interfere with Trump’s master plan, as seen in the US intervention in Venezuela, to gain control of a majority of the world’s oil. Iran has more than 200 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves, behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. “Trump believes,” I was told by a knowledgeable US official, “that if you can control the oil you can control the world. That’s his life—control.” An Israeli combat hero, whom I’ve known for decades, and who over the years has repeatedly expressed admiration for the United States, bitterly described Trump’s actions in “reorienting” its Middle East policy to make Iran the lynch pin as a “betrayal of Israel by our best ally.” He added, sadly, that “Iran has oil and control of two waterways,” referring to the Strait of Hormuz and a second choke point in the Horn of Africa off Yemen, an Iranian ally. “This will not be Bibi’s final blow,” the Israeli added, referring to criminal charges against the Prime Minister that are still pending. My understanding of the current reasoning of Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who has emerged as the president’s well-spoken envoy and confidant on all things Iranian and, now, oil, is that Netanyahu’s expanding air and ground war in Lebanon was seen in Washington as an unwanted obstacle to US rapprochement with the Iranian leadership. “If Bibi can’t win in Gaza” over Hamas, I was told by the US official, “how can he beat the Iranians? Trump has done something no one else could do—he has taken on Bibi, who overplayed his hand. Israel is no longer a dominant issue and Trump is telling Bibi, ‘My place in the world is more important than your place.’” If all goes as planned, the official added, with the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and agreements yet to be negotiated on the elimination or dismantling of Iran’s underground stockpile of enriched uranium, many of the scores of Iranian billions in sanctioned funds will be put into reconstruction, in some cases provided by—and this was said with no hesitation and no winking—Saudi Arabian construction companies approved by the United States. He added that the key point is that “Iran’s money will be spent in Arab countries, buying Arab goods and services. No cash for Iran—only goods and services. All contracts will be finally approved by the United States. We are using the [Republican] Guard’s money to help the citizens; not the regime. “This is not going to be a Marshall Plan,” the official said, adding that no federal funding will be involved in the reconstruction. He told me that Pakistan was chosen as the site for the initial negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran because it is a major purchaser of Iranian oil today and thus has “an incentive to keep oil flowing.” The Wall Street Journal similarly reported last week that billions in sanctioned Iranian money will be made available to Tehran for humanitarian purposes. (Trump said this week on Truth Social that the early release of funds will be used only on the purchase of US food and medicine.) Presumably some of the many billions in frozen Iranian funds will be released in return for Iranian cooperation in the current talks about the partially enriched nuclear material in Iran’s possession. If that does happen, it could calm the citizens of Israel and enable them to stop listening to and voting for the religious fanatics who have kept Netanyahu in office and away from the courts, while extolling extreme brutality for those held in Israeli prisons. At this crucial time for Israel, however, it is the religious fanatics who are doing the talking, and the scheming and the threatening, as a traumatized nation awaits a future without the prime minister who turned their nation into an international pariah. Meanwhile, changes are coming for Iran. Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Seymour Hersh, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. |