By Terence Smith
The photo, spread across four columns at the top of the front page of the print edition of The New York Times that was delivered to my doorstep this morning (yes, I’m one of the 500,000 or so ancients who still get the daily print edition) told the whole story:
The picture showed Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and President Donald J. Trump, each with an arm around the other’s back, walking away from the camera, perhaps after one of their several closed-door meetings plotting the U.S.-Israeli assault against Iran. The unmistakable message — “we’re in this together” — was so obvious that The Times did not even bother with a cutline under the picture.
But the article’s sub-head underscored the message: “From Netanyahu’s Hard Sell to Inner-Circle Talks That Greenlit Attack.”
The piece, a brilliant, must-read reconstruction of the high-stakes deliberations that led to the costly, perilous assault on Iran, made it clear that the idea for the attack was pushed relentlessly by Netanyahu. In it, the authors Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman documented how the Israeli leader persuaded Trump that a joint attack would achieve a near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed, Iran would be so weakened that it could not choke off the vital Strait of Hormuz or attack its neighboring countries across the Persian Gulf. (All wrong, of course.)
Netanyahu also argued that the joint assault could decapitate the Iranian leadership by killing the Supreme Leader, induce regime change, prompt a popular uprising within Iran and install a more moderate, secular head of the country.
Those predictions apparently sounded good to Trump, but when U.S. intelligence analyzed Netanyahu’s argument, they disputed two of his four major points, describing the likelihood of regime change as “farcical.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio went further, dismissing it as “bullshit.” And Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine, asked by the President for his opinion, said the Netanyahu pitch was “standard operating procedure”for the Israelis.
The article quotes Caine as saying of the Israelis: “They oversell, and their plans are not always well developed. They know they need us, and that’s why they are hard-selling.”
Hard-selling, indeed. But Trump remained open to the pitch, which Netanyahu repeated in several meetings, and ultimately the President gave the go-ahead.
The news article quite rightly does not attempt to describe either leader’s motives in deciding to attack Iran. But both men surely could see the political benefit:
For Netanyahu, a successful assault on Iran and the Hezbollah in Lebanon would keep Israel on a war footing and likely rally support as he approaches upcoming national elections. Like most people, Israelis are reluctant to turn out a leader in the midst of war. An added plus for Bibi: the fighting would further postpone his long-running corruption trial and keep him out of jail.
As for Trump, the war would divert attention from the Epstein files, a stagnant economy, inflation and declining polls in the run-up to the mid-term elections.
Of course, neither man would or did offer the political considerations as a justification for the war. Nor did they have to; it was obvious. Now, however, with a shaky, two-week ceasefire in effect and the status of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz uncertain, the true and lasting impact of the war remains to be seen.