By David K. Shipler
Israel’s
government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given President Trump plenty
of bad advice about Iran. But the rising belief that Israel is to blame for Trump’s
war of choice deflects responsibility from the White House, where it obviously belongs.
Trump failed to weigh Israel’s interests against those of his own country. He reportedly
ignored his advisers’ doubts about Israel’s assessments and predictions.
As the war
damages the global economy and security, Israel is being teed up as a scapegoat.
A most aggressive effort has come from Tucker Carlson, once a Trump
cheerleader, whose recent rant against
the war includes a malevolent portrait of a president at the mercy of Israel.
“The Israeli government has a
storied history of blackmailing US presidents,” he writes absurdly in his Morning
Note. “America’s ‘special ally’ is willing to play very dirty to achieve
its goals. Dark-money campaign contributions, extortion, physical threats and
even assassination. In their anti-Christian worldview, the ends always justify
the means. They have no issue destroying lives.” (Carlson doesn’t mention “Jews,”
but those with an antisemitic bent will surely read it that way.)
Americans’ longstanding support for
Israel has weakened severely. Unfavorable opinions were driven up by Israel’s
widespread bombing and brutal blockade of Gaza Palestinians following the
October 7, 2023 atrocities by Hamas, and have risen further since the
coordinated Israeli and American war on Iran was launched February 28. A Pew
Research Center poll taken in March 23-29 found that 60 percent of American
adults hold a negative view of Israel, up from 53 percent last year and 33 per
cent in 2022. This could get worse if the conflict is not resolved beneficially
to American interests. It’s not truly over, of course, and the eventual outcome
will render judgment.
Netanyahu lobbied hard for this war,
particularly on February 11, when he gained a rare invitation to a
highly-classified meeting in the White House Situation Room. His pitch to Trump
came in a period of terrible coincidence, a perfect storm of anxiety and
extremism. Gripped by a heightened sense of vulnerability, Israel is led by the
most radical, right-wing government in its history. The result is an anti-Arab
and anti-Muslim strategy driven by religious absolutism and ethnic bigotry.
After the October 7 attack, a wave
of existential fear swept through Israel. Hamas fighters, many on motorcycles, had
managed to breach Israel’s high-tech defenses around Gaza, shredding confidence
in the intelligence and military establishments. Iran then attacked mainly through
its proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, forcing Israelis to leave their homes near the
border. Others, evacuated from near Gaza in the south, added to an
unprecedented population of internal refugees. Israel felt nearly encircled by Iran’s
determination to annihilate the Jewish state.
It’s doubtful that Israel’s
existence was truly at risk; it still had the Middle East’s most formidable
military. But a muffled drumbeat of fear has always run through Israeli
society, a legacy of the Holocaust reinforced by the perpetual conflict with
the Palestinian Arabs. For most of its history, Israel’s counterpoint to fear
has been aggressive defiance, which the Netanyahu government has translated
into military onslaughts.
Israel demolished most of Iran’s
air defenses and decimated both Hamas and Hezbollah. Last June, the US and
Israel coordinated air attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The streets filled
with huge numbers of Iranian citizens, hostile to the Islamic Revolution and suffering
economically; many were gunned down, but Iran’s government looked weakened. The
time for action seemed as ripe as it had ever been.
According to remarkable reporting
by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan in The
New York Times, Netanyahu and the head of Mossad, Israel’s version of
the CIA, argued that regime change would be triggered by a joint US-Israeli
attack. The Israelis even played a video—imagery, not words, seem the major
input to Trump’s brain—showing individuals who could take leadership.
“Mossad’s intelligence indicated
that street protests inside Iran would begin again and — with the impetus of
the Israeli spy agency helping to foment riots and rebellion — an intense
bombing campaign could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to
overthrow the regime,” wrote Swan and Haberman. “The Israelis also raised the
prospect of Iranian Kurdish fighters crossing the border from Iraq to open a
ground front in the northwest, further stretching the regime’s forces and
accelerating its collapse.”
To anyone who knew anything about
Israel’s record in predicting or manipulating the politics of its enemies, this
confidence should have raised a red flag. It did among several participants,
according to the reporters. In all the efforts to remake the politics of the
Palestinians and Lebanese over the years, not a single example of success comes
to mind. Israel’s intelligence agencies are good at locating targets for
assassination and disrupting technology, but terrible at understanding the
political and social dynamics of their adversaries.
The Israelis were also wrong about
the military results, at least in the short term, according to the Times
reporters: “Mr. Netanyahu and his team outlined conditions they portrayed as
pointing to near-certain victory: Iran’s ballistic missile program could be
destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would be so weakened that it could not
choke off the Strait of Hormuz, and the likelihood that Iran would land blows
against U.S. interests in neighboring countries was assessed as minimal.”
Trump seemed nearly persuaded by
Israel’s optimistic predictions. Having cushioned himself with sycophants and purged
Iran experts from the State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council,
he had forfeited the opportunity for informed debate. Nevertheless, a few
voices of skepticism were raised in subsequent meetings.
The CIA director, John Ratcliffe,
called Netanyahu’s regime-change scenarios “farcical,” the reporters wrote. “At
that point, Mr. [Marco] Rubio [Secretary of State] cut in. ‘In other words,
it’s bullshit,’” he said.
When Trump asked General Dan Caine
for his views, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff answered: “Sir, this
is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They
oversell, and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need
us, and that’s why they’re hard-selling.”
Since those meetings were attended
by only a small circle of high-level officials, somebody inside clearly wanted
the discussions documented publicly. The writers did the reporting for their forthcoming
book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
Their account suggests that in
deciding to go to war, Trump filtered out cautionary information that did not
harmonize with his gut desires. Like millions of his fellow Americans who choose
news sources the confirm their biases, he absorbs only what he agrees with. And
like authoritarian personalities throughout history, he cows his subordinates.
Swan and Haberman note that in the end, despite some reservations, his deferent
aides did not argue vigorously against the mission.
Years before, Netanyahu had opposed
the multinational agreement with Iran, negotiated under President Obama to
curtail its nuclear weapons program. It left Iran’s ballistic missile development
untouched and placed no limits on its proxies, which threatened Israel. Yet even
with its flaws, the agreement froze Iran’s nuclear development for a period and—what
should be most telling for a president—bolstered US national security interests.
Trump, who hates everything Obama did, took Netanyahu’s advice and committed the
blunder of scuttling the accord, releasing Iran to renew its advance toward
nuclearization.
Bad advice doesn’t have to be
taken.
Today, while Israel can be blamed
for misreading Iran militarily and politically, it need not be blamed for the
war. The fault is Trump’s. The fault is the collaborators’ he has installed
around him. The fault is the millions of Americans’ who put him back in the
White House even after seeing his anti-constitutional moves to overturn
democracy.
Even if he were not a
semi-dictator, Trump would put the country in danger from his startling lack of
analytical skills and obvious cognitive impairment. His decline into
impulsiveness is rapidly advancing, perhaps a symptom common to aging narcissists.
Barely any checks on his power are imposed by any branch of government. He rules
by feelings, not facts, limited only by his “own morality,” as he told The
Times in a January interview.
What a comfort. His own morality.
