In a war with no real winners, Netanyahu looks like the biggest loser
In a war where there have been no winners, Israel’s prime minister looks set to be the biggest loser entering a fragile and vague ceasefire with Iran.
After years of Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats against Iran, his stunts at the UN’s general assembly, the dodgy dossiers endlessly wafted under the noses of the world’s media, and diplomatic pressure on successive US presidents to agree to a war against Iran, Israel’s conflict has turned out to be a bust.
The US intelligence community’s verdict that Israeli predictions of regime change and revolution in Iran were “farcical” turned out to be correct. The Israeli assessment that the war would last at best a handful of days, at worst a handful of weeks, was woefully wide of the mark.
Even two days ago, according to Israel’s Channel 12, Netanyahu was pushing Donald Trump not to agree to a ceasefire. For a day, the US president issued his genocidal warnings to Tehran and then buckled, by some accounts sidelining Israel in his deliberations.
“There has never been a political disaster like this in our entire history. Israel was not even close to the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security,” Israel’s main opposition leader, Yair Lapid, wrote on X.
“The army carried out everything that was asked of it, and the public showed remarkable resilience, but Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and did not achieve any of the goals he himself set. It will take us years to repair the political and strategic damage that Netanyahu caused due to arrogance, negligence, and lack of strategic planning.”
The head of the leftwing Democrats party, Yair Golan, also called the ceasefire a “strategic failure” by Netanyahu.
“He promised a historic victory and security for generations, and in practice, we got one of the most severe strategic failures Israel has ever known,” Golan said on X. “It’s a total failure that endangers Israel’s security for years to come.”
The reality is that Netanyahu gambled everything on his war and in his failure to secure the fall of the theocratic regime, the seizure of Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, or meaningful state degradation, Israel’s global standing – already massively tarnished by its actions in Gaza, where it has been accused of committing a genocide – has been damaged.
On the security side, despite Trump’s claims, the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has been strengthened as Tehran – for now, at least – has achieved its primary aim of simply surviving a month-long onslaught by two of the world’s largest military powers.
The attacks have left a wounded but still intact regime, with significant military assets, which is likely to pursue rapid rearmament as it seeks opportunities to retaliate.
Netanyahu’s insistence on continuing attacks in southern Lebanon also appears hubristic, given that Israel’s declared intention to carve out a new security zone puts its forces in direct conflict on the ground with Hezbollah fighters who have historically proved adept at fighting on their own terrain.
Seen in this context, Israel’s horrific and unwarned-of mass airstrikes on Lebanon seem like a punitive act of displacement, having been thwarted in Iran. [Continue reading…]