The Times of Israel reports that Israel is learning the pitfalls of following the MAGA edict to “trust the plan” when it comes to Trump. There is none:
Trump and his advisers — especially top envoy Steve Witkoff — might occasionally have said things that confused Israel and even undermined its interests, but they trusted that he was a president who could distinguish good from evil, and was not about to be pushed around by Iran and friends.
Trump’s decision to unleash an all-out bombing campaign against Iran alongside Israel seemed to confirm the wisdom of putting trust in the US leader. Sure, Trump might have engaged in direct talks with Iran, but, they reasoned, he saw right through their attempts to prevaricate and delay and embarked on a war that could damage him politically because he knew it was right.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu certainly acts like he fully trusts Trump. In a press conference last week, he lauded “the wisdom and the courage of President Trump’s decision, and his leadership, and the fact that we’re working together.”
[…]
After delivering a seemingly unequivocal deadline to Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, Trump seems to have equivocated. In a bombshell announcement Monday, Trump revealed that his administration has been engaged in “productive” talks with Iran regarding a “complete and total resolution” of hostilities, leading him to postpone his pledge to bomb Iran’s energy sites. He followed that up by claiming that the US had effectively achieved “regime change” in Iran because so many of its leaders are dead. Israelis who had trusted the plan now fear there is no plan and wonder if Trump can still be trusted.
It seems that Jerusalem was caught off guard by the announcement from the mercurial president. As of 4:30 p.m. Israel time, hours after Trump dropped his bombshell, Netanyahu and his office had yet to formulate a public reaction. Just the day before, the IDF said Israel expects to fight for “several more weeks” to achieve its goals in Iran, indicating that even if it knew the US was talking to Iran, it did not think the negotiations would go anywhere. “This was always a possibility,” said Israel’s former ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren.
There are precedents over the past year for Trump accepting a hasty deal that solves nothing in order to extricate himself from a situation, even if it leaves others in the lurch.In May, Trump came to a surprise deal with the Houthis in Yemen that simply returned the situation in the Red Sea to the status quo before the seven-week-long bombing campaign. The agreement ended attacks on US vessels, but allowed the Houthis to keep shooting at Israel and others using the waterway.
Israeli officials told Hebrew media outlets at the time that Washington did not give Jerusalem advance notice of the announcement, and that Israel was surprised by it. That deal, not surprisingly, was negotiated by Witkoff and brokered by Oman.
At the end of the 12-day June war, Israel promised to “forcefully strike the heart of Tehran” in reaction to an attack that broke the fresh ceasefire. Trump’s response was to berate Israel and publicly force it to turn its planes around.
Lie down with dogs…
I suspect that Bibi has already gotten much of what he wanted. And the war will continue until Israel wants it to end and the U.S. will be part of it. The dynamic is set.
Trump can TACO about this and declare victory but it’s not going to be the end of it. Maybe the markets will continue to reward him which seems to be the only thing that matters but in the end we’re all just passengers on the crazy train and we have to hope it doesn’t crash before we can get rid of him.