Puppet President
Ha’aretz is the name of an Israel newspaper that I mention regularly in the pages of this blog. It’s the country’s relentlessly left-wing newspaper-of-record. Very rarely it makes room for divergence, but it’s the kind of paper that evokes threats of violence from the right. My sense is that it never backs down. You can read some of it online without having to contend with a paywall, and I think that you might find it thrillingly courageous.
What interests me right now is that it’s part of an odd convergence, one of those back-of-the-circle moments where right meets left. The developing consensus is that Trump is a lump of dozing incomprehension and intellectual emptiness who was led into war by Benjamin Netanyahu.
That doesn’t mean America didn’t have its reasons. The hostage crisis during the Carter administration and the long rule of Iran’s authoritarian ayatollahs have focused American hostility for decades. The columnists of Ha’aretz, notably Anshel Pfeffer, say instead that Netanyahu and his predecessors methodically built the case for intervention over years. Netanyahu’s address to Congress during Obama was merely one of the high points of this campaign. Reporting from Reuters brings things up to date, namely the call from Netanyahu that triggered Trump and brought the first bombs to Khamenei’s compound.
What’s especially interesting is that this is now echoed on the right. The notorious letter from MAGA fanboy Joe Kent, announcing his resignation from the Trump administration, is now a manifesto for right wing choler. It says what Jew-haters always say: America under Trump is a plaything of the Jews. To the extent that Trump had agency at all, he was hijacked by Israel in a war of choice. If Trump is guilty, it’s that he broke his vow to keep America out of forever wars, but he was seduced by none other than Benjamin Netanyahu. I instinctively reject figures like Joe Kent, but he bears a strong resemblance to Anshel Pfeffer.
And now comes the next part of war in Iran. At least for America it is clearly a muddle of unripe objectives and old obsessions. I clearly don’t do independent reporting; all I know is what I read in the papers, and the papers say that Trump is desperate for an off-ramp. Given the mess at the choke point of Hormuz, that makes good sense to someone like me. America will not tolerate rising prices forever, especially in the run up to bloody midterms.
So why have things gone even this far? According to reporting in the New York Times, the Saudis are now the Grand Puppeteers. MBS, de-facto king, is preaching the gospel of the “historic opportunity.” Echoing the script of Benjamin Netanyahu, he seems to have persuaded Donald Trump that a lasting rearrangement of power is possible.. All he has to do is stay the course, and he will go down in history as the conquering hero. If I were the kind of person who trafficked in conspiracies, I would say that he is getting plenty of support from Jared Kushner, who is up to his neck in Saudi wealth. Here is the perfect convergence of Saudi security politics and Trump family greed.
But whatever the factors behind this mess, buckle up for a protracted conflict. Trump is allied with leaders who are smarter than he is, meaning that that American lives and dollars are already circling the drain. Iran should fall. The ayatollahs should be dethroned. Iran is a sewer of violence and oppression, but a campaign of “obliteration” is a treacherous affair, unlikely to succeed, with unwelcome consequences.