Raymond J. de Souza: Time is running short for peace in the Mideast
Israel has gone to war with Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided that time is growing very short — short for Iran to build a nuclear bomb, short to cut off American diplomatic efforts, short for an exhausted Israeli population and short for his own government's survival.
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In recent months an emerging intelligence consensus has concluded that Iran is very close to making a nuclear bomb — perhaps weeks or months, but likely within a year. If that is to be ruled out entirely — as both Israel and the United States have declared for decades — then the military option comes into play if diplomacy fails. Whether weeks or months, the diplomatic track was running out of time.
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For 20 years, going back to the George W. Bush administration, American policy has been that Iran's nuclear weapons program would be prevented by diplomatic deals and economic pressure, not military strikes. Partly this was because it was not clear that military strikes could get the job done. If after 20 months of ground forces in Gaza, Israel cannot eliminate the Hamas threat, housed in tunnels, will airstrikes disable nuclear facilities built deep into the sides of mountains?
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Israel likely feels strong after its quick decimation of Hezbollah last year in Lebanon, but Iran is rather different in both degree and kind.
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President Donald Trump's actual Secretary of State, his developer buddy Steve Witkoff, was scheduled to continue his Iran talks on Sunday. Real estate moguls make deals, and Trump prides himself on being the moguliest of all moguls, so the Israelis likely feared that Trump and Witkoff would have accepted a bad deal. There is ample reason to think that; the Trump-Witkoff preferred deal in Ukraine was Ukrainian capitulation; Ukraine refused and Trump's tantrum in the Oval Office indicated how keenly he had wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to surrender.
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Netanyahu's declaration of war is maximum defiance of Trump. Trump makes deals — or at least claims that he does — and proudly claims that he does not make war. Netanyahu's Iran war scuttles American deal-making and threatens to pull the United States into war-making. If Netanyahu forces Trump into the art of war rather than the art of the deal, it will make manifest that Trump's second term is as confused and weak in foreign affairs as he is in trade policy.
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There is another consideration, too, rather darker but not to be excluded. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states share Israeli opposition to Iran's nuclear program and have been largely supportive of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. A blow against Iran helps them on long-term strategic and security matters — and generates a fortune in the short term as oil prices spike.
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Is it not possible that Israel and its Gulf allies may have concluded that any opposition from Trump could be handled simply by funnelling more money to the Trump family? The extra profits from oil in the next weeks alone would provide more than enough to take care of Trump, who can be bought rather cheaply in Gulf terms. Having just completed his grift tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Trump has demonstrated that a few hundred million here and there can work wonders.
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