Here's the smart way for Trump to end the Israel-Iran war
Behind the strikes and counterstrikes in the current Israel-Iran war stands the clash of two strategic doctrines, one animating Iran and the other animating Israel, that are both deeply flawed. President Donald Trump has a chance to correct both of them and to create the best opportunity for stabilising the Middle East in decades — if he is up to it.
Iran's flawed strategic doctrine, which was also practised by its proxy, Hezbollah, to equally bad result, is a doctrine I call trying to out-crazy an adversary. Iran and Hezbollah are always ready to go all the way, thinking that whatever their opponents might do in response, Hezbollah or Iran will always outdo them with a more extreme measure.
You name it – assassinate the prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri; blow up the US embassy in Beirut; help Bashar Assad murder thousands of his own people to stay in power – the imprints of Iran and its Hezbollah proxy are behind them all, together or separately. They are telling the world in effect: 'No one will out-crazy us, so beware if you get in a fight with us, you will lose. Because we go all the way — and you moderates just go away.'
That Iranian doctrine did help Hezbollah drive Israel out of southern Lebanon. But where it fell short was Iran and Hezbollah thinking they could drive Israelis out of their biblical homeland. Iran and Hezbollah are delusional in this regard – Hamas too. They keep referring to the Jewish state as a foreign colonial enterprise, with no indigenous connection to the land, and therefore they assume the Jews will eventually meet the same fate as the Belgians in the Belgian Congo. That is, under enough pressure they will eventually go back to their own version of Belgium.
But the Israeli Jews have no Belgium. They are as indigenous to their biblical homeland as the Palestinians, no matter what 'anticolonial' nonsense they teach at elite universities. Therefore, you will never out-crazy the Israeli Jews. If push comes to shove, they will out-crazy you.
Former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, both thought that Israel would never try to kill them personally, that Israel was, as Nasrallah liked to say, a 'spider web' that would just unravel one day under pressure. He paid with his life with that miscalculation last year, and the supreme leader probably would have as well if Trump had not intervened, reportedly, last week to stop Israel from killing him. These Israeli Jews will not be out-crazied. That is how they still have a state in a very tough neighbourhood.
That said, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of extremists running the Israeli government today are in the grip of their own strategic fallacy, which I call the doctrine of 'once and for all'.
I wish I had a dollar for every time, after some murderous attack on Israeli Jews by Palestinians or Iranian proxies, the Israeli government declared that it was going to solve the problem with force 'once and for all'.
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The Iron Dome component has to date largely been used to form a shield against the common types of basic unguided projectiles launched from Israel's immediate neighbours, such as rockets fired from Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is believed to consist of 10 mobile batteries, each made up of three essential parts: radars; three or four launchers, each holding 20 interceptor missiles; and a manned control centre from where defence personnel oversee interceptions. 'What humans do is analyse the attack profile that's coming in and then, essentially, work out how best to counter it,' says Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. 'And then the Iron Dome System is automated, in the sense that you're not having humans launching individual missiles.' 'You've got a missile coming at high speed – you've got to be able to hit a bullet with a bullet, basically.' 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'And ballistic missiles are some of the highest-speed missiles on the planet because they go up into the atmosphere and then come down at enormous velocity.' The Arrow 3 missile defence system is reportedly capable of shooting down missiles outside the atmosphere, while the Arrow 2 protects against medium-range missiles raining down from the upper atmosphere. The Arrow system uses both radar and satellite technology, says Davis. 'If they detect an Iranian missile being launched, they would immediately get a notification from the satellite that would then give them a missile tracker.' Once a ballistic missile attack is detected, the entire system might team up to defeat it, with the Arrow defences attempting to engage the threat well outside Israeli airspace. David's Sling and, as a last resort, Iron Dome might be tasked with intercepting any missiles that slip through the net. 'They're able to intercept all the way down with the various layers of defence,' says Dwyer. 'Which is why you'll see some intercepts almost at the last second. You want to avoid that if possible because you're still going to have debris falling and there's the risk that you might actually still have a live warhead tumble out of control.' The IDF also has radar-directed cannon and machine guns to deploy against short-range rockets and drones. 'They're like multiple umbrellas,' Shoebridge says of the overall system. 'Each umbrella can be porous, and that's why you need multiple layers.' Moreover, says Shoebridge, Israel has been actively targeting Iran's ability to launch missiles and drones in the first place. 'It's not just passively receiving and defeating incoming missiles or drones, it's stopping them being put on launchers,' he says. 'They're trying to destroy Iranian stockpiles and storage areas for missiles and drones and manufacturing for them. The best defence is to never have the missile launch towards you.' Israel's allies also provide another layer of defence. A spokesman for the US Pentagon said two US Navy destroyers fired about a dozen interceptor missiles to down Iranian projectiles when Iran launched about 200 ballistic missiles against Israel in October 2024, a massive escalation between the two countries which followed Israel's assassination of a Hamas leader on Iranian soil (using a remotely detonated explosive device hidden in his room, according to The New York Times). Can attacking rockets overwhelm Israel's defences? While Israel has apparently been successful in countering many of Iran's recent attacks, 'the Iranians have been getting missiles through,' says Malcolm Davis. He suggests the sheer quantity of Iranian attacks means one or two will succeed. 'Missile defence is an incredibly difficult task to do, in terms of targeting,' he says. 'You've got a missile coming at high speed – you've got to be able to hit a bullet with a bullet, basically.' Loading So how has the system performed overall? 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