British journalist Jeremy Bowen has pointed out that US and Israeli leaders hoped that victory over Iran would transform the Middle East, but it has not happened as hoped, writes the BBC.
The region has become different, but Iran has not been defeated, and there is now a risk of a permanent crisis that periodically escalates into direct hostilities. The Iranian regime has proven to be much more difficult to defeat than US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thought. Their assessment was wrong, and now both have lost control of the situation.
Among the latest events is the Iranian downing of a US Apache helicopter. This is another reminder that Iranian leaders have not lost their ability to harm Americans, and will not back down from their commitment to end the war as winners. For Tehran, victory means survival and a better ability to resist, which would come as recognition of its control over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
Trump and U.S. generals will try to shape a response to the loss of the helicopter, while simultaneously showing that the Iranians cannot do as they please, while trying to preserve the so-far sluggish and unproductive diplomatic process. The helicopter crew survived, but if the outcome had been more tragic, the American response would have been sharper and more rapid.
The US president hopes to make a deal with Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz;
he also wants to start longer talks on other serious issues, starting with Iran’s nuclear program.
The war is deeply unpopular in the United States, and Trump wants to find a way to end it as a winner, but this has proven to be a serious challenge. Both Trump and Netanyahu are relearning an old lesson. Since mankind first learned the art of war (and its curse), countless leaders have faced the realization that it is easy to start a war, but difficult to emerge from it with a clear victory.
On the last day of February, Trump and Netanyahu released video statements as they launched their attacks on Iran, and their rhetoric reflected the assumption that a moment of historic change was approaching. The regime that overthrew the country’s then-leader in 1979 was in decline. Early on the morning of the 28th of February, Trump promised opponents of the Iranian regime that he would help end the regime’s rule, and promised that freedom was within reach: “Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
The next morning, standing on the roof of the Israeli Defense Ministry building, Netanyahu also gave a speech, and he too spoke as if victory had already been won. He said that a coalition with the United States would allow him to do what he had wanted for 40 years: to oust the terrorist regime: “This is what I promised – and this is what we shall do.”
Throughout his political career,
Netanyahu has repeatedly said that the real threat to Israelis is not the Palestinians or its Arab neighbors, but Iran.
He has tried before to get US presidents to get involved in a war against Iran, but so far it has not worked. And then came Trump. For more than two years, Netanyahu has promised Israelis that the country’s army, with American help, would be able to destroy its enemies and build a more prosperous and secure future.
Netanyahu had an air of anticipation that suggested he had waited for his special moment. By contrast, when Netanyahu spoke to reporters on the 8th of June after Trump ordered a halt to the attacks on Beirut, he looked like a deflated balloon. Netanyahu’s plan to forcefully shape the region to his liking has clearly failed.
Trump expected a quick victory. He had previously witnessed the US military’s swift capture of the Venezuelan president and his wife and their transfer to New York to stand trial while forces more friendly to the US administration took power in Caracas. It was a textbook moment, and Trump believed it was a far better option for a regime change than the years of wars other presidents had waged, and Iran was next to be overthrown.
Now both leaders can only wonder where they went wrong.
The US has the most powerful military in the world. Israel is the superpower of the Middle East. The Iranian regime was suffering from an economic crisis caused by sanctions, poor governance, and corruption. Israel had already largely crushed Iran’s regional allies. In January, Tehran violently suppressed widespread protests, killing thousands of its own citizens. However, Trump and Netanyahu underestimated the Islamic regime’s resilience, ruthlessness, and cunning. They believed that killing the regime’s supreme leader and his closest subordinates would cause the regime to collapse from within.
Both Trump and Netanyahu overestimated the capabilities of military force against a regime that had survived more than 50 years of various threats and had built itself up to survive an attack. Tehran has also carefully considered how to build a national security that is saturated with religion and ideology.
The situation has hit America’s allies in the Persian Gulf hard. They have not only lost income from the export of oil, natural gas, and their byproducts. The long-established tourism industry has also been destroyed. The Iranian regime, meanwhile, believes that suffocating the international economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking its neighbors is a long-term defense against the United States and Israel.
The people who have replaced Iran’s previous leaders are as ideologically convinced as their predecessors,
but they are much more willing to take the risks they see as necessary in the fight for survival. They believe that words will not be enough to deter further attacks by the United States and Israel, and instead want to show that further attacks will have painful consequences. One of the key points of this strategy is to link Israel’s attacks on the terrorist group Hezbollah to the war in Iran, and Tehran has indicated that there will be no agreement unless it also covers strikes on Lebanon.
By urging Israel to abandon its plans to attack Beirut, Trump has demonstrated that events in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf are interconnected. Meanwhile, Netanyahu said on June 8 that he did not agree with the commitment, and that making one was completely unacceptable. The Israeli problem will be that Trump will put his interests in ending the war in Iran ahead of Israel’s desire to fight Hezbollah. Israel has called off its attack on Beirut but is continuing to carry out strikes in southern Lebanon.
When the Strait of Hormuz was closed in March, there were dire warnings about the economic consequences if the waterway was not open by June. It is June, and barring a swift diplomatic turnaround, it does not look like traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will be able to resume anytime soon.
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