While there is always some risk in offering a final analysis of a game, a war, or even a marriage, while it has not fully run its course - compounded even more so by the certitude that ‘facts’ will change as more information is made available or as time plays its role - we are permitted to draw certain conclusions before future historians get their turn.
We shall endeavor to do exactly that, by offering a potpourri of observations that cannot be ignored. Together, these will be the dots that need to somehow be connected. Our focus will be mainly concentrated with the Israel-Iran war - or Rising Lion or whatever other nomenclature will ultimately be employed by commentators, analyists and those same future historians. For the moment, President Donald Trump has chosen to speak of the “Twelve Day War” - which might explain why he has chosen to declare so tempestuously that it ends before it becomes a thirteenth, or more. It’s a bone to the butchers of Iran.
Let’s offer some of those dots.
Item: There have been two wars which Israel has fought during its three-generations-old tenure as a modern Jewish State. The one is reflected by the kinetic wars that Israel has fought - “one long war” as it was occasionally described, interrupted by equally occasional pauses in conflict or by periods of quiet. That war has not yet ended. Only some cease-fires. The other is the “war of ideas” - even older than Israel since its re-creation in 1948 - and not one that has ever experienced even a pause - nor any quiet.
Item: During the months prior to the 2024 presidential elections, Donald Trump campaigned on several issues. Illegal immigration, the economy, and his promise to be a “peace-maker” will be remembered as the more notable. His reputation and his legacy, he still believes, depend on all three. Only six months into his second term, he can already declare a victory with immigration, optimism on the future of the US economy, and he is determined still to deliver the peace as part of what is often described as the “Trump Doctrine” - identified by many as the “America First” approach to foreign policy formulation.
With hostilities still extant in various parts of the globe, it is the volatile Middle East that he is most concerned about, ignoring for the moment short-term ramifications of Russia vs Ukraine, or the long-term projections of a threatening Communist China. Read any newspaper anywhere in the world - or access any of a thousand podcasts that offer opinions about matters they are unqualified to discuss - it is always about Israel. With Hamas now on the backburners - it is about Israel and Iran.
Item: The Islamic Republic of Iran has been an enemy of Israel and the United States for forty-six years. And, an enemy of the Judeo-Christian enterprise for as long as Islam itself. That will not change simply because it has had its military senior command decapitated, its nuclear scientists prematurely retired, or much of its deep-underground installations turned to shrapnel. Wars don’t end simply because they ought to, or because someone in Washington thinks that they should. Particularly religious wars. And it is Iran - post the 1979 Islamic Revolution - that has declared it as such.
Item: President Donald Trump has been running a lot of victory laps because of the success of the US bombing of the three underground nuclear facilities. That’s fine. Let him enjoy his moment. But the success of the operation (note to the anti-war Democrats and other detractors: it was an operation, not a war) was guaranteed by the table being set for nine days prior by the genius of the Israeli assault on Iran, on all fronts and by various means.
It was the product of a strategic patience that Israel had planned for a very long time. Nonetheless, commentators everywhere have applauded the brilliance of the American attack. Truth be told, the US could have announced the bombing in advance - and live-streamed it during the entire eighteen-hour flight to Iran - and there was nothing the Iranians could have done to prevent it. That is because Israel had already cut off the head of the chicken - which was left to desperately launch some missiles, several of which caused tragic civilian deaths, into Israel as if to shout - we’re still here.
What should have followed was a mop-up exercise, several weeks perhaps. But it was denied. By Washington.
Item: Enter the “war of ideas”. One wonders: why the American president would abort Israel’s further decapitation of the Iranian government - especially if it meant that the present barbaric regime might be allowed to survive.
The answer is two-fold. The first (see paragraph two, above): the Twelve Day War. Only twelve, he has demanded. The second is a response to the growing voices that belong to the American conservative Right, many who are actually friends to Israel, but only to a degree, it seems, while others are transparent as declared ideological enemies of the Jewish State.
These prominent figures in the conservative political sphere have been blasting the Trump Administrations - via the Internet and airwaves - that they were promised “no more wars” by the self-declared “peace-maker par excellence”. Among others, they are - Vice-President JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Steve Bannon, Joe Rogan, and even Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec. And, of course, conservative Israel-haters like Tucker Carlson, Rep. Thomas Massie, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Alex Jones.
President Trump has heard the protests of both elements about a prolonged war that he promised to avoid - and he has now decided to appease them. His supporters will deny it - but that really doesn’t change the facts. A lifeline has indeed been thrown to the Iranian mullahs.
Item: The way the Arab and the Muslim minds work is discernibly different than the way we in the West seem to think. The Arab and Muslim mind operates on a completely different timeline. Politically patient, their venomous ideology is predicated that time - however long - is always on their side. (Footnote: it is the reason that they are certain that Europe will fall to Islam - if not by 2040, then perhaps 2050. While Europe sleeps). As for the imposition of the Trump Doctrine as it applies to the Middle East, waiting patiently for January 21, 2029, when ex-President Donald Trump will be golfing on one of his courses, is a short-term inconvenience for the enemies of the West.
The mullahs simply need to survive - to avoid a regime change. And the best way to avert or sidestep falling victim completely to the catastrophe that they have suffered at the hands of Israel, and the coup de grace delivered by the B2s and the tomahawk missiles, is to agree to the one tool the enemies of Israel have always employed after those kinetic wars: the “cease-fire.” In this case, the Iranians reached out, quite desperately, to Qatar, an enemy state to Israel - which because of its wealth and its deceit has convinced Trump that they are honest-brokers willing to join in the art of the deal.
Let’s impose a cease-fire on both. Translation: let’s compel Israel to accept a cease-fire which is the last thing Israel needs, nor wants. And something which just might save Iran. Forgotten - quite conveniently - is the promise, the demand, the dictate, of President Trump on June 17: the United States will accept only an unconditional surrender from the nation that was the world’s largest sponsor of regional and global terrorism. Unconditional surrender. The way wars between good guys and bad guys have been known to end. Or ought to.
Item: While Donald Trump is the best American president Israel has ever known - or most likely, will ever know - he still suffers bouts of gullibility. That dreaded political disease which has been defined by one authority as “a failure in which a person is easily tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action. It is closely related to credulity, which is the tendency to believe unlikely propositions that are unsupported by evidence.” In a nutshell, that certainly describes how the US looks forward to the day, expressed by Trump and echoed by Steve Witkoff (who is beholden to Qatar) - that sooner rather than later - peace will be brought in the entire region, including of course, between Israel and Iran. Truly unfathomable.
One must now be reminded what David Wong once opined: “Gullibility is a knife at the throat of civilization”.
Item: President Trump has been prolific with his comments on Truth Social. They have ranged from some wonderful declarations of the need to defeat those who target Israel, to the peculiar or outlandish announcements of “God Bless Israel, and God Bless Iran”, or the promise that peace will bring prosperity to Iran. Someone needs to remind the president that Iran has a long history of using its oil-rich prosperity to export terror. And that prosperity does not woo Islamists.
Those are the dots. There are so many more. And they fall so properly in place.
Any student of the history of the Middle East conflict, with a basic understanding of the Islamic religion and culture, coupled with a comprehension of the Muslim political ideology, has already been schooled to the obvious: a cease-fire is a victory, albeit temporarily - until the next war is fought.
The mullahs are patient. As such, Israel should be allowed to decapitate their patience. Otherwise, future historians will never be able to fathom why.
Meir Jolovitzis a past national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, and formerly associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.