Meir Jolovitz is a past national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, and formerly associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.
Napoleon Bonaparte's famous maxim, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" - a concept well understood and exploited by the Iranian regime whose only game plan was to survive - was at the same time a concept clearly not understood by the United States.
In life, when things are obvious, they are generally recognized - as obvious. Not so in politics. Political discourse has demonstrated more often than not that the obvious - seems not. Perhaps the best example is the one being served with the multitude of analyses that have followed the mid-term elections in the United States on November 3. The Republican debacle will be recognized by future historians much beyond the simplistic explanations that have filled the airwaves and social media. And quite remarkably - but certainly not surprisingly - is the fall guy. Israel.
No long or detailed analysis is required beyond this: The reason the Republicans were dealt a stunning rebuke - much beyond the normal (read: expected) mid-term losses by the incumbent president as evidenced historically - was a self-inflicted wound by the incumbent president. President Donald Trump’s electoral campaign failure was quite predictable, if one bothered to observe the obvious. The economy. The price of gas and food. By and large - the cost of living. Coupled with the scandalous belief of an Israeli war imposed upon the United States.
One needs not possess an advanced degree in either politics or economic matters from The London School of Economics and Political Science to accurately argue that the Trump Administration suffered its losses because of the war in Iran. Not because they fought it. But because they failed to win it. In fact, and this matters - because they refused to fight it. Only the numb and dumb fail to grasp this obvious explanation.
For the sake of brevity:
Item: The first domino falls. Had Israel not been prevented from winning that first phase of a two-phased war when Trump not only demanded that Israel stand down - after 12 days - on June 24, 2025 - but boasted publicly and quite emphatically that he had prevented a massive Israel retaliatory airstrike by 52 fighter jets. Trump demanded that the Israeli response to an Iranian missile strike be aborted - and purposefully used the incident to project his total authority over the Middle East as the definitive decision-maker. The enemy noticed.
Footnote: Recall also that Trump sought to project the same chest-beating authority in October 2025 when he demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept a premature cease-fire in Gaza with this boast as well: “If I tell him to do something, he does it," followed by “Netanyahu knows who the boss is." And, the enemy noticed.
Because every war has its psychological component(s) the Trumpian posturing was to prove counterproductive to properly ending the war (by winning it) in both Iran, and Gaza. The “12 Day War" - if Israel had not been told to abort - might have lasted an additional week or so. And quite likely with the demise of the Iranian regime. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. It was so obvious.
Item: The second domino falls. Despite the fact the first phase of the war against Iran was ended with a severely crippled Iranian military capability, and in spite of the American president’s never-ending self-congratulatory boasts - including taking credit for almost all operational successes that were the work of the IAF - it soon became readily obvious that a second phase needed to be launched. Trump’s frequent public refrain that “we won the war" was obviously premature. Therefore, on February 28, 2026, the US joined Israel and launched a major strike against Iran. Then, the lesson of the first phase not learned - Trump called a cease-fire after 38 days, on April 7. The enemy noticed.
Item: Political experts and amateur pundits alike warned the White House that the mid-term elections in November would be disastrous for the Republican party if the war was not ended. Most wanted the war simply to end. Trump was too-militarily-naïve to understand that he needed the war to end with victory. Instead, he dispatched his clueless surrogates - Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, and later Vice-President JD Vance - to broker a deal. For Trump, it was always about the deal. A fruitless endeavor when it comes to a lying regime driven by a genocidal ideology. A third domino falls.
Item: With the date of the mid-term election fast approaching, Trump unwittingly accommodated the Iranian mullahs and the IRGC - who wanted no end to the conflict. His cease-fire allowed the enemy to stall. And stall. With each passing week, the Americans were being played as fools, something not seemingly understood. Well, certainly not by one side of the conflict. Meanwhile, at home, Trump watched, almost obliviously, to the continued economic struggles, and the disenchantment of his own political voter base. With his ratings in the low-30s, the Republicans were certain to lose the election - but by how much?
Item: On November 3, we found out by how much.
Item: Post-election, throughout the American media - network, radio, and social - there appeared a common denominator. Yes, the same one obscenely purveyed, and amplified, by Vice President Vance. That Israel was to blame for the Republican defeat; an opinion endorsed immediately after by Donald Trump Jr. Listing four main causes or reasons, they all pointed the accusatory finger at Israel. Yes, those Jews. And here they are:
1) End the war in Iran; 2) Focus on the cost of living and inflation; 3) Put America first; and 4) Change our relationship to Israel.
Each, if the truth was to matter, the product of the failure to fight and win the war. Each - a reminder of the statement made on September 16, 2026 by the American VP: “The United States cannot let our Middle Eastern foreign policy be subservient to the state of Israel". An obviously transparent canard, while a growing discontent in the US fed off the accusation of “Israel’s war."
Item: Consider - The American president fails to win the war. More accurately, he fails to fight the war. In the 210 days between the April 7 cease-fire and the date of the mid-terms, the US armed forces attacked Iran 4 times, counting strikes of any significance. Four times all told. The rest of the time, the guns were silent. Instead, the same VP who was to blame Israel for the electoral loss disaster was trying to sell the ill-fated Memorandum of Mis-Understanding to an enemy that would immediately school him with the Art of the Deal, Muslim edition. No deal!
What went wrong?
Had the president of the US simply allowed Israel to do what it seemed willing, anxious, and ready to do - the “dirty work" - at no cost of Americans risking their own soldiers (one of the major concerns of the anti-war sentiment in the US.) things would have been different. Axiomatically, I would be penning a very different op ed today. Had Israel been allowed - encouraged - to win in June 2025, or even later in April 2026, with the US providing the munitions needed for the task, Trump might have indeed lived up to his boasts as a commander-in-chief supreme.
Had the war been won - instead of the insane and prolonged paralysis of the cease-fire - Trump would have rightly claimed a heroic win. Oil prices would have plummeted. The economy would have flourished while gas prices dropped to new lows. Trump would have campaigned on the back of “his" victory, watching his popularity elevated to an all-time high.
That didn’t happen. What happened, instead, was this: Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan - three nations that adhere to all-things-Muslim Brotherhood and all it portends - became Trump’s “very good friends". And you could throw in a not-really-reformed terrorist, Ahmed al-Sharaa as well. Three enemies of the West ostensibly replacing the Jewish State as America’s natural and only legitimate ally. Three nations which Trump himself claimed were advising, guiding, and directing his Middle East stratagem. Three nations whose end-game was not an American, and certainly not an Israeli, victory in any form. Three nations that he would never publicly reprimand as he did Israel. The enemy noticed.
Why do smart people do stupid things? Well, maybe they aren’t that smart after all.
On November 3, with the humiliating defeat to the Democrats - the party that unapologetically embraced an anti-West, anti-Israel, and anti-American political agenda - and yes, a transparently obvious anti-Semitic portfolio - Trump still refused to understand that he suffered a self-inflicted wound. He didn’t shoot himself in the foot, he shot himself in the head. A tragic mistake, based on a series of inexplicable miscalculations. He did not notice the dominoes falling. The question remains: did he notice that Qatar, Turkey, and Pakistan actually celebrated his mid-term defeat; and, we wonder, will that alter his Middle East perspective as it relates to Israel?
Aldous Huxley, in his 1956 essay “A Case of Volunteer Ignorance", wrote: “That men do not learn much from the lessons of history is the most important of all lessons that history has to teach." Indeed. What Trump failed to learn from June 2025, he failed again on April 7.
And who knows - let future scholars debate - had Trump not stopped Israel against Hamas in Gaza, against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and against an Iranian regime ready to topple in Tehran - might Benjamin Netanyahu have won his election with 61 MKs exactly a week before what could have been Trump’s own election victory too?
Uncertain, we know only this: Trump’s defeat, and Israel’s misfortune, are the result of a series of senseless self-inflicted wounds.