By Amotz Asa-El

 

THE setting could hardly be more proverbial.

A few steps from the Oval Office in which American presidents once fought slavery, Nazism, and Communism, a pair of shirtless oafs were exchanging kicks and blows to a delirious multitude’s roar. And the gladiators weren’t squatting or trespassing. They were there because the leader of the free world invited them to duel on the White House lawn.

The free-wrestling event that Donald Trump choreographed as a highlight of his country’s 250^th birthday took place just when he, the successor of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan, was betraying everything for which they stood and fought.

At this writing Trump’s deal with Iran has yet to be fully unveiled, but the general outline is clear, and it means he has thrown the Iranian people, the Jewish state, and his friend Bibi Netanyahu under the bus.

 

DIEHARD Trumpists will disagree, but in this country it is clear to everyone, from Yair Golan to Itamar Ben-Gvir, that the deal stinks.

First, it leaves the Jihadist regime intact, emboldened and brazen, and grants it redoubled legitimacy. Second, it ignores the Iranian missile industry. Third, it allows Iran to continue nurturing its proxies. Fourth, it accepts, and prizes, Iran’s maritime bullying. Fifth, it funnels billions to the Revolutionary Guards’ pockets. And above all, through a vague promise signed on ice, the deal keeps Iran’s atomic plot alive.

The gullibility to which all this adds up is second only to Neville Chamberlain’s.

Trump’s boasting that Iran “agreed to never have a nuclear weapon” has been Tehran’s formal position all along. Sober people never believed them, especially after North Korea’s violation of its promise in 2012 to suspend its own nuclear program in turn for Western aid.

One of the people who didn’t believe the Iranians all those years was Trump himself. That, he said, is why he canceled Barak Obama’s deal with the mullahs, and that is why he went to war with Iran.

Now there is a new Trump, one who claims there is a new, trustworthy Iran. That’s as pitiful as his bewildering statement that Iran’s leaders are now “rational.” In fact, whether in their aims, motivations, or tactics, Iran’s leaders are mad. Then again, when it comes to their judgement of the interlocutor they face, they indeed are rational.

Iran’s negotiators understand all too well that the American president whose head is full of prizefights, ballrooms, victory arches and self-aggrandizement will not stand his ground, because he does not believe in any value, least of all his own country’s ideals, including those which ostensibly made him attack their land.

 

OPERATION Epic Fury’s stated aim was moral. “Help is on the way,” Trump assured Iran’s courageous rebels as they braved the regime’s bullets and buried their dead.

Thousands died because they took this vow at face value. Little did they know that Trump would join their battle not for them, but for himself; that he would readily send an army to their shores, provided the effort would be brief, victory would be swift, and glory would be his; that if the going would get tough he would flee the battlefield and abandon the rebels to their butchers’ devices.

And why would he care? Why would the American who inspired a mob’s assault on the American democracy’s holy of holies care about other people’s liberty? Only this reactionary populist’s blind followers could expect him to fight for democracy, or indeed for any humanistic ideal.

Yes, the Trumpian bravados which animated Operation Epic Fury have made way for strategic surrender and moral collapse. And yet, from a Middle Israeli viewpoint Trump is not the point. Trump is not our leader. Our leader is Bibi Netanyahu, and in terms of our interests and his pretensions this fiasco is all his.

 

NETANYAHU’S main political card was his worldliness in general, and his clout in America in particular. The American-Israeli attack on Iran was supposed to be, from his viewpoint, the climax of a great statesman’s career, the incontrovertible proof that he knew more, saw father, and did better than everyone else. That is why he hastened to celebrate the attack as a massive success, mistaking its tactical achievements for strategic breakthrough.

And then came reality – strategic fiasco – and reared its ugly head.

Iran’s leaders were killed, but the regime survived. Iran’s army was decimated, but its missiles traveled on, night after night. The proxies had been crippled, but the Lebanese front returned to sizzle. Israel and Lebanon were talking, but the hopeful American-Israeli-Saudi alliance was replaced by a Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani-Qatari axis.

And on top of all this, Netanyahu’s harmony with Trump evaporated – so much so that Bibi was ignored while Trump waltzed away with Iran. The American-Iranian deal’s draft was not even shown to the humiliated Netanyahu, who had to learn its damning clauses from the press.

Does this mean that the war should not have been waged? It doesn’t. Does it mean it should have been waged differently? It doesn’t. It does, however, mean that Bibi is not the great statesman he and his followers thought he was. Not because of what happened in Iran, but because of what happened in Washington.

The man who prided on knowing Washington’s corridors of power better than any other Israeli, has lost the White House’s appreciation, trust, and respect.

Signs of this diplomatic meltdown were evident already before February’s attack on Iran. As this column claimed a year ago, Netanyahu thought he would ride the Trumpian beast, only to see it tun on him like a tiger on its trainer. “The declining statesman,” it said, “thought Trump was his stooge.” (“The Nude Statesman,” 16 May 2025) In fact, it was the other way wound. Now, as the tiger enjoys his gladiatorial entertainment, we are left with the stooge.

Jerusalem Post 19 June 2026