Trump would be foolish to fall for Netanyahu's shoot first ask questions later approach.
It's easy to start a war. Hard to finish. Trump doesn't want to get into this one.
Here are three incontrovertible facts about the cliffhanger playing out between Israel, the US and Iran in the Middle East.
The first is that America has not won a war since 1945. You can, if you wish, describe Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as strategic retreats in the face of inferior enemies with superior staying power. But the fact is that, in each case, America retreated at great cost in treasure, lives, internal cohesion and external prestige.
If this fact is not being weighed in the minds of those advising Donald Trump then the White House is suffering from collective amnesia. Starting a war with Iran is not like doing a real estate deal in the Gulf.
A single (or several) 13-tonne bunker busters delivered from a great height to destroy Iran’s Ferdow underground nuclear facility will not be a one-off event that will transform the region. It will light a long, slow fuse that will create mayhem – again.
Iran is a vast, populous and enterprising country. If, after the war, it wants to start rebuilding it’s nuclear weapons programme, it will. And there are plenty of kindred spirits around the world - North Korea and Russia to name but two - who might help.
The great lesson of Vietnam (and Afghanistan) is that fighting a dogged enemy from 40,000 feet doesn’t get the job done. The US has 40,000 troops massed in the Middle East as well as significant commercial interests. One way or another – sooner or later - they will become involved. The object lesson is Iraq in 2003. There is plenty of anti-US sentiment left to go round.
The US went into its post-WWII conflicts with fists flying. It miscalculated not because it doesn’t have the brain power to understand the people it was fighting but because the armchair generals and the politicians chose to ignore the complexities on the ground in favour of a quick ‘mission accomplished.’
The second certainty about this latest crisis is that Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s warlord, is phenomenally adept at starting wars and prosecuting them but hopeless at ending them. This is, in part, because, in each case, he has no clear political objective other than an ill-defined ‘victory’.
War is his default option when dealing with threats to Israel’s security. In so far as he has one, Netanyahu’s guiding principle has been to do anything he can to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. He said in 2015 : “ I am asked if we will live forever by the sword”. His answer, predictably, was “yes”.
One wonders how much the heroic death of his younger brother Yonatan, who commanded the daring raid on Entebbe in 1976 to free the hostages on a plane hijacked by Palestinians and German extremists, has influenced his thinking. Is he trying to live up to Yoni?
This view of life, of Israel and how it can live and survive, has guided his actions ever since he came to power, only briefly interrupted, since 2009. Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and something a little more restrained but equally brutal on the occupied West Bank.
He remains mired in Gaza. Hezbollah are depleted in Lebanon but still standing. Syria, liberated from Bashar al-Assad, remains a mystery. the West Bank is reaching boiling point.
Is he after destroying Iran’s bomb-making capacity? Or is he after regime change? Or both with regime change a bonus. What does he think regime change might look like? Would it usher in a milder, more liberal regime? Or will it be something even worse than the mullahs?
The theocracy ushered in by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 (I flew into Tehran with a bunch of other reporters on his Air France 747) has been bad for Iran, bad for the region and a constant headache for the rest of the world.
The rule of the mullahs has been one, long calvary for Iranians: Suppression, executions, brutal discrimination against women, economic shambles and corruption. Sanctions have throttled its economy. Its depleted coffers have been frittered away on funding its proxies in the region and advancing its Shia agenda.
The cleric and Supreme Leader, Ayattolah Khamenei is now 86. His grand scheme was creating the so-called “ axis of resistance” which now lies in pieces: Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and the Houthis.
He is said, without irony, to be an admirer of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables which he has described as a book about “divinity, kindness, compassion and love”.
Khameinei is ruthless and politically adept. He built Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a kind of praetorian guard. He has stymied reformists, crushed dissent and reinforced his position.
Khameinei’s grip on power has inevitably been seriously weakened. He is, literally, under siege. He cannot, in the second half of his ninth decade, be as sharp as he needs to be to face an existential threat.
If he isn’t pushed out – or assassinated – he may well step aside in favour of a younger man. That could be part of the price of a deal with America. Either way the brand of the ayatollahs has been brutally undermined.
The regime’s boast that it can protect its people against the great Satan and Israel has proved worthless.
Which brings us to the third and final fact about the crisis. War is unpredictable. You can’t script it. “ In war” said Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian general” everything is simple. But the simplest thing is difficult. No plan survives contact the with the enemy.”
The mullahs are hated by the majority of Iranians. Religious observance has brought misery and unhappiness. Netanyahu may have calculated that all the regime needed to collapse was a shove.
But Iran is a proud, complex and ancient nation. The instinct will be to rally round under Israeli attacks. We should not forget that Iranians have been weaned – not without cause - on the idea that western commercial interests have only been after its oil.
Britain and the US have schemed and meddled over the decades. A joint CIA and MI6 coup overthrew the left-leaning Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953.
As the world economy grew it became addicted to oil. Iran had to be brought under control. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Iranian economy was subordinated to British interests.
Trump is faced with a choice: negotiate a new nuclear deal with a weakened and humbled Iran, even if it’s not perfec,t or go in with both feet and risk stepping into a minefield. His MAGA base may not forgive him for opting for the latter.
What he mustn’t do is fall for Netanyahu’s shoot first ask questions later approach. It may be in the Israeli leader’s interest to breed another forever war. It’s certainly not in America’s.