The die is cast. Six bunker-busting bombs and thirty cruise missiles put an end to the guessing and speculation of the past few days. We may well learn in the coming days that Trump made up his mind to attack Fordo in the initial hours of the Israeli campaign, ten days ago.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the hesitations and the timetable ("within two weeks") were necessarily put on. Some degree of hesitation has to accompany any decision of this kind. General Eisenhower didn’t know whether he would order the Normandy invasion in 1944 until a few hours before it began.
The drama of the US strike requires no explanation. A US squadron crossed the world almost clandestinely, fooled most observers, and apparently most intelligence services as well. It proved that the US still has no rival in the global arena. It is still a super-power, in a class of its own.
Ayatollah Khamenei dragged his country to this point: economic decline, international isolation, social repression, and now the danger of war with the US in an unprecedentedly intimate alliance with Israel. Trump hopes that common sense will persuade Khamenei to negotiate on a historic Iranian concession.
The question is whether Trump was sure from the start that this would be the result of his intervention. In other words, did he think that he would be able to dash in, hit the mountain, and dash out again? And if so, on what exactly did he base that expectation?
Who exactly is "unpredictable"?
It’s doubtful whether there is a greater mistake in international relations than to attribute intentions to an enemy on the basis of one’s own habits. The president himself has for years been wont to boast of the advantages that grow from his being "unpredictable." The bombing of Fordo and the remains of the other installations confirm his pretensions.
But what about the other side? Does he really assume that he can predict the behavior of a tyrant from another culture, from another scale of values, from a world of messianic fantasies and a theology that extols self-sacrifice? Does he really attribute to him business logic, and expect more or less that the aged dictator will straiten out the wrinkles in his gown, brush of the specks of dust from the Fordo mountain, and come to the table?
He probably hopes to frighten the Iranians as he did in 2020, when he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. He even troubled to mention Soleimani in his speech this morning. Five and a half years ago, there was a pervasive fear that that assassination would set the Middle East alight. The Iranians vowed revenge, and even threatened the president himself. Their revenge at that time was confined to US forces in Iraq, with very limited results.
But the assassination of Soleimani, painful and humiliating as it was, bears no comparison to a massive attack in the heart of Iran, and that close to the holy city of Qom, which is in the vicinity of Fordo.
In his short speech, Trump let Iran know the seriousness of the choice it now faces: "There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days." But what will be the dimensions of the "tragedy"?
Kennedy promised to "pay any price"
The possibility that Trump will lead the US into full-scale war in the Middle East is contrary to every assessment of his inclinations when he entered the White House. He promised to put an end to the chain of "forever wars" that his predecessors had conducted in the previous 35 years.
In 2015, when he first ran for the presidency, his main rival, at least in the early stages, was former governor of Florida Jeb Bush, crown prince of the Bush dynasty.
Trump mercilessly played on Jeb’s pedigree. He reminded voters that the two presidents from the House of Bush had dragged the US into three wars in the Middle East or nearby. We knew that those wars were unpopular, but until Trump came along we didn’t know how unpopular. His unexpected victory in 2016 was to a large extent the result of massive weariness from those wars.
The reason that the US was not drawn into isolationism in the period immediately after the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in 1991 was broad consensus among the elites of the two major parties on the formulation of the aims of US policy since the end of the Second World War.
John Kennedy brought it to a rhetorical peak in his inauguration address in 1961: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge - and more."
Two years later, the US was bogged down in the Vietnam mud, and the party system began to fragment. A pacifist left-wing in the Democratic Party challenged the Vietnam War and the military and political establishment that had made it possible. Some of Kennedy’s supporters, who had continued to justify the war even when the dimensions of its failure became clear, eventually deserted the party. They were later dubbed "neo-conservatives." They were small in number, but intellectually very influential. Many of them were Jewish.
Democratization of Islam
The neoconservatives made a deep impression on US foreign policy for 25 years. They provided the political, ideological, and moral justifications for the arms race with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and thus expedited its collapse. Some of them found their way into senior positions in the George W. Bush administration, and produced breathtaking justifications for the war in Iraq, such as the "democratization" of Islam.
The identification of the "neocons" with the second Iraq war over twenty years ago was fatal. It put them out of favor and ended the careers of many of them in the administration. Any connection of a Republican politician with the neocons is a political poison pill in Trump’s party. Whenever a Republican member of Congress raises his voice on behalf of an "activist" foreign policy, the label "neo-conservative" is stamped upon his brow.
Two-and-a-half months ago, the president fired his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, following his use of the Signal messaging app to discuss security matters. Waltz is really a neo-conservative hawk who threatens Trump’s policy goals. He is also a longstanding, staunch supporter of Israel.
On Sunday morning, Israel time, Donald Trump himself turned into a neo-conservative, if only briefly. That is not a desirable label as far as he is concerned, and certainly not in the eyes of his supporters. It’s doubtful whether at this point they will dare to spark an uprising against him within the party. The Republican leadership in Congress will thwart any such attempt.
On the eve of the Iran adventure, an opinion poll conducted by Fox News found that 73% of US voters considered Iran to be a danger to US national security. That’s represents a rise of 13% in comparison with a similar survey carried out six years ago. If that is how things stand, Trump needn’t worry. But things could change, if the news headlines change.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 22, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.