Netanyahu's long game ensnares Trump

Donald Trump is caught in the trap that he helped to build, and he is starting to flail against his fate. His “war of choice’ “Operation Epic Fury’, was supposed to end in “unconditional surrender” by Tehran in just a few weeks, but if Mr Trump ever had a plan beyond “use massive force’, it isn’t working.

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Mr Trump managed to “decapitate” much of the Iranian regime in the first hour of the American-Israeli sneak attack. (For the second time in a year, the United States attacked while still in peace talks with Iran.) However, this massacre of the old leadership class only ensured that a younger, smarter generation of true believers would lead Iran's resistance struggle.

Knowing a bit about the cult of martyrdom in Shia Islam, I am even tempted to speculate that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei knew that the US might strike that meeting and held it anyway. At any rate, it gave regime supporters more martyrs (killed by infidels) to celebrate, including the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s father, mother, wife and son.

Mojtaba was a hardliner anyway, having fought as a 17-year-old volunteer in the Iran-Iraq War. (Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Iran with US encouragement and support in 1980-88.) There is almost zero probability that Iran’s new leadership will seek a peace deal with the US and Israel - and no good reason that it needs to.