THE SALESMAN DIES AGAIN

T is easier to begin a war than to end one.

- CP SURENDRAN

Few would have expected that a “twice obliterated” Iran could still strike back.War, once set in motion, acquires a momentum that resists both prediction and control. It unleashes forces we barely account for—suffering, memory, pride—those non quantifiable elements that outlast matériel.

Unlike wars driven by territory or ideology—or even by the pathologies of individual leaders—the present conflict has taken on a distinctly transactional character under Donald Trump: war as the deal. Many have compared him to Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, who crashes his car and dies so his son Biff can receive $20,000 in insurance.

The premise is simple. Apply sufficient pressure and alignment will follow; once alignment is secured, outcomes can be managed. It is, in effect, bombing conducted as part of a corporate deal.

Trump’s has been consistent in one respect: he treats geopolitics as extended real estate. It is in this light that he imagines Gaza—not as a political tragedy, but as a site for reconstruction, a Mediterranean Riviera. He has found a natural ally in Israel, to which Yahweh apparently promised the Greater Israel project. The language of policy elides into the language of property. And god wields a bulldozer the size of Earth.

In this framework, policies are measured in terms of cost and return. Conflicts become arenas in which advantage can be extracted. The size of the deal justifies everything. The method reflects a worldview articulated in Trump’s autobiography,