Netanyahu sets the pace in the Middle East
When Trump canceled the Obama-era nuclear deal with Tehran in 2018, it was a blatant mistake for Israel. From that moment on, Tel Aviv demanded US support for its rearming: the Trump and Biden administrations have continuously sent the weapons Netanyahu requested, even during the past year and a half of annihilation in Gaza.
Like Putin, who does whatever he wants in Ukraine, Netanyahu sets the agenda for Trump both in Gaza and Iran, where he has effectively boycotted the ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran to resume the nuclear deal that Trump himself thwarted during his first term. Trump's boastful promises that would end his friends' wars in a snap have come to nothing. Everyone has taken him at his word—China too, by the way: Beijing's silence on the tariff negotiations speaks volumes. World leaders let him boast. And they pay little attention to him.
Netanyahu is gaining strength in the Middle East: he is making his military superiority clear, of course in Gaza, but also in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Iran. The Islamic Republic does not have a military capability comparable to Tel Aviv's. Everything indicates that Tehran will raise the tone of its response compared to last July, when it was also attacked. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the attacks a "declaration of war" and insisted that they reveal the "vile nature" of Israel, which, according to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, will receive a "legitimate and powerful response." Despite the rhetoric, it does not appear that a regional war will break out, although the risk of escalation is present. It remains to be seen what direction the cycle of mutual retaliation will take. In any case, no matter how much Israel bombs key nuclear facilities and kills its military leaders and scientists, there's no reason to believe the country of the ayatollahs will give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The agreement with Washington, therefore, is slipping away.
Israel's old (new) enemy will remain in place, uncomfortable, as a latent threat. Certainly, Iran has lost key interposed forces that worried Tel Aviv: the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the weakening of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have left it without two relevant tentacles. Hezbollah is badly damaged, and, furthermore, the new Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, sponsored by the US, has pledged to disarm it. But Iran still has the Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. The regime led by Ayatollah Khamenei still has cards to play. It will therefore continue to be a headache for Israel and the West.
A heavily armed Israel, oblivious to international criticism for the inhuman brutality employed in Gaza, and protected by the United States—which, even if Netanyahu does his own thing, will not and will not abandon him—dominates the region, stakes out territory, and puts on one show of force after another. And yet, the Middle East is far from a safer place today. Not even for the Jewish state.