One Week In, Will Trump and Netanyahu Have Time To Finish Reshaping the Mideast and the World?

President Trump’s midterm election in November is also the latest date for Prime Minister Netanayhu to conduct an Israeli election. Can these two leaders complete the task of reshaping Iran, the Middle East, and the world with ample time to then face voters? On Friday, a week into Operation Epic Fury, or Roaring Lion, 50 Israeli jets completely destroyed a deeply dug underground compound at the heart of Tehran. The complex bunker was designed as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his top commanders’ lair in case of war.The Friday strike underlined the deep intelligence penetration of the Tehran regime. It follows the Tuesday bombing of the Assembly of Experts building at the holy city of Qum, and Saturday’s hit on the Supreme Leader’s compound that killed Khamanei on the war’s first day. Beyond killing regime bigwigs, the goal of such strikes is to hit regime symbols of power, a veteran Jerusalem-based Farsi language broadcaster, Menashe Amir, tells The New York Sun. While bullish on the progress of the war, he has a word of caution: “Defeat is a concept that doesn’t exist in the Islamist vocabulary.” Two years after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, the Islamic Republic’s founding ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, ignored his losses and rejected Baghdad’s offer for a ceasefire. “It took six more years of bleeding for Khomeini to finally drink the poison chalice,” Mr. Amir notes. In 1988 he finally agreed to a ceasefire. Do either America or Israel have that timeframe in mind? “There will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender,” President Trump wrote on TruthSocial Friday. “After that, and the selection of a great & acceptable leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. Iran will have a great future.”Rather than contemplating “surrender,” though, remnants of the regime are putting on a brave face. Mr. Trump speaks of regime change in Iran but he “cannot even appoint New York’s mayor,” the Tehran deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said Friday at a conference in India. “With over 500 American soldiers killed in just the past few days, does America still come first, or Israel?” the former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps military commander, Ali Larijani, writes on X. In fact, only six American deaths have been reported.Beyond such taunts, can the regime force Mr. Trump to end the war prematurely? By Friday, 186 ballistic missiles had been lobbed at the United Arab Emirates — more than Iran directed at Israel. Attacks on other neighbors are testing their resolve.Several Gulf countries ceased oil and gas production. Economic constraints could force them to reconsider foreign investments, the Financial Times reports, citing an unidentified senior Gulf official. In November the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, pledged to invest $1 trillion in America.Proud of drawing foreign investors, will Mr. Trump cower — or will Iranian attacks on the neighbors actually backfire? The UAE is mulling a freeze of Iranian assets in its banks, CNBC is reporting. Emirati banks have long served as Iran’s go-to destination for laundering illicit funds from oil sales in violation of American sanctions. Sure, Gulf states are reportedly ticked off at Mr. Trump for failing to inform them of the war in advance. They also fear a depletion of their missile defenses. Yet the Iranians are also fast exhausting ammunition.In last June’s 12-day war, dozens of missiles were shot at Israel daily. This week the Iranians managed to launch one or two a day. Jerusalem estimates that more than half of all missile launchers have already been destroyed, as were missile manufacturing facilities. American jets destroyed an Iranian ship “the size of a WWII aircraft carrier,” loaded with killer drones, the Central Command commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, told reporters Thursday. How effective, then, is the Iranian strategy? In fact, hitting allies like Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Cyprus indicates a complete lack of strategy.“There is no logic to hitting Gulf allies, but right now the top commanders are gone, so there is complete chaos in the ranks,” Mr. Amir says. “Khamenei said once that if the leadership is hit, anyone with a weapon would be authorized to shoot as they see fit — and that’s happening now.” Mr. Amir assesses that the Americans and Israelis will exhaust military target banks in a week or so. After that, and regardless of which regime figure is chosen to replace Khamenei, the regime’s real power, the IRGC, must be destroyed. Only then can a democratic, American-allied and pro-Israel Iranian government arise.

One Week In, Will Trump and Netanyahu Have Time To Finish Reshaping the Mideast and the World?

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