Politics

In a war where there have been no winners, Israel’s prime minister looks set to be the biggest loser entering a fragile and vague ceasefire with Iran.

After years of Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats against Iran, his stunts at the UN’s general assembly, the dodgy dossiers endlessly wafted under the noses of the world’s media, and diplomatic pressure on successive US presidents to agree to a war against Iran, Israel’s conflict has turned out to be a bust.

The US intelligence community’s verdict that Israeli predictions of regime change and revolution in Iran were “farcical” turned out to be correct. The Israeli assessment that the war would last at best a handful of days, at worst a handful of weeks, was woefully wide of the mark.

Even two days ago, according to Israel’s Channel 12, Netanyahu was pushing Donald Trump not to agree to a ceasefire. For a day, the US president issued his genocidal warnings to Tehran and then buckled, by some accounts sidelining Israel in his deliberations.

“There has never been a political disaster like this in our entire history. Israel was not even close to the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security,” Israel’s main opposition leader, Yair Lapid, wrote on X.