Trump and Biden: Mutually Assured Hostility to Iran

Trump shares personality traits and political ideology with the Israeli leader. Both are malignant narcissists who believe their own personal interests are identical to the nation’s. Both are authoritarians who see enemies everywhere. Both are willing to destroy democracy to achieve their ends.

Trump’s fulsome support for Israel during his first term was spurred by one of his most generous donors, the late Sheldon Adelson, a pro-Israel billionaire who donated $100 million to his 2020 campaign. The gambling tycoon lobbied intensively on Israel’s behalf for moving the embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

Trump’s approach was not so much strategic as transactional. Whoever flattered or funded him was his favorite. He returned their admiration by doing them favors. Which explains the extraordinarily close ties between the two leaders and the political “gifts” Trump bestowed on Israel, such as Trump’s approval of the extraordinarily dangerous and provocative assassination of Iran’s most senior and beloved military leader, Qasem Soleimani. Israel’s Unit 8200 provided key signals intelligence permitting the CIA to locate, target, and assassinate him.

Critics of Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal correctly argued that it would free Iran to take even greater strides toward nuclear breakout capacity. In refusing to sign a new agreement, Biden continued this failed policy.

During the Gaza war, the outgoing US president abandoned the Palestinian people and allowed Israel carte blanche to exterminate Hamas, and along with it, much of Gaza. This encouraged Israel to pursue a strategy of maximal aggression toward its enemies in Lebanon, Damascus, and Iran.

In Damascus several months ago, Israel assassinated a leading Iranian military commander and destroyed a diplomatic compound. This attack was followed by two unprecedented rounds of direct Iranian attacks on Israel and the latter’s retaliatory strikes. These were the first such strikes by both parties on the enemy’s territory.

This showdown between Israel and Iran could have led to massive missile strikes targeting key economic assets and population centers in both countries. Both possess hundreds of thousands of missiles. In addition, Israel has airpower that can attack Iran directly.

Biden finally realized the region was on the brink of all-out war and pressured Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Netanyahu’s uncharacteristic restraint may be the reason war was averted, though lately he has claimed that Israel did attack nuclear-related assets. Neither Iran nor Western intelligence officials have confirmed this.

Analysts have noted that such an Israeli attack might have signaled to the Iranians that the nuclear card was their ace in the hole. Becoming a nuclear power, as North Korea has done, would be the ultimate, and perhaps only, guarantor of Iran’s survival.

The new Trump administration is unlikely to constrain Israeli military objectives in the region. Consequently, there will be a greater chance for new conflicts and war. Though Netanyahu is much more likely to accede to Trump’s aim of ending the Gaza war by January, his second term could be much more dangerous than his first.

Biden has done Trump a great favor by negotiating a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel, announced earlier this week. Like past failed efforts, Netanyahu dithered until the last minute. But a threat by US negotiators to quit forced Netanyahu to sign a deal, which his cabinet then approved. However, the agreement only lasts for sixty days — timed perfectly for a few days after Trump’s inauguration. The president-elect will not want anything to spoil this event. So perhaps Israel will honor this cease-fire in order to curry favor with him.

Later in his term, if Israel attacks Hezbollah, it’s doubtful Trump will exert the same intense efforts as those of the Biden administration, which took months of back-and-forth negotiations. Instead, the president-elect may encourage Israel in its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran. Israel will, if anything, feel emboldened to lash out whenever and wherever it wants.

The Trump-Netanyahu Relationship

Donald Trump’s and Bibi Netanyahu’s politics and temperaments make them a perfect pair. Netanyahu is a master manipulator. He knows how to flatter Trump, who is a sucker for it. If the former wants to attack Iran, it won’t be hard to persuade the US president to sign off on it.

But Trump will want to keep his hands clean. He will not want US forces to participate, since it would further embroil the country in a Middle Eastern war. Trump’s attitude will likely be: if Bibi wants to fight Iran, let him. He’ll be doing the US a favor and eliminating an enemy whom both hate.

Israel has for years engaged in a multifront war on Iran and its regional proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah. It has seriously degraded, especially in the past six months, the strength of each through assassinations of key leaders and repeated air and ground attacks in both Gaza and Lebanon. Trump will place few, if any, restraints on Israeli aggression throughout the region including Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.

In President-elect Trump’s second term, we should expect a far more aggressive foreign policy than in his first term, when he was constrained somewhat by more traditional, cautious advisors. His recent cabinet nominees for military and intelligence roles are fully aligned with Trump’s pro-Putin, pro-Israel whims and objectives. There will be no skepticism or caution. Instead, we’ll see officials seeking to outdo each other to achieve the boss’s most outrageous policies. The brakes will have come off, and policies will careen wherever Trump takes them.

This takes the United States into a dangerous zone of uncertainty. Though Trump proclaims a goal of withdrawing US forces in the Middle East, his engagement with Israel, which maintains regional military hegemony, will work against this.

Though the Israeli prime minister has defied every Biden administration effort to rein in Israel’s genocide there, he may accede to the incoming president’s desire to end the war before he begins his second term. The prime minister will likely feel more beholden to a president who shares his political, Islamophobic, and anti-Palestinian views. Nevertheless, though one war may end, others will fester and grow, since their underlying causes will remain unresolved.

Trump’s second term will continue Biden’s laissez-faire approach to Israel’s slow-moving West Bank train wreck, which has witnessed a “new Nakba,” the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from a score of villages, where they lived for generations. While Gaza’s genocide is full-fledged, the West Bank is creeping toward one. It has included pogroms in which Palestinian homes, vehicles, and businesses were torched, residents beaten, and some killed by Israeli settler marauders.

Israel has not yet formally annexed the West Bank, since Arab states pressured Trump during his first term to halt it. But in a second term, it’s unlikely Saudi Arabia will exert the same pressure, nor is Trump likely to oppose annexation. On the contrary, he probably will welcome it.

Annexation will hasten the absorption of the entire West Bank (and perhaps even Gaza) into Israel proper. The Palestinians living there will not obtain Israeli citizenship, remaining in a stateless limbo they’ve endured for nearly sixty years. Without rights, without business and financial opportunities, and with land and water resources increasingly stolen, they will become victims of a full-fledged apartheid regime.

The International Criminal Court, after months of delay, finally issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant earlier this month. Eleven signatories of the Rome Statute so far have declared they will honor the warrants if the two enter their territory. Britain and Australia have affirmed they would “fulfill their legal obligations” under the treaty, which we may call a qualified “yes.” Germany is one of the few parties that outright refused to do so. It’s a heartening step toward some level of accountability for Israel’s war crimes. The court itself urged all member states to affirm their commitment to enforcing the warrants: “States that are parties to the ICC Rome Statute have an obligation to cooperate with the ICC, according to Chapter Nine of the statute,” said the court spokesman Fadi El Abdallah on Monday. “States that are not parties to the ICC can cooperate on a voluntary basis if they want to.”

The court also warned those nations that are recalcitrant or refuse to do so that they could face an internal disciplinary process. But only greater determination to enforce the ICC ruling by the rest of the 124 members will lead to accountability for Israel’s crimes.

Biden denounced the new ruling. Trump, for his part, has declared his antipathy toward the ICC. He, along with Israel, will do everything possible to undermine the UN body and its decision in this case. This will permit Israel to literally get away with murder.

The targeted Israeli leaders will likely avoid these states. The world, whether intimidated or indifferent, is unlikely to put up much resistance. Israel is unlikely to pay a price. Nor will these nations stand up for or defend Palestinians. This will continue the simmering boil of Palestinian despair and hatred. Trump will contribute to the dysfunction. He will continue Biden’s approach of providing Israel with the weapons it uses to commit genocide, while shielding it from accountability through US Security Council vetoes. That, in turn, will likely continue the tragic cycle of armed resistance which led to Hamas’s 10/7 attack. The steadfastness of a people cannot be stifled, no matter how ruthless US or Israeli policy is toward the Palestinian victims.