President Trump\u2019s hapless efforts to extricate himself and the United States from his failed Iran war may have one salutary piece of collateral damage. There is now a wedge between Trump and one of his prime manipulators: Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who prodded Trump into launching the war and recklessly sought to widen it, is now trying to sabotage the fragile cease-fire.<\/p>\n
We have to hope that there will not be far more serious collateral damage in the form of increased antisemitism\u2014of the real kind, not the fake version that Trump has been using to eviscerate civil rights enforcement for everyone but Jews. At some point, Trump may well turn on his former close ally and take MAGA with him.<\/p>\n
More from Robert Kuttner<\/a><\/p>\n The fact that the U.S. delegation to Islamabad this weekend is headed by Vice President JD Vance is a mark of Trump\u2019s desperation. Vance was one of the few senior people in the administration (and the only one whom Trump can\u2019t fire) to express skepticism about the war. But even before Vance departed for Pakistan, Netanyahu was doing his best to undermine the deal.<\/p>\n Netanyahu had not been consulted about the cease-fire, nor was Israel was invited to participate in negotiations. On Wednesday morning, hours after Trump announced the cease-fire, Israel\u2019s military launched over 100 strikes on southern Lebanon, killing more than 300 people, including in Beirut neighborhoods outside of Hezbollah\u2019s traditional domain that had been spared. Israel\u2019s attacks on southern Lebanon have now killed more than 1,800 people, including many civilians, and displaced more than one million from their homes.<\/p>\n Vance tried to claim that suspension of Israel\u2019s attacks on Lebanon was not part of the bare-bones cease-fire agreement, calling it a \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d with the Iranians: \u201cI think the Iranians thought that the cease-fire included Lebanon, and it just didn\u2019t, we never made that promise,\u201d Vance told reporters. He was contradicted by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped negotiate the terms. Sharif said<\/a> that Lebanon was explicitly part of the cease-fire agreement.<\/p>\n Israel acts, often more aggressively than Trump wants and not always on Trump\u2019s timetable.<\/p>\n On Thursday, in a short phone call, Trump told Netanyahu to halt the attacks. Netanyahu has complied, for now, and said that he would begin direct talks with the Lebanese government. This seems another feint, since the Lebanese government does not control Hezbollah, and it is not clear what would be negotiated. And just hours later, Netanyahu declared, \u201cThere is no cease-fire in Lebanon.\u201d<\/p>\n All this is part of a pattern. Israel acts, often more aggressively than Trump wants and not always on Trump\u2019s timetable. This helps push the U.S. into acting.<\/p>\n When Israel, helped by U.S. intelligence information, launched an attack on February 28 that assassinated much of Iran\u2019s leadership, Washington was not informed in advance. Trump later expressed frustration that there was nobody to negotiate with.<\/p>\n On April 6, Israel attacked Iran\u2019s South Pars gas field, site of Iran\u2019s largest petrochemical complex, for the second time in three weeks. After the first Israeli attack on March 18, which Trump had not approved, was followed by Iranian retaliation against other Gulf states, Trump requested Netanyahu to stop targeting South Pars<\/a>. Instead, Bibi waited a little while and did it again.<\/p>\n