It shouldn't take Trump to tell Netanyahu to end it

Telegraph

4 days ago

Do you want to look wise before an audience of foreign policy experts? Would you like to humour the average Western diplomat? One sure-fire way is to mutter sagely that any leader who tries to reshape the Middle East is bound to come to grief.
The grand panjandrums will never admit it, but the prime minister they most heartily despise – Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel – has managed to transform the strategic balance of the region with astonishing speed.
In just nine months, he has eviscerated Hezbollah in Lebanon, triggered the downfall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and wrecked the nuclear ambitions of Iran's regime. One by one, superficial and widely-believed assumptions – that Hezbollah was impregnable, that Assad was safe as houses, that Donald Trump would never send US forces into action in the Middle East, and that Iran's nuclear programme was indestructible – have tumbled ignominiously to the ground.
Now, precisely because of that success, the time has come for Mr Netanyahu to draw a line. He should accept America's proposed ceasefire in Gaza and stop the killing. Everywhere else, he has succeeded. In the rubble and misery of Gaza, he can at least bring Israel's Carthaginian campaign to an end.
True enough, the great minds of the foreign policy world are already questioning Israel's military achievements. Many are deeply invested in the adamantine belief that military action can only ever achieve a short delay in Iran's progress towards a nuclear weapon.
Every plant can be rebuilt and every centrifuge repaired or replaced, or so runs the argument. Very soon, the vital elements of Iran's nuclear enterprise might be just as menacing as before.
Hence the attention paid to Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, when he said that in 'a matter of months' Iran would have 'a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium'.
But a 'few cascades' – which means, at most, a few hundred centrifuges – is only a fraction of the 20,000 that were installed in Iran's nuclear plants at Natanz and Fordow before they were bombed by America and Israel last month.
Even if Mr Grossi is right and Iran swiftly rebuilds its ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade, it would still need to convert that material into the solid form used for the core of a nuclear bomb.
One problem: Israeli bombs have flattened the conversion facility required for this task. And where exactly will Iran find the scientists with the expertise for this supremely delicate operation? Are they still alive? We know that Israel has killed many of Iran's nuclear experts and training their replacements will be the work of years, if not decades.
Here is another problem: given that Mr Netanyahu's spies have obviously penetrated every level of Iran's regime – particularly the nuclear programme – any scientists or officials who might be ordered to rebuild the whole effort will have to be thoroughly investigated and vetted.
Those who do the vetting will themselves need to be vetted. Once again, this is the work of years. Israeli intelligence seems to have spent decades recruiting agents in the most sensitive pillars of the Iranian state; rooting them out again could take just as long, even supposing that it's possible at all.
As for the destruction of Hezbollah and the downfall of Assad, our diplomats will say that Israel has been tactically adept but strategically blind. They will quote the great Prussian military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, on how 'war is the continuation of politics by other means' and they will say that Israel's campaign has killed individuals without achieving a political outcome favourable to its interests.
Yet, once again, there are good reasons to question this familiar analysis. After the elimination of Hezbollah's entire leadership and thousands of other operatives, the terrorist movement could not prevent an avowed opponent, Joseph Aoun, from becoming President of Lebanon in January. In former years, Hezbollah had the power to veto Lebanese presidential candidates but no longer. That is one squarely political benefit of Israel's campaign.
Meanwhile, the disembowelling of Hezbollah deprived Assad of the most reliable force keeping him in power in neighbouring Syria. His flight into exile cleared the way for new leaders who are now negotiating through American mediators for a possible normalisation and peace agreement with Israel. Earlier efforts never got anywhere under Assad, but they might under his successor. If so, Israel will have achieved a political goal that would have satisfied Clausewitz.
But Gaza is the great exception. What is the objective of Mr Netanyahu's ever more futile campaign, now the longest and bloodiest war in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict? What cause could justify such suffering among ordinary Palestinians?
A deal has been on the table for months. Hamas will release all the Israeli hostages in return for a permanent truce and a withdrawal of forces. Having reshaped the region and confounded his critics, Mr Netanyahu should now do what is both right and wise. He should take what is on offer in Gaza, bring the hostages home and end the war.