How does this war end?

The trouble with war is that you know how it’s going to start it but nobody knows how it’s going to end.
We have two narcissistic megalomaniac leaders who started this war, each with their own motivations. The one in the White House claimed for a year that he ends war, and doesn’t start them while taking credit for ending some wars that never existed.

And then we have the leader in Jerusalem who has let war go to his head. He self-promoted himself as Mr. Security and October 7 proved him to be quite the opposite. He was laser focused on Iran and through his blindness and misconceptions, paved the way for the worst attack in Israel’s history and the worst day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

On October 7, it was clear that we were in a war. It was a war that was declared on us but one that could have ended so much sooner with bringing all the hostages home, if not for the political self-interests of the Prime Minister who kept the war going.

For years, Netanyahu drove into the heads of everyone he addressed, that Iran was the single existential danger to the State of Israel. He wasn’t able to convince Obama or the Congress at the time not to sign a nuclear agreement that would delay and possibly eliminate the advancement of an Iranian nuclear weapons plan. There are still many experts who strongly believe that a nuclear weapons program was not even part of the Iranian plan, just the threat of one.

When Trump entered the White House, Netanyahu jumped at the opportunity to convince his BFF to exit the agreement and that the Iranians would beg him for a better agreement. That didn’t happen and Trump blames Netanyahu and holds a grudge towards him.

Again, it is strongly believed by those same experts that the exit of the US from the agreement was the actual trigger for Iran to go into overdrive to enrich uranium and reach the potential of a nuclear weapon, if not the weapon itself. The Iranian regime  made it quite clear that they would not let the US or Israel dictate anything to them.

We all know the history of the 12 day war with Iran this past June. Trump declared victory and stated innumeral times of the total destruction of Iran’s nuclear plants and their nuclear program.

A similar thing happened in Israel. In addition, with the end of the 2 year October war, Netanyahu also declared the complete weakening and devastation of Hizbollah and their capabilities to terrorize northern Israel.

Announcements by both blowhard leaders have proven utterly false.

I’m not going to address here why this war was launched on February 28. I already wrote about it. The questions however, are what were and are the objectives.

With Trump, those objectives change day by day, if not hour to hour. There are no real objectives defined, no strategy and no end game insight. And when he states a supposed end game, he reverses course almost immediately. The latest example of him saying that he will accept nothing less than total surrender by the regime. His White House administration was taken by surprise and had to word smith what that meant and their explanations were everything except total surrender. The last total surrender offered to an American President was from Japan to Truman after he dropped 2 atom bombs on the country.

For Netanyahu, there were some important objectives stated: the end of the ballistic missile threat to Israel and no nuclear program for Iran. Very lofty objectives. In the following days, he added regime change as well. Those objectives are not tied to any strategic plan, only tactics and like Trump, with no end game in sight or known.

A disgruntled security official briefed the news outlet Yedioth: “We’re already in a stalemate. A war with no clear goals. Not everything the IDF does in Iran is a resounding success. Neither here nor there does anyone stop to ask what the goal is, and where the hell this is going.”

For 2 years starting on October 7, Netanyahu refused with every breath to discuss or even allow discussion about the day after. His repeated message was that we would deal with the day after on the day after. That is not the words of a leader but of an ostrich who buries his head in the sand hiding from danger (as the expression goes).

Dealing and planning for the day after is what states people and competent leaders do. Ignoring it and making the statements that Netanyahu made are signs of someone who doesn’t have a strategic bone in his entire body.

As I said in the beginning, starting a war is easy, but ending one is a completely different matter. The only way that a war doesn’t become a cycle is when there is a diplomatic resolution to that war that leads to a future without this war cycle. The Israeli leadership under Netanyahu, has never had any strategic plan, nor any real plans for diplomatic solutions. This is painfully clear by another of Netanyahu’s repeated statements that we are condemned to live by the sword. This is another sign of a person who is not a leader and has no strategic plan for a better Israel. It is the sign of a coward who promotes and then feeds on fear and hatred.

In 2019, in an interview with an Israeli reported, Netanyahu made his war plan very clear. He said that if he could drag the US into a war together with Israel against Iran, he wouldn’t hesitate. It took hism another 7 years to have a president like Trump to pull him into this attack and war. As I’ve written before, the timing was based on deflection and elections for both leaders (see my previous post). Neither one of them has any plan or defined goal to be reached to call an end to this war. So, what does that mean?

For Netanyahu: He originally believed that this war would only take a couple of weeks. However, facts on the ground are very different than wishful thinking. If it indeed would have been only a couple of weeks, immediately thereafter, Netanyahu would call for early elections with the hope that the successes of the war would put him over the top in the next election. Due to the reports of his security heads that the war would have to go on for at least another month to achieve any worthy goals, Netanyahu has worked out with his coalition that following the approval of the 2026 budget, the Knesset would go into an unscheduled recess for 6 weeks which means that September would be the earliest time for new elections. Netanyahu’s greatest fear is that Trump will suddenly call the war ended and that he achieved his total victory (as Richard Nixon did to end the Vietnam war and called it victory. Nixon called it Peace with Honor.) Ending the war abruptly without achieving any stated goals would mean that Netanyahu will have to take over the narrative by mimicking Trump’s stated victory. It was false with regard to Hizbollah in Lebanon and false with regard to Hamas in Gaza.

For Trump: Prior to the war, Trump’s approval ratings were amongst the lowest in modern history. Due to the Epstein affair, his MAGA base approval rating have also been hard hit. The war has had mixed impact on his base but overall, it is not playing well for his political position and dropping every day that the war goes on. This is the main reason that he has stated that ‘we have already won’, claiming that the successes so far have been above and beyond their expectations and hopes and done in record time. He further said that the war will end very soon but not this week. Does this mean that the war will end next week? I think it is a distinct possibility.

Both leaders’ people are very busy now developing the narrative that they hope to control with the end of the war. It’s almost like Santa Claus before Christmas, busy making his lists of the good kids and the bad kids. In this case, their good list will be very long detailing their ‘great successes and accomplishments’ and their bad list will be filled with the atrocities of the Iran Regime together with who has been assassinated, how much of the Iranian army, navy and air force has been destroyed. The lists will be capped with grandiose proclamations that the Iranian missile capabilities has been decimated , that they will have no chance to continue their nuclear program and that the regime has been permanently weakened to the point that they will never be able to raise their heads against Israel and the US again.

No matter how many colorful feathers these two swaggering peacocks show and claim total victory, it will be far from that.

There are two definitions of real success in this war and it is exceedingly unlikely that either will be attained: removal of all of the enriched uranium from Iran which would effectively end the nuclear program for years to come, and regime change.

It is more likely that the successes will be in the grand words and descriptions these two leaders will us to describe their total victories.

The bases of both of them will eat up every word and disparage anyone who says anything against them. In Israel, the danger is the people who were opening their eyes to who Netanyahu really is and his responsibility and blame for October 7. Many of them, however have been left with the question of who they will vote for, if not Netanyahu. This war and Netanyahu’s very practiced and very designed narrative may find a welcoming place among those who are sitting on the fence. That would be a great danger, actually a disaster for the future of Israel.

This war will end either very soon or in a few weeks. The end of the war will not come with any diplomatic solution or even plans for diplomacy to make sure this is not just another part of the recurring cycle. For that to happen, we need strategy and leaders with vision. Netanyahu has neither of these most important traits. He is not a leader and should never been in a leadership position ever again. The exposure of his refined exaggerations and narrative of lies must be the order of the day. We must never again allow his great talents for speech to conceal the truths of his total failures as a leader and protector of Israel. The damage he has done in Israel and in the world for Israel must be stopped and the memories of every Israeli voter must be shaken to remember everything that he has brought upon us from October 7, before and after.