As Israel contemplates a two-week ceasefire announced by United States President Donald Trump in the war on Iran on Tuesday night, it appears weakened in the eyes of its opponents and critics. Its arch-nemesis, Iran, is still standing; Israel\u2019s defensive stock of missiles is depleted and its prime minister is facing a political backlash.<\/p>\n
Following news of the Pakistan-brokered truce, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s office issued a statement in English, saying that the PM supports the US decision and claiming that \u201cIran no longer poses a nuclear, missile and terror threat to America, Israel, Iran\u2019s Arab neighbours and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n But there was a caveat. While mediator Pakistan had announced that Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon would also cease, Netanyahu added that he does not regard the ceasefire as extending to Israel\u2019s war on Lebanon, which, for now at least, the US appears willing to allow to continue, subject to its peace negotiations with Iran.<\/p>\n Responding to Netanyahu\u2019s announcement, Israel\u2019s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, who had strongly\u00a0supported his country\u2019s attack on regional nemesis Iran, called the ceasefire one of the greatest \u201cpolitical disasters in all of our history\u201d. Israel had not even been involved in negotiations, he said, adding that, despite its military successes, the prime minister had \u201cfailed politically, failed strategically, and didn\u2019t meet a single one of the goals that he himself set\u201d, adding that it would take years to repair the damage inflicted upon the country through the prime minister\u2019s \u201carrogance\u201d.<\/p>\n Others were swift to join in the bashing. \u201cI wasn\u2019t surprised that the announcement was in English,\u201d Ofer Cassif of the left-wing Hadash party said. \u201cNetanyahu has no interest in talking to the people of Israel. He rarely does and almost never enters the [television or radio] studio,\u201d he said of the prime minister, who waited two weeks to spell out his war aims to the Israeli public in a televised address after the start of the war on Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knows, probably correctly, that those who support him will do so anyway, and those who oppose him will continue to do so, so when he speaks, it\u2019s to the international media and to reassure his base,\u201d Cassif said.<\/p>\n Those war aims, as stated by Netanyahu, of preventing \u201cIran from developing nuclear weapons\u201d and of creating \u201d the conditions for the Iranian people so they can remove the cruel regime of tyranny\u201d, were merely the latest iteration of Israel\u2019s longstanding strategic goals. Indeed, Netanyahu has been claiming Iran\u2019s potential to develop a nuclear weapon was imminent since the 1990s.<\/p>\n But, despite significant military successes over the past 40 days of attacks on Iran, neither of those goals has been achieved.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Israelis are deeply disappointed with the ceasefire as none of the original aims of the war have been achieved,\u201d Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow at the Department for War Studies at King\u2019s College London, who has recently returned from Israel, said. \u201cThe Iranian regime is still in place, its ballistic missile programme could be rebuilt very quickly, and it\u2019s still got 440kg of enriched uranium at 60 percent purity, enough for 10 bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, according to many observers, despite significant military defeats, including the loss of control over its airspace, the assassination of much of its leadership \u2013 including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war, as well as many of Iran\u2019s key military figures \u2013 Iran has, counterintuitively, emerged stronger as a result, analysts say.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael and the US had many tactical gains. They won militarily, but, strategically, Iran is the clear victor,\u201d Bregman said.<\/p>\n Key among its victories was not just the Iranian government\u2019s survival in the face of relentless Israeli and US military strikes, but also its decision to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world\u2019s key energy arteries and, according to current negotiations, one where safe passage for international shipping is now entirely under the control of Iran and its neighbour Oman.<\/p>\n Iran has been struggling under increased US sanctions after Trump, with Netanyahu\u2019s encouragement, unilaterally withdrew from an international deal to limit its nuclear programme in return for reduced economic sanctions in 2018. However, many observers now expect Iran to continue with newly imposed levies on ships for safe passage through the Strait. Also supporting the Iranian economy are Trump\u2019s promises, posted on Truth Social on Wednesday, of future sanctions and tariff relief as part of the ceasefire arrangement.<\/p>\n \u201cIran\u2019s decision to block the Hormuz pushed Trump off balance, and he never recovered,\u201d Bregman said. \u201cFuture historians will regard this Iranian decision as the turning point in the war.\u201d<\/p>\n According to some observers, Israel\u2019s conduct during the war has also served to strengthen the Iranian government. Some centres of opposition, such as Tehran\u2019s Sharif University, which had been a focal point of antigovernment protests in January, have been destroyed in Israeli attacks. Donald Trump\u2019s 11th-hour threat to wipe out Iranian civilisation also allowed the Iranian government to beam out rallying images of citizens forming human chains around critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease understand, I despise the Iranian regime; it\u2019s murderous,\u201d Cassif told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. \u201cBut we [Hadash] had warned from second number one that we didn\u2019t have the right, or the ability, to change it. Instead, we\u2019ve strengthened the support for that regime at the expense of the opposition,\u201d he said of reports of the surge in support for the Iranian government in the face of US and Israeli attacks.<\/p>\n Israel and the US had, he said, \u201cgiven operational control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, which had never been an issue before, and, with the first aggressions coming while negotiations were under way, signalled to the entire world that they can\u2019t trust the US and Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n Then there is Israel\u2019s assault on southern and eastern Lebanon, where it claims it is targeting Hezbollah strongholds. Whether it will continue with these attacks remains to be seen.<\/p>\n For now, Israel is not expected to attend peace talks in Pakistan on Friday. But that is where, according to Bregman, its freedom to continue attacks on Lebanon may be determined by the US and Hezbollah\u2019s allies in Tehran.<\/p>\n \u201cAssuming the ceasefire holds beyond the two-week period, Israel achieved almost nothing tangible,\u201d Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera of its war on Iran. \u201cIran upended the strategic asymmetry by both attacking the Arab Gulf states and, crucially, shutting the Strait of Hormuz with almost no pushback from China. Israel is increasingly perceived as a destabilising force and, arguably, strained the US relationship since all promises Netanyahu made to Trump unravelled,\u201d he said, referring to reported\u00a0assurances of swift regime change in Iran that Israel made.<\/p>\n Cassif was more succinct: \u201cIt\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As Israel contemplates a two-week ceasefire announced by United States President Donald Trump in the war on Iran on Tuesday night, it appears weakened in the eyes of its opponents and critics. Its arch-nemesis, Iran, is still standing; Israel\u2019s defensive stock of missiles is depleted and its prime minister is facing a political backlash. Following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s war aims<\/h2>\n
A strategic blunder?<\/h2>\n
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\u2018Israel has achieved nothing tangible\u2019<\/h2>\n
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