This morning at 5.53am, air raid sirens sounded across Tel Aviv. War-weary locals largely went about their business as usual unfazed by the eerie wail, while out of towners headed at speed to the nearest bomb shelter. The ballistic missile was fired from Yemen and intercepted by the IDF.
At 7.02am, again, mobile phones buzzed with warnings to take shelter. Iran had fired a barrage of ballistic missiles. The beach volleyball game being played outside my hotel didn’t stop. The missiles “disintegrated” or fell harmlessly.
Israelis hardly batted an eyelid, yet regional experts say that this could be the start of a new war between Israel and Iran, the third of the year. While Iran claimed it had ended its military operations against Israel. Nevertheless, the latest round of tit-for-tat attacks will certainly be felt in Washington DC.
America First foreign policy and Israeli foreign policy were always uncomfortable bedfellows
The salvos today were a response to overnight bombing of Iran by Israel, which in itself was a response to Iranian attacks on Israel last night. A barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles was intercepted in the north of Israel last night, in the first serious breach of the ceasefire that was struck in April.
After the attack, Trump, fearing that Israel would respond and push his germinal peace deal further off the rails, said he would order Benjamin Netanyahu not to respond. He said that Netanyahu would have no choice but to accept the deal that he is negotiating with Iran.
Trump said: “He won’t have any choice. I call the shots. I call all the shots. He [Netanyahu] doesn’t call the shots.” And added: “I am going to call Netanyahu right now and tell him not to strike back.”
After that phone call, Netanyahu said: “If we must stand alone, we will stand alone.” The IDF then launched retaliatory strikes on military targets in western and central Iran, which led to the fierce response from Iran and Yemen.
While Iran today said it had ended its military operations, regional experts warned that the latest attacks might be the opening of a new limited war with Iran to demonstrate to Tehran that Israel is prepared to act unilaterally. But the more permanent damage might be to the Israeli-US relationship.
Growing cracks were clear last week when Trump reportedly told Netanyahu: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” He was irate over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon.
It’s a far cry from last year when Trump ordered Netanyahu to turn Israeli war planes around that were heading to Iran and threatening a fragile ceasefire brokered after operation Midnight’s Hammer. An infuriated Trump told reporters on the White House lawn, “They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” He then called Netanyahu and told him to call back his planes, which he did.
This time is different. Netanyahu believes he has to react to strikes by Iran and its proxies to maintain deterrence. He does not want a new status quo to develop where Israel is pummeled and there is no response – and is wary of Trump’s peace deal that threatens to tie his hands. While Trump has domestic issues on his mind, most pressingly the midterms and the spiraling costs of gas. The two divergent objectives signal that the rift could grow.
More and more dirty linen between the two countries, which stood shoulder-to-shoulder four months ago when the war started, is being aired. Over the weekend, it was reported by the Jerusalem Post that Israeli intelligence agencies blame JD Vance for leaking a Mossad plan to use Kurdish forces against Iran to Turkish President Recep Erdogan. The leak was intended to help Erdogan reach Trump in time to stop the operation before it could be carried out.
Shortly after the Vance story was leaked another story appeared in the New York Times revealing that recent US intelligence reports have raised concerns about Israeli spy agencies eavesdropping on American negotiators working on a peace deal with Iran. The reports state that Israel has stepped up its efforts to spy on senior American officials, including Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s top negotiator.
It is only to be expected that Israel would want to discover details of the peace deal being brokered by the US, that it has been shut out of. Both countries know and tolerate each spying on the other. The US is hardly blameless in any event, in 2016 WikiLeaks documents revealed that the National Security Agency intercepted telephone conversations between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the United Nations.
The real surprise is that both security services, or rather their political masters, are so publicly slinging mud at each other. It is noteworthy that Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official and one of the principal targets of the Israeli spying, is a close ally of Vance. Could Colby, or another Vance ally, have leaked the intelligence reports?
With Trump’s peace deal looking increasingly elusive, the blame game for failure is starting with gusto. Israeli intelligence sources are briefing that the failure to arm the Kurds was a mistake and doing so could have helped topple the Iranian government. They argue that if Trump doesn’t keep up the military pressure on Iran, Tehran will emerge emboldened and the war aims will not be realized. Failure will be America’s fault.
Trump is already publicly blaming Netanyahu for the failure of his peace deal. Vance and Colby, who both had misgivings about the war, would back that and add to it that Israel is responsible for the whole misadventure. Opposition to Israel was a rallying call for both Democrats and Republicans last week in elections across the US and will no doubt harden further in the 2028 presidential election.
America First foreign policy and Israeli foreign policy were always uncomfortable bedfellows. But Trump melded them together through the sheer force of his will and his command of the MAGA movement. If he is having second thoughts, the future of the relationship looks increasingly volatile. And the sirens in Tel Aviv might become a fixture.
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