{"id":325528,"date":"2026-03-31T06:24:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=325528"},"modified":"2026-04-02T06:39:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:39:54","slug":"israel-is-making-sure-trump-cant-find-an-off-ramp-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=325528","title":{"rendered":"Israel is making sure Trump can’t find an off-ramp in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Cook \u2013 Middle East Eye March 30, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must have persuaded Donald Trump that a war on Iran<\/a> would unfold much like the pager attack<\/a> in Lebanon<\/a> 18 months ago.<\/p>\n

The two militaries would jointly decapitate <\/a>the leadership in Tehran, and it would crumble just as Hezbollah had collapsed – or so it then seemed – after Israel assassinated\u00a0Hassan Nasrallah<\/a>, the Lebanese group\u2019s spiritual leader and military strategist.<\/p>\n

If so, Trump bought deeply into this ruse. He assumed that he would be the US<\/a> president to “remake the Middle East” – a mission his predecessors had baulked at since George W Bush\u2019s dismal failure<\/a> to achieve the same goal, alongside Israel<\/a>, more than 20 years earlier.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu directed Trump\u2019s gaze to Israel\u2019s supposed\u00a0“audacious feat”\u00a0<\/a>in Lebanon. The US president should have been looking elsewhere: to Israel\u2019s colossal moral and strategic failure <\/a>in Gaza.<\/p>\n

There, Israel spent two years pummelling the tiny coastal enclave into dust, starving the population, and destroying all civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu publicly declared<\/a> that Israel was “eradicating Hamas”, Gaza\u2019s civilian government and its armed resistance movement that had refused for two decades to submit to Israel\u2019s illegal occupation and blockade of the territory.<\/p>\n

In truth, as pretty much every legal and human rights expert long ago concluded, what Israel was actually doing was committing genocide – and, in the process, tearing up<\/a> the rules of war that had governed the period following the Second World War.<\/p>\n

But two and a half years into Israel\u2019s destruction of Gaza, Hamas is not only still standing, it is in charge of the ruins.<\/p>\n

Israel may have shrunk by some 60 percent<\/a>\u00a0the size of the concentration camp the people of Gaza are locked into<\/a>, but Hamas is far from vanquished.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Rather, Israel is the one that has retreated to a safe zone, from which it is resuming a war of attrition on Gaza\u2019s survivors.<\/p>\n

Surprises in store<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When considering whether to launch an illegal war on Iran, Trump should have noted Israel\u2019s complete failure to destroy Hamas after pounding this small territory –\u00a0 the size of the US city of Detroit – from the air for two years.<\/p>\n

That failure was all the starker given that Washington had provided <\/a>Israel with an endless supply of munitions.<\/p>\n

Even sending in Israeli ground forces failed to quell Hamas\u2019 resistance.\u00a0These were the strategic lessons the Trump administration should have learnt.<\/p>\n

If Israel could not overwhelm Gaza militarily, why would Washington imagine the task of doing so in Iran would prove any easier?<\/p>\n

After all, Iran is 4,500 times larger than Gaza. It has a population, and military, 40 times bigger. And it has a fearsome arsenal <\/a>of missiles, not Hamas\u2019 homemade rockets.<\/p>\n

But more important still, as Trump is now apparently learning to his cost, Iran –\u00a0 unlike Hamas in isolated Gaza –\u00a0 has strategic levers to pull with globe-shattering consequences.<\/p>\n

Tehran is matching <\/a>Washington\u2019s climb up the escalation ladder rung by rung: from hitting US military infrastructure in neighbouring Gulf states, and critical civilian infrastructure such as energy grids and desalination plants, to closing the Strait of Hormuz,<\/a> the passage through which much of the world\u2019s oil and energy supplies are transported.<\/p>\n

Tehran is now sanctioning the world, depriving it of the fuel needed to turn the wheels of the global economy, in much the same way that the West sanctioned<\/a> Iran for decades, depriving it of the essentials needed to sustain its domestic economy.<\/p>\n

Unlike Hamas, which had to fight from a network of tunnels under the flat, sandy lands of Gaza, Iran has a terrain massively to its military advantage.<\/p>\n

Granite cliffs and narrow coves along the Strait of Hormuz provide endless protected sites from which to launch surprise attacks. Vast mountain ranges in the interior offer innumerable hiding places – for the enriched uranium the US and Israel demand<\/a> Iran hand over, for soldiers, for drone and missile launch sites, and for weapons production plants.<\/p>\n

The US and Israel are smashing Iran\u2019s visible military-related infrastructure, but – just as Israel discovered when it invaded Gaza – they have almost no idea what lies out of sight.<\/p>\n

They can be sure of one thing, however: Iran, which has been readying for this fight for decades, has plenty of surprises in store should they dare to invade.<\/p>\n

No trust in Trump<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The main problem for Trump, the US narcissist-in-chief, is that he is no longer in charge of events – beyond a series of soundbites, alternating between aggression and accommodation, that appear only to have enriched<\/a> his family and friends as oil markets rise and fall<\/a> on his every utterance.<\/p>\n

Trump lost control of the military fight the moment he fell for Netanyahu\u2019s pitch.<\/p>\n

He may be commander-in-chief of the strongest military in the world, but he has now found himself unexpectedly in the role of piggy in the middle.<\/p>\n

He is largely powerless to bring to an end an illegal war he started. Others now dictate events. Israel, his chief ally in the war, and Iran, his official enemy, hold all the important cards. Trump, despite his bravado, is being dragged along in their tailwind.<\/p>\n

He can declare victory, as he has repeatedly sounded close to doing. But, having released the genie from the bottle, there is little he can actually do to bring the fighting to a close.<\/p>\n

Unlike the US, Israel and Iran have an investment in keeping the war going for as long as either can endure the pain. Each regime believes – for different reasons – that the struggle between them is existential.<\/p>\n

Israel, with its zero-sum world-view, is afraid that, were the military playing field in the Middle East to be levelled by Iran matching Israel\u2019s nuclear-power status, Tel\u00a0Aviv would no longer exclusively have Washington\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n

It would no longer be able, at will, to spread terror across the region. And it would have to reach a settlement with the Palestinians, rather than its preferred plan to commit genocide and ethnically cleanse them.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Iran has concluded – based on recent experience – that the US, and especially Trump, can no more be trusted than Israel.<\/p>\n

In 2018, in his first term, the US president\u00a0tore up<\/a> the nuclear deal signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Last summer Trump launched<\/a> strikes on Iran in the midst of talks.<\/p>\n

And then late last month he unleashed<\/a> this war, just as renewed talks were on the brink of success, according to mediators.<\/p>\n