{"id":328309,"date":"2026-06-24T07:12:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T07:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=328309"},"modified":"2026-06-26T06:50:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:50:55","slug":"israel-picking-up-the-pieces-of-its-deep-seated-hubris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=328309","title":{"rendered":"‘Israel Picking Up the Pieces of Its Deep-Seated Hubris’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alastair Crooke \u2013 The Unz Review June 22, 2026<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Trump\u2019s Iran deal shatters Israel\u2019s 40-year dream of regime change.<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

The Iran-U.S. de-escalation framework has been signed. As always, getting a framework agreed is one thing, but preserving it from disruptive actors or malicious distortion<\/a> of the text is quite another. Who knows how long it will survive intact? The MoU nonetheless constitutes an important phase \u2013 albeit one leg \u2013 in a long journey ahead for Iran. The Agreement however, may also prompt wider geo-economic \u2018plate\u2019 shifts.<\/p>\n

Iran has succeeded in pushing a reluctant Trump to cross the Rubicon. Danny Citrinowicz<\/a>, a former senior Israeli Iran military intelligence analyst, says that for Trump,<\/p>\n

\u201cachieving a deal with Iran and ending the current cycle of escalation is not merely an option but a clear strategic goal \u2026 He now envisions a broader vision of U.S.\u2013Iran relations\u201d.<\/p>\n

An unquestioned dogma<\/a> has bitten the dust:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe long-standing expectation in parts of Jerusalem and Washington has been that sustained pressure could lead to regime change in Tehran \u2026 [However] the announced agreement suggests a [new] fundamental reality: The campaign that many hoped would weaken or even destabilise the Islamic Republic will instead conclude with the regime intact, strengthened, and formally engaged by the U.S. \u2026 [This] amounts to the collapse of a broader strategic assumption: that coordinated American and Israeli pressure could generate conditions conducive to fundamental political change inside Iran. Instead, the likely outcome is the opposite \u2026 [it is] an outcome likely to reinforce confidence amongst [Iran\u2019s] ruling elite rather than weaken it \u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n

This moment represents a major strategic achievement for Iran: A heroic image is surging across the globe \u2013 whereas Israel\u2019s isolation on the Iran issue, even amongst its Gulf allies, has spiked. On the personal level, Netanyahu\u2019s standing in Israel has plunged catastrophically.<\/p>\n

Of course, the \u2018Understanding\u2019 may quickly unravel \u2013 Trump is prone to sudden changes of mind, and the full force of the U.S. Zionist billionaire class is being unleashed against Trump, compelling him to change course (perhaps through the former working to mobilise opposition<\/a> in Congress and the Senate).<\/p>\n

Both are possible, but the reality of Trump having actually come to agreement \u2013 however tentative \u2013 with Iran underlines a growing divergence between Trump and Israel. And Netanyahu\u2019s attempt to sever the linkage between the MoU and any ceasefire in Lebanon (by mounting an attack in Dahhiya in Beirut on Sunday) paradoxically achieved the opposite<\/a> \u2013 Trump promptly improved the terms of the MoU for Iran.<\/p>\n

And if the Agreement does unravel, Iran has the option simply to close the Hormuz Strait \u2013 and potentially the Bab el Mandeb passage too. And what can Trump do? The closer that the U.S. moves towards the \u2018economic cliff\u2019 and to the mid-term elections, the less the appeal will be for him to restart the war. In any case, Iran is fully expecting and preparing for a resumption of military strikes.<\/p>\n

Aside from the local impacts of Trump prioritising the understanding with Iran over that of Israel\u2019s interest to keep the war in Lebanon burning, the Accord may portend wider geo-political consequences \u2013<\/p>\n

Iran, for four decades, has been enveloped in the ever tightening boa-constrictor coils of sanctions<\/a>, energy strangleholds and dollar exclusion, reflecting the non-stop efforts by Jewish-Israeli supremacists in Israel and America to maintain U.S. dominance over the Middle East.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran, yet conversely, through its animus, has forged that very adversary (Iran) to now exercise its leverage to gradually prise off the snake\u2019s enveloping coils so that it can begin to breathe more easily.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s resistance has caught the imagination of much of the world \u2013 precisely because it is seen as a moral<\/em> fight to reassert an Iranian vision for their own future.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Iran example rather, has opened eyes around the world to the U.S. project to forcibly coerce states to acquiesce to the U.S. demands that they align with the U.S. imposition of Zionist hegemony across the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Already states seeing<\/a> the extent of the chokehold imposed on Iran, are seeking ways to protect themselves from a similar U.S. weaponisation of foreign trade in food, oil, fertiliser \u2013 and in just about anything that the U.S. can create a choke point for \u2013 to be deployed against them.<\/p>\n

Will the signing of the MoU then indeed be something of an inflection point? It is too early to say, but one initial question must be: Has Trump\u2019s volte face<\/em> dealt an irreversible blow to Israel?<\/p>\n

Lazar Berman, military correspondent of the Times of Israel, <\/em>observes<\/a> that \u201ctotal victory\u201d and its illusions are over \u2013<\/p>\n

\u201cThe post-October 7 wars, which came with expectations and promises of \u201ctotal victory,\u201d are over \u2013 as are their illusions. Palestinians are not going to leave Gaza. Hamas won\u2019t disarm, nor will Hezbollah. Trump is not going to return to war in Iran, which can now threaten to withdraw from a deal to get Trump to stop any major Israeli operation against Hamas or Hezbollah \u2026The Middle East has certainly changed\u201d.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s goal, it now seems, is to reach an agreement with Iran \u2013 he apparently believes too, that the move will also serve Israel\u2019s interests. This may, or may not, be realistic. For, as Aluf Benn writes in Haaretz<\/em>,<\/p>\n

\u201cthe idea that Israel and Iran are capable of reconciliation after decades of hostility, which culminated in bombings and missile attacks last year, was never even discussed in Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was this lacuna that gave rise to hubris and wishful thinking in the Israeli Establishment.<\/p>\n

As leading Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea amplifies<\/a>, it never even occurred to Israel that Iran might survive a U.S.-led onslaught \u2013<\/p>\n

\u201cThere probably wasn\u2019t anyone from Military Intelligence, the National Security Council or the Mossad who raised at the meetings the possibility that the Iranian regime might survive and emerge stronger. Even if there were a few sceptics in the room, they held their tongue\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Israel, the sense of defeat<\/a> is palpable.<\/p>\n

What Trump now is likely angling for is more room for manoeuvre for his vision of peace in the Middle East. His kite-flying about Iran joining the Abraham Accords; that he would like to talk with Hizbullah, and his (even more absurd) comments to the effect that Jolani and Syria should \u2018take care\u2019 of Hizbullah in Lebanon, however, do lend support to Citrinowicz\u2019s contention that for now, Trump entertains some (possibly implausible) broader vision of where U.S.-Iran relations might lead.<\/p>\n

In this reconfigured Israeli strategic landscape, perhaps even the pusillanimous<\/a> Europeans<\/a> might begin some corrective action by insisting on a return to ancient understandings of war \u2013 in which de-capitation strikes and multi-assassination campaigns of women and children lie outside of all civilised norms of war, let alone of human morality. Iranian negotiators insisted in the negotiations that any assassinations or killings would kill relations with the U.S. stone-dead.<\/p>\n

The other key issue that flows from these events is the question \u2013 what will be the effect of the signing of the MoU on the complexion of U.S. polity? Will this prove to be a separate and strategic point of inflection? Will America as a whole start to detach from Israel?<\/p>\n

There is a clear segmentation in the U.S. electorate. The demographic layer of the over 55-year olds is broadly sympathetic to Israel; but the young have shifted radically<\/a>. Even amongst American Jews, 61% have concluded that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, and 39% regard Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza as genocide.<\/p>\n

Of course, the Israel-Firsters will not change their stance and will insist that Congress toes their line.<\/p>\n

But a recent WSJ\u2019s opinion piece<\/a> \u2013 Netanyahu has Lost Middle America \u2013 <\/em>concludes:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Israel approaches elections this Fall, I am confident that: If its voters choose to continue the current government despite the deadly mistakes it has made, many Americans will conclude that the Israel they have supported for decades no longer exists\u201d.<\/p>\n