Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu now knows how Esther and Mordechai felt when Achashveirosh told them that he could not cancel the letters sent out by Haman for the destruction of the Jews of Persia. To get rid of the threat of Haman, Esther and Mordechai had no choice but to hitch their star to Achashveirosh, with Esther even risking her life to do so by appearing unbidden before the king.
But by making themselves dependent on Achashveirosh, an erratic ruler, easily led astray by his own ego — the kind of ruler who needed to show off the beauty of his wife Vashti for all the world to see — they paid a price. And so have Netanyahu and the citizens of Israel by placing their reliance on President Trump.
Here's a message I received last night from President Trump, or someone with access to his email, who sends out similar messages on a regular basis: If you had to decide today, would you say I am the greatest president in US history?
The childish braggadocio and total lack of self-awareness is astounding. And of a piece with mulling over plans to create a new $250 bill with his likeness, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and with the placing of his name on the Kennedy Center.
It would be difficult to name a president less fit to represent the principles of the American Revolution than Donald Trump. When he speaks of America, it is always in terms of boasts of its military strength or economic might, never in terms of its founding principles or what they gave to American citizens and to the rest of the world.
Elliot Abrams, a leading foreign policy figure in the first Trump administration, has remarked of the curiously small value Trump places on liberty and democracy. He repeatedly manifests a preference for strongmen governments — e.g., Putin's Russia, Erdogan's Turkey. After ridding Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro, he left the Maduro regime in place, in the person of vice president Delcy Rodriguez, without pressing for free elections or the release of political prisoners from jail.
And it is now fairly clear that whatever memorandum of understanding (MOU) is signed with the IRGC-led Iranian government will do nothing to weaken the regime's grip on its restless population.
THE EGOTIST is dangerous to all those around him, and even to himself; the bigger the egotist, the greater the danger. And most of those dangers have been evident in Trump's handling of Iran ever since he declared a ceasefire in the US-Israel joint campaign.
For one thing, the egotist will surround himself with toadies, selected not for their competence but for their telling him what he wants to hear and not what he needs to hear. That has been reflected in some of Trump's inexplicable choices for senior positions. Matt Gaetz, for instance, was his first choice for attorney general, despite virtually no legal experience and a long history of scandalous behavior that made it impossible for him to be confirmed. Today, Gaetz spends his time spreading antisemitic invective on the internet.
The experience of Steve Witkoff, Trump's chief international negotiator and golf buddy, is in New York real estate, not in international diplomacy. It is fair to say that his understanding of a fanatic Islamist regime willing, even eager, to suffer for the greater glory of Al-lah is nil.
Marco Rubio, one of the adults in the room in the administration, has held both the portfolio of secretary of state and national security advisor almost since the beginning of Trump's second term. That merging of the two roles has been accompanied by leaving the National Security Council woefully understaffed, and thereby greatly limiting the expertise available to the president.
That leaves Trump solely dependent on his own instincts — some of them good, and others appalling. Those instincts told him that Iranian regime would quickly collapse in the wake of the US-Israeli decapitation strike to open the war on February 28. When that didn't happen, and Iran moved to close the Strait of Hormuz, there was no plan in place to counter.
Trump's ego led him to endorse Ken Paxton over four-term senator John Cornyn in the Texas Republican primary. Cornyn, it seems, had been too slow in endorsing Trump's bid for a second term, and that slight had to be avenged. The result, however, is that Republicans are saddled with a scandal-riddled candidate, who was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas Senate, for a multitude of serious crimes. As a result, a Senate seat that should have been a Republican lock could well be won by a progressive Democrat, making Republican control of the Senate much more precarious.
Similarly, Trump's heedless remark about Canada becoming the 51st state doomed the 2025 campaign of Pierre Poilievre, a populist politician identified with Trump, who had a large lead prior to Trump's thoughtless comment. Instead, Trump ended up with a much less friendly Liberal-led Canadian government. Similarly, his bullying remarks about seizing Greenland from Denmark made it more difficult to attain by negotiation what America sought and greatly deepened the rifts with European allies.
Last week, Trump's efforts to make himself big at Netanyahu's expense — "I'm the boss and I call the shots" — and his confirmation to journalists of his vulgar dressing-down of Netanyahu for not complying with his demands not to attack Hezbollah may well have sunk the prime minister's reelection campaign, based in large part on the closeness of his relationship with Trump. Not the way to treat an ally that multiplies America's ability to project power in the region more effectively than any military partner of the US since the Normandy landing.
MANY TIMES, BULLIES fall apart when their bluff is called. For the last four months, Trump has been hurling all manner of fierce threats to totally destroy Iran — i.e., bomb its train lines and bridges, wipe out its infrastructure, eliminate its oil facilities. All to no avail. As the Eli Wallach character in an old spaghetti Western says, "If you are going to shoot, shoot; don't talk." (Never saw the movie, just heard the line on Tablet's Barbarians podcast.) Each threat unacted upon has only made the president look more clownish and blustering.
The last thing a self-centered egotist can take is being exposed. But that is what the Iranians have done to President Trump. That is best captured in a cartoon showing a school blackboard announcing the topic, "How to Deal with Iran," with Trump at an elementary school desk looking over at Obama, seated at the adjacent desk, and copying from his paper. Remember, he once labeled the JCPOA "the worst deal ever."
Last week when Iran knocked down an American Apache helicopter and thus crossed a Trump red line by seeking to kill US servicemen, the US responded by bombing Iranian air defenses and at least one oil complex. Many thought the American response signaled that Trump recognized he was being played for a chump in negotiations. But the magnitude of the response was interpreted by the Iranians as a simple tit-for-tat response, not an indication of resumed warfare.
In any event, defining the American red line as the killing of US servicemen, not as attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and American bases located in Jordan and the Gulf, was a mistake, as it suggested to Gulf states that the US will be at best a half-hearted defender.
And that is crucial. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is rumored to have already unfrozen $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets. Whether those billions are being unfrozen at the request of the US to sweeten its offer in negotiations or as protection money to Iran, the transfer is a very negative development.
In a press briefer last Friday, Vice President Vance argued that the difference between the pending deal and the JCPOA is that there would be no pallets of billions of dollars in cash transferred to Iran prior to its performance with respect to handing over or destroying its existing stock of 60 percent enriched uranium. But if rumors of the UAE unfreezing of Iranian accounts is true, even that claim is false.
The more money that Iran receives, the more it will have to spend on restarting its nuclear program and amping up again its ballistic missile production, not to mention reconstituting its regional proxies. Indeed, it is already doing so with respect to opening up the bombed entrances to ballistic missile sites. One thing is for sure: That money will not be spent on bettering the situation of Iranians.
A temporary opening of the Strait of Hormuz will lessen the pressure on Trump to bring energy prices down. But it will also remove the noose around Iran's economy in the form of the American blockade of shipping to and from Iran. Continuation of the American blockade without an MOU is surely the outcome Israel would have preferred.
Inasmuch as the US did not successfully reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force, or even try to do so, there is nothing to prevent Iran from simply announcing the closure of the Strait again, when it believes it has extracted as much as it can in sanctions relief and unfrozen funds.
In the meantime, reports of the contents of the allegedly imminent MOU make scant mention, if any, of limitations on Iran's ballistic missile capabilities or of restraints on its financing of the Ring of Fire proxies surrounding Israel. Most commentators assume that the Iranians have extracted a promise from Trump to include an Israeli ceasefire in Lebanon as part of the ceasefire with Iran.
That puts Netanyahu in the difficult position of being forced to defy Trump. Israel cannot acquiesce to citizens of the North being subjected to Hezbollah rocket fire, at times of Hezbollah's choosing, without incurring a heavy IDF response. Netanyahu's long reign in power is over if he cannot credibly protect the citizens of the North from Hezbollah.
PERHAPS THE SADDEST PART of the failure to see Epic Fury to its conclusion is that for all Trump's failings and bluster, he is likely to be the most sympathetic president that Israel will see for some time. The Democratic Party has all bought the Obama Kool Aid of moderating the Iranian regime by elevating them to the role of regional hegemon.
And the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, including most prominently the vice president, is of a similar mind. Vance even sounded like the Obama team when he touted the upcoming agreement as strengthening the alleged "moderate" wing of the regime. That is the line promoted by the Quincy Institute, funded by the Koch brothers and founded by the Iran-born Trita Parsi, who has often been accused of being an Iranian operative.
For solace, I return to Megillas Esther, which, after all, turned out well for the Jews. Because it was the King pulling the strings behind the scenes all the time.