This is a follow-up to my news item yesterday about President Trump getting Israel and Hezbollah to agree to quit killing each other. Reports have it that Trump used some foul-mouthed language to convince Bibi Netanyahu to forego plans to invade Beirut as a final step to eradicate the terrorist cell operating in Lebanon at Iran’s behest, i.e., the aforementioned Hezbollah.
According to Axios (believe them if you like, but I see no reason not to), Trump, in his call with the Israeli Premier yesterday, told him: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
By way of backdrop, Iran has demanded that any ceasefire include Hezbollah and Israel. Otherwise, Iran says, there can be no moving forward on a peace deal, let alone a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to open the Strait of Hormuz and continue further negotiations.
Netanyahu, by many accounts, is the force that got Trump involved in the Iranian conflict to begin with. Following a public uprising in Iran, for which Trump promised that “help is on the way,” the president saw an Iranian bombing campaign as the fulfillment of that promise, with the hoped-for result of regime change. The rationale and justification for the air-and-sea onslaught have now changed.
Remember how, in June 2025, after Operation Midnight Hammer and the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump proclaimed that the country could no longer produce a nuclear weapon. Now, after a six-week war that began as an effort at regime change in the Islamic Republic, Trump is billing the effort as preventing the mullahs and the IRGC from ever getting a nuke.
Alas, the world is now in a worse situation after hostilities were paused than before “bombs away,” what with the Strait of Hormuz closed by Iran as a bargaining chip. Asian countries are starved for oil. A worldwide recession looms, as does a GOP massacre in the November elections. Trump is rightfully desperate, though he is doing his best to mask it.
It looks as if yesterday that desperation came out of hiding.
