The biggest battle in the Middle East isn't Israel vs Iran anymore; it's Trump vs Netanyahu
Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert thinks their relationship isn’t just under strain; it may be breaking because the U.S. and Israel no longer want the same thing.
Trump wants the Iran war over; he wants Hormuz open, oil prices down, markets calm, and America out of another Middle East disaster before it consumes his presidency.
Netanyahu doesn’t have that luxury.
Ehud argues Netanyahu still sees Iran as unfinished business, has his own political needs, and is leading a coalition packed with hardliners who believe the answer to every problem is more force, more escalation, and more war.
He even believes Trump may have created the nuclear problem he now claims to be solving.
According to Ehud, when Trump tore up Obama’s Iran deal, Israel hadn't found evidence that Iran was violating it. Without the deal in place, Iran accelerated enrichment, and the crisis escalated.
After bombing them, the region nearly blew wide open, and now Washington is back trying to negotiate another deal with Tehran. Only this time, Iran is stronger, the price is higher, and the stakes are worse.
Olmert’s warning is simple: military power can buy time, but it cannot replace a political strategy.
That applies to Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and Israel’s future relationship with America.
Because if Trump wants the war to end while Netanyahu’s coalition still wants escalation, then the question is whether they are still fighting for the same future.
And if they are not, this may be the beginning of the biggest U.S-Israel rupture in decades.
Pakistan, not the U.S., may be the real architect of this Iran deal.
That was Pepe Escobar's throughline, and Pezeshkian seemed to confirm part of it, publicly crediting Pakistan's leadership as the builders of the MOU before landing in Islamabad.
Pepe's account of Switzerland reads like a thriller.
He says the U.S. and Iranian delegations never spoke a single word directly, everything routed through Pakistani and Qatari mediators, and that Iran walked out three times before being coaxed back.
The framing he keeps returning to: nobody, not even close allies, trusts what Trump says day to day, so the Gulf is quietly building its own architecture.
His biggest claim is that Saudi Arabia is shifting its security umbrella away from Washington and toward Pakistan's nuclear deterrent, with Iran's blessing.
He says Pakistani leaders fly to Riyadh this week to take it further.
Where it lands is the question.
Pepe thinks Israel will try to wreck this deal relentlessly.
The MOU holding depends on one thing: whether Washington actually wants it to.
@RealPepeEscobar
Vance is out claiming victory and dictating terms, but the Iran war is nowhere near over, and the optics of where Trump signed should worry the White House for years.
This framing from Patrick Henningsen reshaped how I see Iran's position.
By forcing Lebanon into the package and making it stick, Iran did what a superpower does, drawing a red line and backing it with real hard power.
They stood toe to toe with the world's strongest military and the region's best, got pounded, and came out dictating terms.
That, Patrick says, vaults Iran to the top tier of the region, above Israel and Saudi
But his warning is to stay cautious.
Israel doesn't think week to week, it thinks in decades.
They've occupied South Lebanon twice before and came back a third time.
He pointed to history rhyming: the 1982 invasion was triggered by an assassination later pinned on the wrong group, and a similar false-flag spark could blow this open again
The piece that stuck with me hardest?
Patrick was in Tehran the week before the bombs fell.
He says the "50,000 massacred protesters" story that justified this war came from US intelligence, and the real picture on the ground was very different.
@21WIRE
Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar says Trump may have already undermined his own deal
The first condition in the 14-point MOU is that both sides stop threatening each other. Then Trump publicly warned Iranian negotiators they might not even make it home
If the parties can't get past point 1, there's no reason to discuss points 2 through 14
92% of Israelis reportedly believe Iran won the war. Aguilar says Americans see tactical victories. Israelis are looking at the end result: sanctions relief, frozen funds released, pressure on Israel to leave Lebanon, and the Strait of Hormuz still sitting over global markets
On Lebanon, he doesn't expect a full Israeli withdrawal anytime soon, but he thinks Trump forced Netanyahu into at least considering one
His theory is that Trump didn't ask nicely. He either offered something Netanyahu wanted or threatened something Netanyahu fears
The question hanging over everything: can this deal survive long enough to become reality, or does one more provocation send everyone back to their corners?
Most of the conversation around the Iran war has moved on to who won and who lost.
But Mohamed El-Erian gave me a sobering warning: the economic damage from this war is the kind that SCARS, not the kind that heals.
His core point reframed it for me.
Economists usually expect mean reversion, the rubber band snapping back.
El-Erian says this is the opposite, what he calls multiple equilibrium.
Disrupt the status quo this violently and you don't return, you drift further away. A ping pong ball knocked off a cup doesn't roll back on.
The mechanism is an inflation shock that starts in energy and spreads. Gas, then the cost of moving food, then food itself.
And because Hormuz chokes fertilizer too, he says the worst of the food price hit lands six to nine months out. But the real danger is the precedent.
Iran just showed the world that weaponizing a single choke point delivers enormous leverage.
Now the Red Sea, the Taiwan strait, the Malacca strait are all fair game.
Welcome to geo-economics, where strangling a choke point is cheaper than missiles.
The word he kept returning to was SCARRING...
Geopolitical scarring, economic scarring.
This one is going to haunt the global economy for YEARS.
@elerianm
Cenk is famously critical of Israel for dragging Trump into the Iran war.
But now that Trump is getting out of it, despite all the pressure
And considering the fact the MOU does NOT serve Israeli interests
Are we seeing a shift by Trump away from Israel?
Or is Israel about to sabotage the entire peace deal?
Enjoy my convo with @Cenkuygur
INTERVIEW: The U.S. Iran deal includes a halt to the war in Lebanon, as well as Israel pulling out
Israel says "they have the right to defend themselves" and would not pull out of Lebanon, as they are not technically part of the deal
Soooooooooo...... what happens next?
INTERVIEW: Belfast erupted into chaos last night after a Sudanese migrant tried to behead an Irish man
Neil Oliver breaks down the root cause of the crisis, the grooming gang epidemic, and how illegal immigration is part of a bigger plan to divide society and force submissiveness
Europe is on edge
@thecoastguy