-Analysis-
TURIN — Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprise attack on Iran has shaken the Middle East, brought the West back together and returned Israel to Europe’s fickle and rather cynical good graces. Somehow, the Iranian conflict has managed to push the inhuman massacre in Gaza into the shadows, appearing merely as a secondary disturbance, collateral damage.
On the chaotic chessboard of current geopolitics, the fate of Iran’s nuclear sites and the cave-dwelling fanaticism of the ayatollahs carry a thousand times more weight than the ever expanding Palestinian graveyard.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
International law may have died as well, but not everyone sees that as bad news. Vladimir Putin’s curious caution seems to confirm this fact, giving credence to the idea, widely floated in international circles, of an unwritten pact with Donald Trump: a temporary hands-off approach to Tehran in exchange for a U.S. pullback in Kyiv. And without a doubt, any regime change that decapitates Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and topples Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, holed up in some bunker in Tehran, would be cheered from Washington to Brussels.
Suddenly, the Netanyahu government’s brutal excesses seem a bit easier to stomach. Israel’s current military assault against Iran might have gone ahead even without the October 7 massacre, but it would have been unthinkable before Russia’s aggression in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. That day marked the true turning point in our recent history, the moment when the illegal use of force began to replace international treaties.
At first it went unnoticed, but over time, the shift became undeniable. These days, might makes right. It is a doctrine cemented by the rise of a volatile American president who no longer even tries to cloak his arbitrary decisions in legal justifications. We are under the sway of a global “black swan” event operating in a fourth dimension: one of uncertainty, lawlessness and disorder.
No swift end
Still, it is hard to deny that 15 years of attempts to dissuade Tehran from going nuclear have failed. Diplomacy has fallen short, and we have to find the courage to face not just what pleases us, but the collapse of what we once believed to be right.
One crisis would trigger another.
Anyone who thinks Netanyahu’s war is headed for a swift and predictable resolution is deluding themselves. Israel is in real danger, as is the Iranian regime, an empire far larger and stronger than many assume. By simply targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran could throw global trade into chaos and send oil prices through the roof. One crisis would trigger another.
So why is Israel striking now? As Gabriele Segre of La Stampa puts it, “The Western sense of time is different from that in Jerusalem, where the underlying ambition is always to make it to tomorrow.”
A final green light?
The Iranian threat is written into the very constitution of the Islamic Republic: destroy Israel, invade Mecca, drive the Great American Satan out of the Middle East. That is why they believe the time to act is now.
No occupant of the White House, not even Trump, can afford to distance himself from Jerusalem.
The Thaad missile defense system, transferred from the United States to Israel, was seen as the final green light for any show of strength, whether or not the stammering, unpredictable Donald J. Trump gave it his blessing.
A confused businessman who contradicts himself, shouts and whispers, threatens and retreats, and eventually jumps on the winner’s bandwagon and boasts: “Great attacks, the next ones will be even more brutal.”
Trump has lost control, so he pretends to have all of it. No occupant of the White House, not even him, can afford to distance himself from Jerusalem. Even if, as Bill Emmott wrote in this newspaper, “The strong voice, combined with a limited attention span, leads to inconsistency on the strategic level.”
Bold and unreliable
The American president may be bold, but he is unreliable. Netanyahu, with whom he shares a kind of animal instinctive bond, knows this. There is no point in imagining a role for Europe, it has none. Even less for Italy, whose Prime Minister, by default, aligns with whatever decision the White House makes.
None of this is new, and none of it pleasant. I was recently in the ancient Arena of Verona to watch a futuristic staging of Verdi’s opera, Nabucco, directed by Stefano Poda. The audience erupted with applause during “Va, pensiero”, and closed with a thunderous standing ovation.
The work tells the story from six centuries before Christ, when Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem and enslaves the Jewish people, already on the brink of extinction. Poda’s direction features a massive steel hourglass at the center of the stage, inscribed with the word “Vanitas,” a monument to the folly of humankind, indifferent to the passage of time.
In Act I, Nebuchadnezzar declares: “My fury no longer constrained, make atrocious havoc of the vanquished, plunder, burn the temple, mercy will be a crime.”
“I am no longer king, I am God.”
Today it is Benjamin Netanyahu, caught between realpolitik and delusions of grandeur, who thinks like that Babylonian king. And no one, not even those who could, wants to stop him. The violence of the Israeli leader, indeed, suits many.
“I am no longer king, I am God.” That kind of leap flattens every trace of humanity and reduces the world to a brutal state of self interest, whatever the price and whatever the means. Here we are again. Mercy becomes a crime.
In today’s new geopolitical playbook, distrust counts for more than trust, or law, as trust by now smacks of naivety. Politics has vanished from the table. The cold calculation of Babylon’s kings wins the day.
This is once again the spirit of our age. Faced with a choice between a bad deal and a beautiful idea, we take the deal. The dead? The oppression? We accept them as given. The disappearance of an individual might stir a sigh at most. We live like dulled turtles inside our shells, and keep calling it life. We pull back, shut ourselves in, suffocate slowly. Hoping the iron fist of the strong doesn’t come down on our heads this time.
As I write these lines, an international news agency reports the latest headline: “Sixty dead, including twenty children, as building hit by Israel.” And so, in this daily disaster, we can turn to Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s words: Perhaps we cling to our demons because we are afraid of losing our angels. Even if, today, we’ve begun to wonder where those angels might be hiding.
