Since the ceasefire between Israel and Iran came into effect life in Israel has more or less returned to normal. Reserve soldiers who have been in the field for months on end have returned home to their families and many are now taking well-deserved vacations. All this would not be happening if not for the fact that, by any reasonable and objective standard, Israel’s operation Rising Lion, together with America’s Midnight Hammer strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, had not been a spectacular success.
Some critics have claimed that this blindness is due to the fact that both Trump and Witkoff have financial interests in Qatar.
Think of it: during a period of 12 days, the Israel Air Force (IAF) made a thousand sorties moving from west to east ever deeper into Iranian airspace. It destroyed nuclear installations, missile launchers, missile and drone factories, anti-aircraft batteries, fighter jets and took out numerous high ranking military commanders and nuclear scientists all without losing a single aircraft.
Similarly, with complete impunity the USAF’s Midnight Hammer strikes dealt a crippling blow to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. But it must be noted that despite President Trump’s bravado, Midnight Hammer probably would not have taken place had the IAF not laid the groundwork. As distinguished military historian Victor Davis Hanson noted in his Blade of Perseus blog of June 26, “For Supreme Leader Khamenei, it was hard to swallow that U.S. bombers got their permission to fly into Iranian airspace from the Israeli air force.”
Given the ongoing necessity of playing to the audience back home, where naysayers are forever predicting another forever war, Trump’s renaming of Israel’s Rising Lion operation as the “12 Day War” is understandable. But it is nevertheless unfortunate because it distorts reality. Israel’s hot war with Iran and its proxies has been going on now not for 12 but rather for some six hundred days. And while America has been involved from the get-go, the immediacy of the Iranian threat to Israel’s existence has mandated that Israel do the heavy lifting.
While the U.S. helped block some of the Iranian missiles shot at Israel in April and October of 2024, Israel, by necessity, intercepted the vast majority. It is with the resupply of critical military hardware that America has played its most crucial role. It must be remembered that during the Biden administration bought and paid for munitions and spare parts were withheld or slow walked. It was only after Trump took office that the IDF was massively resupplied, speeding up shipments and, consequently, bringing the war to its present point.
That being said, it is impossible to exaggerate the amount of effort that it took for the IDF to plan and coordinate operation Rising Lion. Preparation for this operation had been going on for 30 years and every branch of the Israeli military and security apparatus, especially Mossad intelligence and special ops, were intensely involved. In practical terms this means that many personnel spent entire careers in the planning effort.
Now that that mission has been accomplished all efforts are focused on Gaza which is the last meaningful front in the war that started on 10/7. Formerly, Israel’s tactic in Gaza was essentially one of raiding and then retreating. Its new tactic is to take and keep ground while at the same time taking control of the distribution of humanitarian aid in order to help starve Hamas. At this point Israel controls about 75 percent of the Strip and has moved most of the civilian population out of harm’s way. Hamas’s last stronghold is Gaza City where its last effective leader, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, is holed up. Though his whereabout are known to Israeli intelligence, he never appears in public and has ruthlessly surrounded himself with hostages which makes him very difficult to eliminate.
One cannot predict how Trump’s new ceasefire proposal will play out, but we’ve seen this movie before. The bottom line is that for Israel to achieve its war aims Hamas must be completely destroyed. It is impossible to overstate the importance of achieving this goal. The whole world is watching. Other states such as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia will probably not make peace with Israel until she finishes the job.
Hamas is not merely a terrorist organization. It is also an embodiment of the extreme Islamic ideology known as Wahhabism, and ideologies are much harder to eradicate than men and military equipment. That is why it is shocking that President Trump keeps inviting Qatar, which is the foremost fount of Wahhabism to the negotiating table between Hamas and Israel. Egypt also does not come to the table with entirely clean hands — who can forget that she smuggled arms into Gaze — but at least Egypt abhors the Muslim Brotherhood which is one of Wahabism’s main conduits and organizing mechanisms.
The Qataris are the guys wearing nice suits but, as Khaled Abu Toameh wrote at Gatestone on June 3, “After America’s attack on Iran’s nuclear sites on June 22, journalists and those who shape public opinion in Qatar condemned the U.S. and President Donald J. Trump…. Qatar’s government newspapers took to social media to slam the U.S. and Trump, calling him a ‘brazen liar, ‘the leader of a modern crusade,’ and a ‘war criminal’ who has ‘revealed his ugly face’ and is ‘looking for false personal glory.’
By now in the Middle East few entities like Iran, but neither do they like Qatar. In 2017 four Arab states — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — severed ties with Qatar and imposed a sea, land, and air blockade on it. They accused Qatar of supporting various terrorist groups and extremist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and demanded the closure of Al-Jazeera. However, without American support nothing came of it.
However this war ends, whether through the implementation of President Trump’s most recent ceasefire proposal, which calls for Hamas to release all remaining hostages, lay down its arms, and leave the Gaza enclave, or when the IDF has achieved these goals by force, it is obvious that Israel will have to retain security control of the strip for the foreseeable future.
Now that their Hamas jailers no longer control the exits, Gazans have already been leaving the Strip for other parts of the world. Part of Trump’s ceasefire proposal is that a number of Arab nations will oversee and administer the postwar rebuilding. These legitimately include the UAE and Egypt, but Qatar has also been mentioned.
Under no circumstances should Qatar be included. Its true colors have been known to its neighbors for decades, and by now America also knows or should know what they are. For some reason President Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff have turned a blind eye to what Qatar really is, a state sponsor of terror equal to Iran but with a pretty face.
Some critics have claimed that this blindness is due to the fact that both Trump and Witkoff have financial interests in Qatar. One would like to think that this criticism is baseless. Whatever the case may be, the constant engagement with Qatar has become a blot on Trump’s legacy and, if it continues, will make Israel’s job after the war much more difficult and dangerous. For those who have eyes to see, there will be a cloud over Trump’s foreign policy until the end of his term — and it just ain’t worth it.
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