On February 2 of this year, Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to fly to Washington for a first meeting with Donald Trump since the latter's return to the Oval Office. On the tarmac at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, the Israeli prime minister outlined his vision: "The decisions we made in the war have already changed the face of the Middle East. Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further and for the better."
Less than six months later, the bombarding of Iran's main nuclear sites by the most powerful army in the world during the night of Saturday, June 21, to Sunday, June 22, confirmed the triumph of Israel, which in only a few months has become the sheriff of the Middle East. Of course, the US has always voiced unambiguous opposition to the Iranian regime, and especially to its nuclear program. Yet, the Israeli prime minister managed to enlist, at a moment of his choosing, a US president who, upon taking office on January 20, insisted that his success would be measured "by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into."
The bombings serve as a final epitaph to the blindness of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, killed in October 2024. With the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, he not only pushed his militia to the ultimate stage of barbarity, thereby discrediting the armed struggle he claimed to lead, but also took down with him the "axis of resistance" that the Iranian regime set up over decades by exploiting regional imbalances, the fate of Shiite minorities and the persistent Palestinian question. Where the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 boosted support for this "axis," Israel's moves have now reduced it to rubble.
Hezbollah has remained on standby since the start of the Israeli bombing campaign against Iran on June 13, as have the Iraqi Shiite militias. The military capabilities of the Houthis in Yemen remain marginal, while the new Syrian regime, born out of jihadism, could only welcome the unprecedented weakening of a Shiite regime capable of posing a threat to it.
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