CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

After Iran: Is This the Unraveling of the US-Israeli Order?

Image by Hasan Almasi.

The knives are out—and this time, they are not aimed at Tehran, but at Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Even the ever morally flexible Chris Christie moved quickly. The former New Jersey governor and longtime Republican insider, speaking on CNN, did not merely criticize Trump; he used the moment to indict establishment Republicans for enabling him in the first place. What was once quiet discomfort has now hardened into open political distancing.

CNN, for its part, framed the outcome through a language of selective humanitarian concern—invoking the plight of the Iranian people as victims of their own government, even as it criticized Trump’s failure. The contradiction is telling: a posture of moral superiority that condemns mismanagement, yet stops short of rejecting the underlying logic of war itself. In this framing, aggression is not questioned—only its effectiveness.

Across the Arab world, particularly within Gulf establishment circles, the reaction has been sharper—and deeply revealing. The familiar charge of “cut and run” has returned, recalling the criticism directed at Barack Obama during the US withdrawal from Iraq and the pivot to Asia.

The contradiction is striking: many of the same voices that claimed to oppose the Iraq war were equally outraged when the United States withdrew from it. Then, as now, Washington is faulted not for war itself, but for failing to see it through to a decisive conclusion.

According to Axios, Trump’s decision to pursue a settlement with Iran was made in defiance of strong opposition from key regional allies. Netanyahu resisted. So did several Arab governments whose strategic calculations depended on the continuation—and success—of the war. The pressure was not marginal; it was central. Yet it was overridden.

Netanyahu’s anger is not merely emotional—it is strategic. He understands what is at stake. If this ceasefire holds, and especially if it matures into a permanent agreement between Washington and Tehran, then his long-constructed vision of a “new Middle East” does not simply stall—it collapses.

The conditions that made this war possible—its timing, its alignments, its assumptions—are unlikely to be recreated. This was not just another confrontation. It was a convergence of political opportunity, regional ambition, and ideological fixation. And that moment has now passed.

But this raises a more uncomfortable question: why are Arab governments not welcoming this outcome?

If the war ends, their oil infrastructure is safer. Their economies are more secure. The immediate risk of regional escalation diminishes. By all conventional metrics, this should be a relief.

To understand why, one must look beyond the war itself and into the political architecture that has been taking shape in the region for years. A quiet but........

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