A Desperate Gamble: Netanyahu’s Agony

Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington not as the triumphant wartime conqueror, but as a politician on the threshold of political and personal ruin. His two-year campaign against Hamas has disintegrated into a strategic debacle. Despite its sheer military superiority, Israel remains mired in an unwinnable attrition war in Gaza, with hostages still in the grip of the captors and Hamas’s war machinery still intact. The much-touted Israeli Defence Forces have been bogged down in street combat while failing to achieve any of their declared objectives.

Netanyahu’s own domestic position is also troubled. Threatened by charges of corruption that could send him to prison, the Israeli Prime Minister has calculated that there is only one desperate roll of the dice that will preserve his skin: forcing the United States into a full-blown war with Iran. The short twelve-day war in June not only exposed Israel’s failure to destroy Iran but also the danger of a far greater conflagration that could remake the entire regional equation.

This is Netanyahu’s final attempt to avoid the wrath of Israeli courts. He comes to Washington not to seek advice or consultation, but to insist upon American blood and dollars to repair the strategic mess of his own making. His bag of tricks is not only classical diplomatic pressure, but also the threat of playing on sensitive and compromising information that will put immense pressure on the Trump administration to comply.

The economic apocalypse: When the strait closes

The strategic vulnerability Netanyahu desires to exploit has apocalyptic global ramifications. The Strait of Hormuz—that 21-mile narrow chokepoint for a fifth of the world’s oil and over 30 per cent of global liquefied natural gas to travel each day—represents the world’s most vulnerable economic leverage point. Iran has regularly and publicly threatened to close this........

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