There is an old parable about two scorpions in a jar. Neither can leave. Neither trusts the other. And sooner or later, one strikes, not because it wants to kill the other, but because the jar has become unbearable.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are those scorpions now, and the jar is the wreckage of the Middle East they built together.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are those scorpions now, and the jar is the wreckage of the Middle East they built together.

For the better part of a year, they marched in locked steps. One man’s appetite for spectacle matched by the other’s genius for making disaster look like deliverance. Netanyahu persuaded Trump that Iran could be shattered quickly, cleanly, at no real cost. Trump believed him because believing him was easier than doubting him, and doubt has never been a currency Trump trades in. The war came. But Iran did not break. And when the bill arrived, it was delivered to Trump’s door, not Netanyahu’s.

John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who has spent a career mapping the architecture of American deference to Israeli interests, put the verdict as bluntly as a man of his discipline allows:

Netanyahu convinced Trump the war would be short and decisive, and Trump, in Mearsheimer’s words, was foolish enough to believe him.

Netanyahu convinced Trump the war would be short and decisive, and Trump, in Mearsheimer’s words, was foolish enough to believe him.

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© Middle East Monitor