One hundred days after they went to war together to thwart Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program, radically degrade its ballistic missile industry, end its support for the Hezbollah and Hamas terror armies, and create the conditions for the fall of the regime, the US-Israel alliance against the Islamic Republic on Sunday reached its nadir.

With the north battered relentlessly by Hezbollah in recent weeks, Israel resorted to a largely symbolic strike on the terror group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut, reportedly without telling the disapproving Trump administration ahead of time that it was doing so.

And, as it had warned it would, Iran responded by firing about 10 missiles at northern Israel — again sending that sector of the country rushing to bomb shelters, though causing no injuries or damage.

But as Israel prepared to “respond forcefully” against Iran, in the words of an unnamed senior Israeli official, US President Donald Trump ordered it to think again.

Before he had even spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his partner of 100 days ago, the president was telling his favorite Israeli journalist, Barak Ravid, that Israel had better not hit back: “I am going to call Bibi right now and tell him not to retaliate,” Trump vouchsafed. “Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one.”

Trump has repeatedly denied claims that Netanyahu dragged him and the United States into the war. But he has made it increasingly clear that he is desperate to end it, even with none of the declared US-Israeli goals achieved. He’s still insisting that he is holding out for terms that will ensure the regime never gets nuclear weapons, but there’s no guarantee of that in the leaked drafts of the........

© The Times of Israel