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Developments relating to the US-Israeli war on Iran underscore the truth that it is easy to start a conflict, but difficult to predict its course and termination.

Certainly, no one could have predicted that the turning point of the war came with the “discovery” of the importance of the Strait of Hormuz which put the global economy in its cross-hairs. Neither could anyone have forecast that the US bases in the Gulf would be the liability that they turned out to be, especially for their host countries. And certainly no one would have foreseen that Lebanon, which was a secondary front in the war, has now emerged as the principal obstacle to ending it.

This became apparent last week when renewed fighting there led to the postponement of the first round of talks between the US and Iran in Geneva. It led, too, to bitter words from US Vice President J.D. Vance, who said that US President Donald Trump was the only supporter Israel had around the world. In an interview with Ross Douthat of The New York Times, Vance strongly defended the deal and said that the Israeli right-wing was attacking the deal, but he would ask of them “What is your exact proposal? You are a country of nine million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Of course, that is exactly the direction in which the Israeli political leadership seems to be headed. Having destroyed Gaza, the next item in the agenda seems to be Lebanon. A June 19 post of Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir declared, “For every tear of a Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!”

Not to be outdone, Minister of Defence Israel Katz declared, “We have flattened the entire first line of villages in southern Lebanon, all the houses have been destroyed. The residents will never see them standing ever again. The 200,000 Lebanese residents who were in the ‘security zone’ are never returning again. Not one of them will ever return to southern Lebanon.”

What Benjamin Netanyahu wants is not........

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