Martin Jay
Turkey is the new enemy of Israel. That ball has been rolling for some time.
The unintended consequences of Trump's Iran Deal are too many to list. Chief among them is that Trump's own buffoonery has injected cash and power into the regime in Iran that it could only have previously dreamt of. But the "unconditional surrender" deal has also probably destroyed the petrodollar - leading, most likely, to a faster demise of the US as what was once called a "superpower", or even sometimes the superpower. Trump's idiotic outburst of "unconditional surrender" is, of course, the greatest irony of the entire fiasco, given that it is Trump who is on his knees and has given Iran so much simply to open the Straits of Hormuz, simply to bring down the global price of oil.
Yet what happens now in the region, both to Israel and the GCC countries ? For Israel, many leading commentators like Alistair Crooke claim that its people are in a state of shock and that it will take some time before they wake up after the party the night before and realise that things got a little out of hand and that a certain process of cleaning up and repair needs to take place. Crooke and others even go further and believe that Israel can no longer continue to indulge itself in the delusional notion of 'Greater Israel' - i.e. having regional ambitions of hegemony beyond its borders - and needs to recalibrate its goals, starting with the admission that it is not winning its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is a general consensus among analysts that most Israelis are in a state of shock about how the war in Iran was lost, how America itself didn't and couldn't deliver on its military promises, and how even the IDF is no match for Hezbollah. This will take some time for them to sink in - that Israel has simply overstretched itself both politically and militarily, and that the reality is that it is in a deep hole and perhaps a solution might be to stop digging.
But a period of sombreness and solace is hardly what Netanyahu has in mind, and it is likely now that he will become a silent enemy of Trump, who needs him to stop fighting in Lebanon. This relationship between Washington and Israel will also come under strain and enter a new period of saliency, which might briefly mean Congress voting to withhold Israel's funding, to remind Bibi and his coalition partners who really is the superpower (to coin Bill Clinton's comment once in the White House when Bibi attended a press conference).
What is perhaps even more worrying is the region and how America now retreats. It is inconceivable that US forces will return to the dozen or so military bases in the Gulf, as it is unthinkable that those elites will keep the cash flowing into Wall Street. Indeed, a bundle of $3 trillion USD which Saudi Arabia and the UAE had earmarked for the US AI sector will now not make it, as those countries no longer have the cash flow in their economies, with hotels in Dubai only catering to about 10 percent capacity. Trump's war literally sent missiles to these new economies, and the Donald cannot complain now that this cash will not make it to the US.
Yet remarkably, Trump is still dreaming. He is still delusional about who he is and what America currently is, and seems to be stuck with his own ideas which feel like they're from the 1970s rather than 2026. What we are witnessing in the Middle East is the beginning of the end. The loss of the petrodollar and the GCC countries with their fast cash feels like the first domino falling for the old empire, while Trump obsesses with tiny minutiae details which take up time posting on social media late at night. In the last days of the Roman Empire, its emperor was said to have been concerned about "Rome" - but this was not a reference to a crumbling civilisation, but to his pet chicken of the same name. When we see the puerile, juvenile row between the diminutive Georgia Meloni and Trump, there is a sense of déjà vu with Rome. A row on X which Meloni keeps alive for days might be seen as incongruous to the bigger picture of the US and EU falling into the abyss, with the EU being such a dog's breakfast that even bankrupt Britain wouldn't even want to re-join it now, despite most Brits in polls conceding Brexit was a failure.
The recent comments by the Saudi foreign minister might signal that KSA and the UAE are looking for a completely different defence set-up which might actually bypass the US altogether. Other countries like Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt are stepping forward and taking on the challenge by themselves, while leading the anti-Israel doctrine. It is rumoured that Bibi complained to Trump recently about Turkey's tough talking, but Trump told him to forget about even thinking about hitting the NATO country, as it is simply out of Israel's league - or words to that effect. But Turkey is the new enemy of Israel. That ball has been rolling for some time.