If Iran decides to escalate the conflict with more attacks on Israel, will Trump have Israel’s back?
By: Daniel Krygier, World Israel News
The Iranian regime has lately faced many setbacks, directly or indirectly attributed to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu humiliated the ayatollah regime by unmasking its duplicitous nature and showing the world the staggering amount of nuclear files that Mossad secretly smuggled from Iran.
President Donald Trump explicitly referred to Israel’s intelligence scoop when he declared that the United States was pulling out of the Iranian nuclear deal.
Iran’s rocket attack against Israel was a big failure. No Israeli soldier or civilian was hurt, and there was no damage on the Israeli side. By contrast, Israel responded with a massive attack that caused significant damage to Iran’s military assets in Syria. At least 25 Iranian and Syrian soldiers were reportedly killed in the Israeli military operations that targeted military installations belonging to Iran’s elite Quds force. The US and even the Europeans and some Arab states expressed support for Israel.
If Iran decides to escalate the conflict with more attacks on Israel, will Trump have Israel’s back? The Jewish state has rarely, if ever, had a more friendly administration in the White House. However, Trump knows that much of his power base supporters are not interested in another costly Middle Eastern military adventure with an unknown exit strategy. It is unlikely that the US will engage militarily against Iran any time soon.
However, it is important to keep in mind that Israel has always taken pride in being the only US ally capable of defending itself by itself. The Jewish state has never outsourced its military operations and has demonstrated that it is fully capable of taking on Iran by itself in the military battlefield.
Israel’s vulnerability is in the diplomatic arena, where Jerusalem has been slandered and under attack for decades. The Trump administration has already demonstrated that it has Israel’s back by combating anti-Israel bigotry at the UN and planning to put harsh sanctions on Iran. Unlike Obama, Trump is not tying Israel’s hands and treats Israel like the important US ally it is. This will severely limit the Iranian regime’s capabilities for future military operations against Israel.
The combination of American economic sanctions and Israeli military operations is seriously challenging the stability of the ayatollah regime that is already widely resented at home.