By Conrad Black
Some readers will recall that in this space last week I opposed those calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and de-escalation in the Iran-Israel war because that would only lead to renewed terrorist activity in Gaza against Israel and the deployment of nuclear weapons by Iran, whose government has pledged to destroy the Jewish people. To paraphrase Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the detonation of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, in the light of this week’s events, it is time for the “unthinkable.” (The Japanese emperor acknowledged that the war had not gone “entirely as we had hoped.”) As predicted here and elsewhere, the United States Air Force and Navy successfully penetrated and destroyed the underground Iranian nuclear development sites. Those who immediately predicted a drastic escalation of hostilities and were soiling themselves in lamentations of imminent 
world war were placated, and in many cases doubtless disappointed, at the ceasefire that followed 24 hours later. Incorrigibly anti-American and particularly Trump-hating outlets such as the BBC, the CBC, the Guardian, Al-Jazeera, CNN and MSNBC attached themselves like limpets to the instant conjuration that the damage done by the American attacks had only been superficial and would easily be repaired. In the only known honest words that the criminally diseased regime in Tehran has uttered in its 47 years, the Iranian Islamic government acknowledged that official American reports of the success of the raids were accurate. U.S. President Donald Trump’s opponents dismissed this as disinformation. The more vocal political suicide cases among the American congressional Democrats, who had been calling for Trump’s impeachment for plunging the nation into war without authority, were struck mercifully dumb.
Many will require tranquilization, therapy or even defibrillation in contemplation of this, but without incurring a single American casualty, President Trump has satisfactorily ended a potentially dangerous and enervating war; has dealt a shattering blow to the forces of terrorism in the world; has assisted Israel in honouring the pledge of the Jewish people after the Nazi Holocaust murdered approximately half the Jews in the world: “Never again!”; and has helped the Jewish people to the highest level of unconditional security it has enjoyed in its tumultuous history of over 5,000 years. At the same time, as commander-in-chief, Trump has executed the most successful military operation of the U.S. armed forces since Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed nearly 50,000 men in less than an hour at Inchon and annihilated the North Korean army in four weeks in 1950. (MacArthur’s subsequent insubordination was unacceptable, but if his strategic advice had been followed, Korea today would be united and a powerhouse, a second Japan, and the world would have been spared all the outrages of the Kimist regime in North Korea these 75 years.)
President Trump’s very astute deployment of American military force and his agile diplomacy has been the greatest strategic tour de force of any world leader since U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972-3 triangulated the great power relationship with China, negotiated the greatest arms control agreement in world history with the U.S.S.R. (which incidentally restored American nuclear military superiority), while extracting the United States from Vietnam and preserving a non-communist government in Saigon. The events of the last week have given the world a clear perspective on the dangerous vacuum of American enfeeblement that was created by the previous three U.S. presidents. George W. Bush’s insane invasion of Iraq, which made most of that country a vassal state of Iran, and his insistence on elections that raised up Hamas and Hezbollah, and Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s appeasement of Iran, including Obama’s nuclear treaty with Iran, under which the Iranians would at this very time be joining the nuclear club with the blessing of its other members: all of this created an opportunistic appetite in some of the world’s most irresponsible and dangerous governments. It is almost certainly true that if Trump were the president, it is unlikely that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have invaded Ukraine or that the Iranian leadership would have masterminded the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It is also worthwhile to go a little further back in unearthing western strategic blunders in the Mideast: as I remarked (to an indifferent response), in Their Lordships’ House in London some years ago, the British government essentially precipitated the chief crisis of the Middle East by effectively promising the same territory to two different and contending parties: the Jews and the Arabs, in 1917 (unruffled by the fact that the territory was then being governed by Turkey, which ultimately did a better job of it than the British who followed them).
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower made a serious error in promising to assist Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in constructing the Aswan Dam and then reneging, and the subsequent Anglo-French attack on Suez, pretending to be peacekeepers in a war that they had themselves promoted and initiated, must rank as one of the most spectacular and inexplicable disasters in the entire foreign policy history of either of those two venerable countries. And President Jimmy Carter’s role in the eviction of the Shah of Iran must also rank as one of the most colossal strategic errors of the postwar era. We are now in a time of opportunity. The American administration is absolutely correct to take the attitude that if there’s to be regime change in Iran it must be generated by the Iranians. But that country will no longer have the ability to bankroll and promote terrorism as it has and that fact coupled with Israel’s destruction of more than 80 per cent of the terrorist apparatus of Hamas, and almost comparable demolition of Hezbollah, and the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the expulsion of Iran from that country, all augur well for a more constructive era in the Middle East.
Trump’s astoundingly successful visit to the region last month, bringing back $5 trillion of Saudi and Emirati and Qatari investment in the United States, opened prospects of vastly greater commercial and development activity from the petro-states. The skies should now be clear for completion of a comprehensive understanding between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and there may be some possibility of a thorough reconstruction of a demilitarized Gaza, overseen by Egypt and the Saudis. In these evolving circumstances, there is a further distinct possibility of authentic Palestinian leadership that acknowledges the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state and is prepared to accept realistic borders for a state of their own. There is also a message for Russia in these events: the Israelis made short work of the military equipment Russia supplied to Iran and they appear to have destroyed the chief source of Russian drones. The crisp efficiency of the American air incursion should be taken on board by the Russian leader as a hint of what he might be facing in Ukraine if he continues to demand concessions that the appalling fiasco of his aggressive war has failed to produce on the ground.
It is a much brighter political horizon than it was a week ago and we have Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the two bête noire of the fatuous western political press, to thank for it.
First published in the National Post
One Response
Question: will the Iranian regime continue to promote terrorism using money from oil sales? Was the nuclear program not costly to them? I am pleased that the nuclear facilities were destroyed but I don’t see how that fact will curb Iranian support for Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and whoever else they are paying to do their dirty work.