Hussein Ibish

which has an independent nuclear deterrent and which does not get attacked like this, they are going to have to, I think, calculate that they need to focus on somehow figuring out in the next few years how to get to nuclear weapons status.

And it is the American aim to absolutely prevent that.

So you definitely have an absolute collision course.

On the other hand, there are many conflicts that are not resolved here.

you can see how the current situation, the war as it's shaping up, is leading almost inexorably towards one of these open-ended stalemates where

The larger power, you know, sort of ends the fighting, but reserves the right to come back and does on a routine basis every six months, nine months, a year or so attacks again.

The smaller power then retaliates in whatever way it can.

And this happens repeatedly over time.

It's the relationship the U.S.

had with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s.

And that's exactly the kind of so-called forever war.

that Trump said he would never get into, but it really would bear all the hallmarks of that without actually necessitating boots on the ground.

The New York Times report, which was very well done,

explained how and when Netanyahu and leaders of Mossad and other Israeli agencies kind of approached Trump and said, now's the time.

Among other things, they promised him that the Iranian people would likely rebel against the clerical regime.

And so based on that and a whole bunch of fairy tales,

the Israelis managed to persuade a particularly credulous American president that this was all a very good idea.

And whatever the American president thought he was promised certainly didn't happen.

So you have to be, I think, pretty ignorant and pretty dense to fall for it.

But I think maybe the guy in the White House right now qualifies.