War highlights strained alliances, unfettered militaries and a Washington with renewed appetite for regime change
A joint US-Israeli operation that appeared to use nuclear negotiations as cover. Gulf leaders courting Donald Trump as he decided to launch a major Middle Eastern intervention. Europe boxed out and a G7 defence minister caught so off-guard that he was grounded in Dubai as the bombs fell. And from Moscow, a strongly worded condemnation of the missile strikes against a fellow member of the anti-US “axis of upheaval” – and little else.
The war unleashed by the US and Israel on Saturday has exposed the new rules of geopolitics in Trump’s second presidency, with strained alliances, unfettered militaries and a Washington that has regained its appetite for regime change.
Despite an administration that claimed it would pull back from the Middle East and Europe in order to focus instead on the growing threat from China, the White House has toppled one leader in Latin America and has launched another war – that could easily become a regional conflict – with no clear plan for a transfer of power in Iran.
He sometimes did, he sometimes didn’t. He did bomb them at least once publicly.
That should have been enough for people to assume he would do it again when he feels cornered on an issue like the Epstein files.