Netanyahu says he won't rule out killing Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei

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Behind the attacks and counterattacks in the current war between Israel and Iran is the clash between two strategic doctrines, one boosting Iran and the other boosting Israel , both deeply flawed. President Donald Trump has the chance to correct both and create the best opportunity to stabilize the Middle East in decades — if he is up to it.

Iran’s flawed strategic doctrine, which has also been practiced by its most notorious proxy, Hezbollah, with equally bad results, is a doctrine I call outmaneuvering the adversary’s folly. Iran and Hezbollah are always ready to go all the way, thinking that no matter what their opponents might do in response, Hezbollah or Iran will always outmaneuver them with a more extreme measure.

You name it — assassinating Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; blowing up the American Embassy in Beirut; helping Bashar al-Assad murder thousands of his own people to stay in power in Syria — the brands of Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, are behind all of this, together or separately. They are telling the world, in effect: “No one will out-craze us, so be careful if you pick a fight with us, you will lose. Because we will go all the way — and you moderates will just walk away.”

This Iranian doctrine helped Hezbollah drive Israel out of southern Lebanon. But where it failed was in Iran and Hezbollah’s belief that they could drive the Israelis out of their biblical homeland. Iran and Hezbollah are delusional on this score—and so is Hamas. They keep referring to the Jewish state as a “foreign colonial enterprise” with no homeland connection, and therefore assume that the Jews will eventually suffer the same fate as the Belgians in the Belgian Congo. That is, under enough pressure, they will eventually return to their own version of Belgium.

But Israeli Jews do not have a Belgium. They are as much a native of their biblical homeland as Palestinians, no matter what they teach you in elite universities about “anti-colonial” nonsense. So you will never out-crazy Israeli Jews. If you have to, they will out-crazy you.

Israel's air defense system activated in Tel Aviv amid rising tensions with Iran

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They're going to play by the local rules, and yes, these are not the rules of the Geneva Conventions. These are the rules of the Middle East, which I call the Hama Rules — after the Hama attacks carried out by the Syrian government of Hafez al-Assad in 1982, the aftermath of which I covered. Assad wiped out the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama, mercilessly destroying entire neighborhoods of the city, entire blocks of apartments, turning them into a parking lot. The Hama Rules are not rules.

Former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei thought they could outfox Israeli Jews, that Israel would never try to kill them personally, that Israel was, as Nasrallah liked to say, a “spider’s web” that would one day unravel under pressure. He paid with his life for that miscalculation last year, and Iran’s supreme leader would likely have met the same fate had Trump not reportedly intervened last week to stop Israel from killing him. These Israeli Jews will not be outdone in madness. That is how they still have a state in a very difficult neighborhood.

That said, Binyamin Netanyahu and his band of extremists who run the Israeli government today are trapped in their own strategic fallacy, which I call the “once and for all” doctrine.

I would like to have a dollar for every time, after some deadly attack on Israeli Jews by Palestinians or Iranian proxies, the Israeli government declares that it will solve the problem with force “once and for all.”

There are only two ways to end this problem once and for all. One is for Israel to permanently occupy the West Bank, Gaza and all of Iran, as the United States did with Germany and Japan after World War II, and try to change the political culture. But Israel has no chance of occupying all of Iran, and it has already occupied the West Bank for 58 years and has still not eliminated Hamas’ influence there — much less secular Palestinian nationalism. That’s because the Palestinians are as indigenous as the Jews in their homeland. Israel will never subjugate them “once and for all” unless it kills them all.

The only way to come close to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “once and for all” is to work toward a two-state solution. This brings me to what Trump should do now regarding Iran. He says he still hopes “there will be a deal.” If he wants a good deal, he should declare that he is doing two things at once.

First, it would equip the Israeli Air Force with B-2 bombers, 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, and American trainers, which would give Israel the ability to destroy all of Iran’s underground nuclear facilities unless Iran immediately agrees to allow teams from the International Atomic Energy Agency to enter and dismantle these facilities and to have access to all nuclear sites in Iran to recover all of the fissile material that Tehran has generated. Only if Iran fully complies with these conditions will it be able to have a civilian nuclear program under the strict control of the IAEA. But Iran will only comply with these conditions under a credible threat of force.

At the same time, Trump must declare that his administration recognizes the Palestinians as a people who have a right to national self-determination. But for that to happen, they must demonstrate that they can fulfill the responsibilities of statehood by creating a new Palestinian Authority leadership that the United States finds trustworthy, free from corruption, and committed both to effectively serving Palestinian citizens in the West Bank and Gaza and to coexisting with Israel.

Trump must also make clear, however, that he will not tolerate the rapid expansion of settlements and the reality of a single state that Israel is now creating, a recipe for eternal war, because Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza will not disappear and give up their national identity and aspirations “once and for all.” (In late May, the Netanyahu government approved 22 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank — the largest expansion in decades — which is simply insane.)

To that end, Trump could also say that his administration will commit to sponsoring peace negotiations for a two-state solution — with Trump’s peace plan for a two-state path from his previous presidency as a minimum starting point, but not an end point. That, the parties themselves must negotiate directly.

See images of Tel Aviv after new Iranian attack

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On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Tehran residents “will pay the price” for Iranian attacks on Israel. Credit: Oren ZIV/AFPTV/AFP

Being ready to outmaneuver the madmen has been a necessary condition for Israel’s survival in the Middle East, but it is not sufficient. As the Gaza war demonstrates, this strategy only breeds more of the same. Even if it sometimes seems unfair, even if it sometimes seems naive, a peace-loving nation must continue to explore alternatives and combine force with diplomacy. This is not only the best policy for Israel toward the Palestinians; it is also the best way for Israel and the United States to isolate Iran.

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So if Trump truly wants to forge peace in the Middle East, and I believe he does, the United States must not become a hostage to Netanyahu or a puppet of Iran. The United States has no interest in making Israel safe for messianic expansion or Iran safe for nuclear messianism. Trump must ignore the dangerous and impulsive isolationism of J.D. Vance. And he must avoid the equally foolish advice that Netanyahu can do no wrong, given by the armchair generals and evangelicals of the Republican Party. Neither serves America’s interests or credibility in the region.

The necessary but not sufficient conditions for peace in the Middle East that will allow the United States to reduce, but not end, its military presence in the region are: Iran being forced to draw a clear western border and stop trying to colonize its Arab neighbors and destroy Israel with a nuclear bomb; Israel being forced to draw a clear eastern border and stop trying to colonize the entire West Bank; and the Palestinians being forced to draw clear eastern and western borders between Israel and Jordan and stop the “river to the sea” nonsense.

This war has created the best opportunity in decades for a wise statesman to use what Dennis Ross, a longtime Middle East negotiator, calls in his new book, Statecraft 2.0, “coercive diplomacy.” Is Trump up to it? I really don’t know, but we’ll find out very soon.