It is a record of abject failure. I am not speaking of Donald Trump, though I could be. Instead, I am talking about his partner in this terrible war.

Naturally, Trump has been the star of the show. He has been the face of the 40-day war on Iran, whether dialling up the threats against the country in foul, bloodthirsty language – “a whole civilisation will die tonight” – or announcing on his own social media platform a two-week ceasefire and the talks that are supposed to begin this weekend in Islamabad. But Trump has had an ally at his side, who only now is entering the spotlight. That ally is Benjamin Netanyahu.

He is the focus of global attention because, if the guns were meant to have been stilled across the Middle East, the Israeli prime minister apparently did not get the memo. Israel’s assault on Hezbollah – launched in response to the missiles fired at northern Israel by the group, an Iranian proxy that has long functioned as a shadow army inside Lebanon in defiance of the government in Beirut – has not paused. On the contrary, on Wednesday, hours after Trump had hailed his breakthrough with Tehran, Israel unleashed one of the deadliest single bombing offensives ever inflicted on Lebanon, a country that has already endured so much. Over the course of just 10 minutes, Israeli jets struck 100 targets across the capital and far beyond, killing at least 303 people and wounding more than 1,150 others, many of them civilians.

Israel argues that Trump’s deal does not cover Lebanon; Iran and the Pakistani mediators say it does. JD Vance says it’s all a “legitimate misunderstanding”. If so, it is one that needs to be resolved fast. For now, Netanyahu is trying to have it both ways, simultaneously bowing to pressure by agreeing to talks with the Lebanese government while vowing that the attacks on what Israel insists are Hezbollah launch sites will continue with “full force”.

There are two ways of judging Netanyahu: the view from abroad and the view at home. Often those diverge sharply. In the court of world opinion, Netanyahu was convicted long ago of the war crimes for which he remains wanted by the international criminal court in The Hague; he is the architect of the destruction of Gaza, Trump’s equal, or worse, in villainy. Domestically he has enjoyed a different, if........

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