President Trump may have committed a near-fatal error of judgement by succumbing to PM Netanyahu’s unrelenting guile and hysterical harangues about Iran’s ostensible nuclear programme and the existential threats that it engenders for Israel. No US President since President Clinton had fallen for PM Netanyahu’s wiliness and craftiness and gone to war with Iran. President Trump just did so, twice within the space of eight months, and seems to have promptly walked into a strategic quagmire with nary an exit strategy to fall back upon!

The US-Israel Combine’s war on Iran has ground to a stalemate; the (non)talks have run into a deadlock. Iran remains defiant, resilient and unyielding, and has denied the US-Israel Combine any notable successes on the battlefield or at the negotiating table. The US-Israel Combine’s joint assault on Iran seems to have reached its culmination point without achieving any of its strategic objectives. It appears to be running out of strategic options that could either bludgeon Iran into submission or give it a semblance of victory. A peculiar operational paralysis seems to be setting in. President Trump would have preferred a negotiation process that led to a full and final solution in one go. The Iranians, on the other hand, appear to favour a patient, logical, structured and incremental process, moving gradually from the easily doable issues to the more intractable ones. Both antagonists are poles apart in their approach and there seems to be no common ground emerging. Time, however,........

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