Since the ceasefire was announced last night, I have been wracking my brain to identify any true successes to come out of this extension of the October 7 War*, but I have come up blank. (*I will never call the October 7 War Iron Swords or any other euphemism that Netanyahu comes up with to hide his failures, nor will I call this part of the war by Netanyahu’s Names Roaring Lion. It is a continuation of the October 7 War.)

Here is an incomplete list of failures:

No ‘Unconditional Surrender’ – Trump’s short-lived demand

No ‘Total Victory’ and certainly not a ‘victory for generations’ as Netanyahu declared in June 2025

No Regime Change – quite the opposite, the new regime leaders are the Revolutionary Guards and are far more extreme than their predecessors and there are more determined and resilient than ever

Erosion of US credibility and global standing

World-wide economic impacts

Strained alliances and increased isolation impacting both the US and Israel

No commitment by Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program

No talk about Iran’s ballistic missile program

Iran now tacitly controls the Hormuz Straits and is demanding $2 million dollars from each ship to pass

Netanyahu, since November 2025 has relinquished Israeli independence and handed over the keys to Trump. Israel had no seat at any table in the November 2025 ceasefire and end to that part of the October 7 War, and had no say whatsoever in this ceasefire.

Continuing loss of support by US politicians and population for Israel. For many, this was the last nail in the coffin of support. The overwhelming majority of the American public and political arena were against this war and totally blame Israel for dragging the US into our war. Their gas prices skyrocketed, the cost to the taxpayer was over $1 billion/day.

American bases in the Middle East were damaged in major ways. At least 13 bases are reported uninhabitable, 13 US service members killed, over 400 injured, 2 fighter jets downed and crews almost taken into captivity, with at least 16 US military aircraft lost, destroyed or damaged.

Over 40 energy assets, including multiple oil fields, refineries, and storage facilities, have been severely damaged or destroyed across the Middle East in the first five weeks of the 2026 Iran war.

29 civilians in Israel killed, more than 3500 injured, 6 soldiers killed, 15,000 people displaced from their homes; from June 2025, 2500 homes totally destroyed, 31,000 with major damages.

After bombastic statements in November 2025 by Netanyahu that Hizbollah is no longer considered a threat to the north, the IDF stated 3 days ago that Hizbollah can continue to launch 100-150 rockets a day for the next months.

Israeli economy shut down for over a month with major damage which will last for years. Israeli airspace all but shut down with all foreign airlines canceling all flights for months to come. Tourism cut to zero; Energy Sector cut to zero (Natural gas platforms shut down during the war); construction sector cut almost to zero due to constant attack alerts, material price jumps due to higher shipping and insurance cost and demand collapse (currently 86,000 unsold apartments and new purchase deals canceled); across the board unemployment; continued negative outlook by the international financial institutions which means higher costs for all of our growing debt; severe reduction in GDP; severe increase in national budget debt; greatly increased tax burden on Israeli taxpayers; continued financial irresponsibility by the government doling out billions to the Haredi sector.

No diplomatic movement between Israel with Lebanon or Syria, and certainly not with Iran (through 3rd parties)

Massive military and civilian infrastructure damage in Iran. Both Russia and China will be involved in rebuilding both infrastructures and gaining great influence in the Middle East through Iran.

Removal of sanctions of both Iranian and Russian oil making billions for both regimes which Russia also provides Iran with intelligence on US forces and military installations

Iran has hundreds of massive tunnels throughout the country housing missiles and missile launchers as well as missile production facilities. The US and Israel have no idea where they are, how many there are or how many missiles and launchers are there. Many of these tunnels have highways for the easy movement of the launchers.

Hizbollah continues to produce rockets and launchers. Any metal shop with a metal lathe can produce rockets and launchers and position them among trees, in small ditches covered with branches, in garages and shops, etc. Their rocket development has increased both in quantity and quality and are able to reach deep inside Israel.

Each of the above bullets is an article by themselves, but I will address one other point that I did not list above, and that has to do with the Trump-Netanyahu relationship and how their failures in leadership brought all of the above down on all of us.

During Trump 1 term, Netanyahu convinced Trump to leave the Obama era Nuclear Agreement with Iran. Netanyahu is fully cognizant of Trump’s hatred of Obama and incessant need to cancel, denigrate or do better than every Obama achievement. Netanyahu drilled into Trump’s easily influenced head that if he withdraws from the agreement, the Iranians will come crawling on all fours to make an agreement that Trump will see as better than Obama’s agreement. That didn’t happen and it actually had the opposite effect. It prodded Iran to go into high gear to enrich uranium, which many nuclear experts claim was not Iran’s intentions prior to the agreement.

As a matter of fact, the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei, who we assassinated, had actually issued a Fatwa (A religious decree which made it illegal in Iran to violate) against building a nuclear weapon. It is as yet unknown if his son will continue with this Fatwa, but odds are against it as the more extreme Revolutionary Guards running the country are all in favor of nuclear armament.

Trump didn’t forgive Netanyahu for that major blunder. The other unforgivable blunder (in Trump’s mind) was after Biden’s election win, Netanyahu called to congratulate Biden. These two issues are deep wounds for Trump’s and he holds grudges forever, no matter what he may say publicly about his relationship with Netanyahu.

We enter Trump 2 term, and Netanyahu keeps drilling into Trump’s head the need for military action against Iran. He succeeded in June 2025 to get Trump to join the 12-day war for one day of massive bunker busting bombing of nuclear facilities leading to over the top boastful and completely untrue announcements by both Trump and Netanyahu that the nuclear threat was now history as was their ballistic missile threat. Their Nuclear and Missile programs were ‘completely obliterated’. Overstatements, exaggerations and complete lies by both.

After recognizing that they failed in June and prodded by the new popular demonstrations in Iran, Netanyahu saw a new opportunity to drag Trump into an even bigger military action, this time a full-scale war. Netanyahu promised Trump a regime change within weeks and that would solve all their problems. He sold Trump the bill of goods that he could do something that Obama was afraid to do and succeed in ways that Obama couldn’t even dream about. That together with the strong push by Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia) to go to war and bring down the regime were all Trump needed to be convinced. Trump’s two main motivations as President are to outdo Obama and to enrich himself, his family and his closest friends. Saudi Arabia is an important piece of his financial enrichment program.

Netanyahu never has any strategic plan for anything other than his own political career, so it is no surprise that he had no strategic plan for this war. Trump also never has any strategy for anything. He only paints broad strokes and leaves the rest to underlings. However, building strategy for a war is time and effort consuming, so for someone as impulsive as Trump, the time needed for strategy building and planning goes against his demand for quick action. Therefore, both countries went into this war with no strategy, indeterminate objectives, no end game goal, no exit strategy or plan, no day after idea, and of course, no recognition of the impact and implications of their war, such as the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the dangers to the civilian homefront. Top this off with the completely flawed intelligence analysis of all of Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and numbers, which are still not known 6 weeks into this war.

The number one goal of this war should have been regime change. This would have necessitated in-depth planning and strategy and working on many factors to bring this about: -The Iranian Kurdish paramilitary organizations who have been training and preparing for this for years – the Iranian opposition both inside and outside of Iran to plan for massive country-wide demonstrations and protests to outnumber and overpower the regime and its Besiege Militia -partnering with other countries to join the effort with support and/or forces -protection of the Strait of Hormuz to prevent Iran from blocking the movement of 20% of the world’s energy needs

There are certainly hundreds of additional aspects that would need to come together in this strategic plan to actually make a difference for the Iranian people, the region and the world.

Unfortunately, neither of these so-called leaders have any grasp of that kind of strategic planning, setting of iron-clad goals and objectives, ability to measure real success, understanding failures and quick recuperation, preparing the homefront to protect the civilian populations in Israel, Iran and other nations under Iranian attack, end game strategy, exit plans, and day after planning (not to wait until the day after to address this).

This was a war of great military successes by our great IDF and American forces who were involved. Our pilots are truly amongst the greatest in the world and our tireless air defenses who worked 24/7 to keep us safe are unsung heroes as is our amazing Homefront command whose entire mission is the safety of the civilian population. Unfortunately, all of the aforementioned are dependent on an extreme and corrupt government who seem to go above and beyond to make their mission more difficult.

This was a war of massive political, diplomatic, international and homefront failures due to disastrous leadership which is multiplied by the fact that neither of these leaders are willing to take any responsibility for failure. They only know how to claim success which they steal from those who actually perform the successes and then blame failure on others.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)