The op-ed I might have written last week — predicting that Donald Trump would eventually blame Benjamin Netanyahu for the shortcomings of his “victory” in Iran — has been overtaken by events. Trump did not wait for history’s verdict. He delivered the verdict himself, in real time, from the Palace of Versailles.

“Without me, there would be no Israel,” Trump told the G7 summit in France on Tuesday. He called Netanyahu “crazy.” He used an expletive to describe his judgment. He announced, with visible satisfaction, that he had signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran — at Versailles, of all places, a setting chosen by no accident — while Netanyahu was still publicly admitting he had not been permitted to read the document.

Let that land for a moment. The prime minister of Israel, the country that co-launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, that provided the intelligence triggering the decapitation strike on Khamenei, that sent its air force into Iranian airspace — was not shown the text of the agreement ending the war his government helped start. Israeli officials claimed as recently as yesterday that Israel still hadn’t been allowed to review the MOU. Netanyahu, at his first press conference in three months, admitted he did not yet know what was written in the deal. He was not a party. He was an audience.

This is Trump’s alibi, fully constructed and formally executed.

The architecture of blame is now complete. Trump wanted a swift, clean war — the Venezuela model applied to Tehran. He got four months, a closed Strait of Hormuz, soaring gas prices, and a restless Republican base facing congressional elections........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)