When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case for fighting a second war with Iran in eight months, he put forward two arguments.

The first was that, for Israel’s survival, the threat posed by the regime in Tehran needed to be stopped.

“The goal of the operation is to put an end to the threat from the Ayatollah regime in Iran,” he said in a video message in February, back-to-back with one delivered by US President Donald Trump.

“If we do not act,” Netanyahu said, “we will face a nuclear Iran, an Iran with tens of thousands of ballistic missiles, an Iran that seeks to destroy us and would be immune to our countermeasures.”

The second argument, only slightly more implicit, was that this war represented an offer Israel couldn’t pass up: a chance to fight its chief adversary shoulder-to-shoulder with the most powerful army in the history of the world. By prosecuting this war, the US and Israel, Netanyahu suggested, were closer than ever.

“We are doing this in full coordination with our friends in the US, under the courageous leadership of Trump,” he said. “As a people that cherishes life, we have no choice but to go to battle. But this time, we do so with the combined mighty power of the State of Israel and the United States of America.”

Near the beginning of the speech, he assured his country: “This operation will continue as long as necessary.”

Three months later, it has become all but conventional wisdom in Israel that the first set of goals for the war — toppling the regime and eliminating its threat — has not been met. The Iranian regime still exists. It still possesses much of its ballistic missile arsenal and its stockpile of enriched uranium. And it also controls the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, it appears that Netanyahu’s second reason for the war — building an unprecedentedly strong US-Israel relationship — is also crumbling. Netanyahu has claimed that he and Trump are partners, but he’s finishing the war on the sidelines. And he’s not the only one being shunned: In addition to emerging........

© The Times of Israel