BY now, this should be Benjamin Netanyahu’s crowning moment – a personal triumph after four relentless decades of pushing the Middle East towards the brink. His vision of dismantling “terror states” in the region is, at last, at arm’s length. He wrote the playbook himself, back in 1986, outlining a black-and-white world where the only solution to “terrorism” was military might.
But here we are – and instead of basking in victory, Netanyahu’s dream is spiralling into a nightmare. Israel, once insulated by layers of strategic partnerships, now finds itself dangerously alone, standing in the rubble of its own making.
Netanyahu’s obsession with fighting “terror” has always been powered by brute force. He believed in it so much that he sold it to the world – shouting from the rooftops, even convincing the US that ousting Saddam Hussein would be a domino of peace in the Middle East.
Yet, look around – from Iraq to Lebanon, Afghanistan to Syria, each invasion and each war only left more chaos in its wake. But chaos isn’t the worst of it. The bloodletting on all sides, the imploding nations, the rivers of human misery – these are the true legacy of Netanyahu’s vision. This is the “peace” that force has brought.
He didn’t stop there, of course. For decades, Netanyahu played the long game, working behind the scenes to stitch together backroom deals with Arab states, papering over the unresolved Palestinian issue with normalisation agreements and political sleight of hand. But that house of cards collapsed on October 7, 2023, when the massacre in Gaza cracked his façade wide open.
Now, having assassinated Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah with a blaze of 1-ton bombs and taken out a senior Iranian leader in the same breath, Netanyahu has unlocked the gates of hell. And Israel, armed to the teeth with US weaponry, now faces the wrath of Iran’s missiles raining down on Tel Aviv and its military bases.
Netanyahu, ever the gambler, still clings to his last chip – the United States, his ultimate ace. But even the US can’t shield him from the growing sense of global isolation. The Arab world, which he once wooed with his promises of dominance, is now turning its back.
This isn’t the “new Middle East” that Netanyahu promised, this is his nightmare – a region united not in fear, but in resistance, standing tall against the might of Israel’s bombs. Netanyahu’s dream is a wrecked fantasy, and the Rubicon he’s crossed may lead him not to glory, but to the depths of his own undoing. – October 8, 2024
Che Ran is an international entrepreneur based in Malaysia and a reader of Scoop