How Netanyahu, the Monster
of the Middle East, bounced Trump into raining hell on Iran

Donald Trump has taken all the credit for the Iran war. There is no blame of course – unless the U.S. President is the one dishing it out.

But I sense another malign influence behind the pummelling of Iran. Binyamin Netanyahu, the monster of the Middle East.

It was “Bibi” who reduced 219,000 residential buildings in Gaza to rubble, killing 72,000, many of them women and children, as he tried to wipe out Hamas terrorists.

He failed in that objective. But the women and children are nevertheless dead. Now he has joined the  States in raining hell on Teheran.

Netanyahu has waited years for this opportunity. The Ayatollahs want to wipe Israel from the map and they were close to getting a nuclear bomb.

So when Trump got into a slanging match with the Iranians, Bibi got busy. Did you see that picture of them entering the White House, each with an arm round the other’s back?

That was the Trump whisperer in action. Others have vied for the title, including for a time Keir Starmer, but none has wielded the influence exerted by Netanyahu.

He has visited the White House three times since Trump came to power for a second time. The last time he was bearing gifts.

Netanyahu had intelligence from Israel’s spy agency Mossad that Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei would be holed up with his key lieutenants in the presidential compound on the Saturday that the war started.

Now, Netanyahu is Trump’s sort of world leader – bold, ruthless and more than a little shady – so he would not have taken much persuading to act.

You can almost hear the conversation in the Oval Office. “Mr President… Donald… you’ll never have a better opportunity. Strike now at your greatest enemy. Remember the suffering they inflicted on American diplomats when they seized the embassy in 1979.”

Soon afterwards, the compound was obliterated and Khamenei with it. And that left Bibi free to get on with another deadly objective: the bombing of Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Trump has given Netanyahu more than he could ever have dreamed of. He has used the overwhelming might of the U.S. armed forces to remove Iran’s nuclear threat, perhaps for decades.

And he has given him the opportunity to annex the West Bank, finally destroying hopes of a Palestinian state, which many regard as the only way to bring peace to the region.

Trump has also allowed Netanyahu to kick a can of worms down the road. Israel’s Prime Minister still faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denies any wrong-doing.

Pitilessly razing Gaza took the focus off his alleged crimes for many months. Now his trial looks still further away.

The third figure in the rush to trigger another war is the odious Pete Hegseth, secretary of war. Impossible to believe he opposed the President’s plan. Hell, what’s the use of a secretary of war if he doesn’t have a war to fight.

Hegseth is a decorated veteran who served as an infantry officer in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. He is also a reformed drunk with the anger of that breed simmering just below the surface.

Hegseth, 45, a former presenter on Fox News, glories in the horrors of the war. “Death and destruction all day long,” he told reporters at the Pentagon after the early attacks.

“This was never meant to be a fair fight and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

He’s smart. He was offered a place at the U.S military academy but turned it down and instead went to Princeton to study politics. But it seems that was more about playing for the university’s basketball team.

These are the three men who took the world to war. Because of them, we face a conflict that could last for weeks. Oil is about $100 a barrel, the supply of natural gas is being choked too.

Inflation will rise, prices in the shops will go up. Any faint hope Rachel Reeves had of growing the economy is exploded.

Don’t you wish we could send them all to hell?

*****

“Just blow the bloody doors off,” advised The Times on the front of its rugby pull-out The Scrum on Saturday.

It was a reference to the 1969 Michael Caine film The Italian Job as England prepared to face Italy, a team who had never beaten them, in the Six Nations championship.

England had already lost to Ireland and Scotland, teams they were expected to beat. And it happened again with Italy. England capitulated, raised the white flag.

Which left them and their boss, Steve Borthwick, in a coach, teetering on the edge of a precipice as the golden prize, the World Cup, slid to the back of the bus and out of their reach.

I can almost hear Borthwick now in their first training session since the defeat… “Hang on a minute, lads, I’ve got a great idea.”

It was hard, in the closing moments of the film, to see what Michael Caine’s brainwave might be. Likewise, it is impossible to see where Borthwick goes from here.

There are whispers of unhappiness in the camp. Borthwick is a stats guru and believes they contain the answer to life, the universe and everything.

I looked in vain for England’s attack coach, Lee Blackett, every time the TV cameras focused on the England box. Has he been discarded?

Certainly, there was no sign of his influence on the field of play. England were sterile in attack and repeatedly kicked the ball away to the opposition.

It’s France this weekend. Best team in the tournament. Time for Borthwick to reveal his “great idea”.

*****

The end of an era in our road on Monday. Our neighbour Kay died, two months short of her 99th birthday.

Kay was an Army nurse who reached the rank of Major. Until recently, she was still a regular at the march-past at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Her birthday was on May 8, VE Day, and at the height of the Covid lockdown, some of us held a socially-distanced party for her to mark the 75th anniversary of victory in Europe.

There were sandwiches, cake, fizz and, in a nice touch, the lady across the road played Vera Lynn through her open window.

Kay never married and lived in her parents’ house, where she was born in 1927. “They’ll carry me out feet first,” she said.

But she was virtually blind by the end and weakened by a brief illness, so they put her in a home, where she died days later.

She was a feisty old soul. RIP, Kay.

RICHARD DISMORE

10 March 2026