In the annals of diplomatic debacles, this week’s reported phone call between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu may well stand as a monument to the art of the foolhardy. Whitehall sources, in hushed tones, have described the exchange as ‘crazy’, a word seldom used in the corridors of power, but apt for a conversation that has sent tremors through the foundations of Western strategy on Iran. To compare this to the Fall of Rome might seem hyperbolic, yet there is a distinct whiff of intellectual decadence in the air as ageing empires cling to the fading glory of their prime.
Let us not mince words: the United States and the United Kingdom have long maintained a fragile but functional consensus on Iran. The nuclear deal, the JCPOA, was a triumph of diplomacy, even if its architect is now maligned. But Trump, ever the arsonist, tore it asunder in 2018. Now, with Netanyahu at his side, he seeks to resurrect the axis of chaos. The call, according to insiders, involved talk of joint strikes, of going it alone without European allies. This is not merely a policy disagreement, it is a declaration of war on the very notion of Western unity.
The parallels with history are unignorable. Recall the Congress of Vienna, which gave Europe a century of relative peace. Contrast it with the suicidal nationalism of 1914. Trump and Netanyahu, in their hubris, seem determined to replay the latter. Iran, whatever its flaws, is a rational actor in its own sphere. Isolate it, bomb it, and you do not break its regime, you merely pour petrol on the flames of a region already ablaze.
Whitehall’s alarm is not idle. The British establishment, for all its faults, understands that the West’s strength lies in its cohesion. When the American president and the Israeli prime minister start behaving like a pair of renegade satraps, they undermine decades of patient statecraft. The European Union, already fraying at the edges, will not forgive a fait accompli that drags them into another Middle Eastern quagmire.
Some will argue that this is vintage Trump, a man who delights in breaking the china. But there is nothing clever in wrecking the dinner service. Netanyahu, too, knows he is playing a dangerous game. His own legal troubles at home have made him reckless. A foreign adventure is the oldest trick in the dictator’s playbook. To see it played by the leader of the so-called free world is a melancholy spectacle.
What, then, is to be done? The British government must do what it always does: stand firm, speak softly, and work behind the scenes to steer the American ship of state away from the rocks. But there is a limit to what diplomacy can achieve when madness reigns in high places. If the Trump-Netanyahu axis holds, we may look back on this call as the moment Western unity finally gave way. That is not hyperbole. It is the painful arithmetic of power.
We are living through the autumn of the West. The question is whether we are witnessing a temporary chill or the onset of an intellectual winter from which there is no thaw. The ‘crazy’ call suggests the latter. Let us hope our leaders prove wiser than they seem.
