Only a few days ago, Iran downed a US Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. In response, the statement that US President Donald Trump posted on social media reflected extreme caution and weakness rather than the bravado or dominance of the past. Just as the agreement to end the war between the United States and Iran was in its final stages, Israel, defying Trump’s prohibition, continued bombing Beirut.
In response, Iran too ignored the US warning and launched a missile strike on a petrochemical installation in Israel. Despite repeated requests from the White House, the way Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defying Trump has now made the limits of US power clear on the world stage. Trump is the first president in US history to enter directly into a war against Iran on Israel’s behalf. Yet because of this war he has faced intense public anger at home. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 60 percent of Americans are now dissatisfied with Israel. As a result, Trump is desperate to end the war quickly. But Netanyahu is not listening to him, because Netanyahu fears Trump is giving Tehran far too much leeway. Although a ceasefire was supposed to be in place in Lebanon,
Since the war began in March, Israeli forces have killed more than 3,600 people, most of them Shia Muslims. At the same time, they have displaced one-fifth of Lebanon’s population and seized vast areas of the country. Israel’s actions are essentially part of a deliberate plot to scuttle the US-Iran agreement. But because of the enormous funding and influence of the Jewish lobby, or ‘AIPAC,’ in American politics, Trump cannot rein Netanyahu in even if he wants to. Beyond the regular annual aid of 380 crore dollars given to Israel, Trump recently announced an additional 800 crore and 650 crore dollars in arms aid. Although Israel cannot wage the war without this vast supply of arms and money, Trump has completely failed to use this as a tool of pressure.
The days of the ‘strategic patience’ policy of Iran’s former top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are over. After his death, under the new leader Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is now extremely aggressive. Trump, meanwhile, had already lost credibility in the Middle East during his first term by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, ordering the killing of Khamenei and withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal. Even after the World Court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu following the deaths of 72,000 people in the Gaza war, Trump has continued to back him.
Although the Gaza war was supposedly halted through the Qatar agreement, around 900 Palestinians have been killed there since, exposing America’s double standards. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in December 2024 and the removal of the Maduro government in Venezuela in January 2025, the dominance America had displayed has now faded entirely because of the Iran war.
A Middle East survey has found that ordinary Arabs now view China, Russia and Iran more favorably than US leadership. As a result of this war, oil and gas prices have risen on the world market, strengthening Russia’s economy, which it is using in the Ukraine war. China, meanwhile, is the happiest that the United States is moving its warships and military equipment from the Indo-Pacific region to the Middle East. The Gulf states, having lost faith in America, are now keen to expand economic and security agreements with China. Although Trump once gave the ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) slogan, because of all his wrong decisions in the Middle East he has essentially made America weaker and more diminished.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report