{"id":380835,"date":"2026-04-08T05:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/380835\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T05:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T05:30:15","slug":"trumps-new-reasonable-iran-is-neither-new-nor-reasonable-and-he-knows-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/380835\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s ‘new, reasonable’ Iran is neither new nor reasonable, and he knows it"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Editor\u2019s Note was sent out earlier Tuesday in ToI\u2019s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor\u2019s Notes as they\u2019re released, join the ToI Community here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is a blatant contradiction between US President Donald Trump\u2019s repeated insistence, on the one hand, that the war against Iran has achieved \u201cregime change\u201d and he is now negotiating with new, \u201cmuch more reasonable leaders,\u201d and his simultaneous acknowledgement, on the other, that any Iranian who dares to take to the streets faces an immediate death sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, they should do it,\u201d he said<\/a> at his White \u200cHouse press conference on Monday, when asked whether the Iranian public should try anew to rise up against its oppressors. \u201cBut, \u200bagain, the consequences are \u200bgreat\u2026 I mean, they were told, \u2018If you protest, you will be shot immediately.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The same goes for his simultaneous contention, also expounded at Monday\u2019s press conference, that the purportedly new regime is \u201cnot as radicalized\u201d as its predecessor, but that, nonetheless, \u201cIsrael will be gone, the Middle East will be gone,\u201d if Iran gets the bomb.<\/p>\n

The fact is that the \u201cnew\u201d faces of Iran are just like the \u201cold\u201d faces \u2014 except newly aware of their immense potential to extort the world via control over the Strait of Hormuz, and more aware, too, that nuclear weapons would make them broadly invincible.<\/p>\n

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What that underlines, in turn, is the imperative to close down the Islamic Republic\u2019s pathways to the bomb as hermetically as possible.<\/p>\n

Along with the tactical successes of a war now in its sixth week \u2014 the targeting of key leaders, commanders and nuclear scientists, of military facilities, of military-related industries \u2014 have come a series of disappointments and surprises: Iran has fired potent missiles, with longer ranges and a mix of devastating warheads, at far more diverse targets than expected; it has managed to keep on firing despite the relentless strikes on its launchers and stocks; a hoped-for Kurdish invasion failed to materialize; and US allies, in the region and beyond, did not join the fight, even after some of them were heavily targeted.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tIsraeli security forces and rescue teams work amid the rubble of a residential building struck by an Iranian missile in Haifa, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ariel Schalit)<\/p>\n

In terms of strategic goals and expectations, the campaign to date has not created a sufficiently secure reality on the streets to enable the Iranian masses to \u201ctake control of your government,\u201d as Trump had promised<\/a> on February 28, when assuring Iranians that \u201cthe hour of your freedom is at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

And crucially, Iran, for now, retains that 450-kilogram stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent \u2014 just a short step away from weapons grade \u2014 albeit buried underground, with the US constantly \u201cwatching\u201d by satellite, the president said last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we see them make a move, even a move for it, we will hit them with missiles very hard again,\u201d Trump vowed.<\/p>\n

But what about the not-so-distant future, when he is no longer president? And what if it turns out that other, untenable, surprises lie in wait, in terms of hitherto unknown progress toward the bomb, including in weaponization?<\/p>\n

Were the current Israeli government more diplomatically capable, it would be coordinating with the many nations in this region who fear for their futures if the Islamic Republic is allowed to stand, and galvanizing a chorus of public and private advocacy to further impress upon the wider American public that today\u2019s buried or obliterated Iranian nuclear program can become tomorrow\u2019s Iranian nuclear arsenal, and that the danger is not regional, but global.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won, okay,\u201d the US president claimed on Monday night. But for all his contradictions, as Trump knows full well, the Iranian regime against which he went to war remains in power, and its nuclear ambitions are anything but dimmed.<\/p>\n

The prime minister\u2019s priorities<\/p>\n

This has been a particularly ignominious few days in terms of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s skewed priorities and familiar incapacity for empathy.<\/p>\n

Last week, in a late-night maneuver, he furtively redirected hundreds of more millions of dollars from the public purse to the coalition\u2019s ultra-Orthodox partners \u2014 funding those who oppose performing military service to protect the country, at the expense of those who are fighting on the front lines.<\/p>\n

Then, on Sunday, even as search and rescue teams were working to recover what tragically proved to be the four bodies of a beloved Israeli family from the rubble of a Haifa building hit by an Iranian ballistic missile, the prime minister was busy denouncing the Supreme Court for approving \u201ca left-wing demonstration in Tel Aviv\u201d while ostensibly restricting Jews \u201cfrom praying at the Western Wall\u201d during Passover.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tJewish worshipers take part in the traditional Priestly Blessing during the Passover holiday in an indoor section along the Western Wall in Jerusalem, after prayers were limited to 50 participants due to the ongoing war, April 5, 2026. (Chaim Goldberg\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

In fact, the court ruled<\/a> to raise the numbers allowed to gather at the Western Wall and the Temple Mount amid the ongoing war from the Home Front Command\u2019s recommended 50 to 100. And the court\u2019s president Isaac Amit, a prime focus of the coalition\u2019s efforts to demonize and subjugate the judiciary, lamented while hearing petitions on the matter that the Western Wall, the \u201cinnermost soul of the Jewish world,\u201d was empty. \u201cFreedom to demonstrate and freedom of worship and religion carry the same constitutional weight,\u201d Amit specified.<\/p>\n

That same evening, in a quite astonishing act of political self-harm, the prime minister also announced he had refused to accept the resignation<\/a> of his spokesman and chief of staff, who was found to have made a series of highly derogatory racist remarks about Sephardi Jews in general and several of Netanyahu\u2019s Likud Party lawmakers of Middle Eastern origin in particular. Only when his own supporters, including the insulted MKs, rose up in protest did the prime minister reverse course.<\/p>\n

And finally, most egregiously, Netanyahu filmed an Instagram video<\/a> that day in which he castigated those who are warning that Israel \u201chas lost the north\u201d amid the battering of northern Israel by Hezbollah rocket and missile fire. Local leaders have been among those issuing that anguished criticism, but the prime minister declared to the camera that Israel is in the ascendant, Hezbollah is being ground down, and that naysayers are amplifying Iranian and Hezbollah propaganda when they ought to be joining \u201cthe national struggle\u201d on the road to victory.<\/p>\n

Can he not manage even a modicum of empathy for hundreds of thousands of Israelis under nonstop enemy attack, with little or no time to seek shelter \u2014 not to mention the rest of the country, responsibly and resiliently either serving in the IDF or doing its best to stay safe and function in a war whose necessity it fully recognizes?<\/p>\n

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