Benjamin Netanyahu has long been a master of PowerPoint.

But even for a man with a track record of shaping world events, no presentation would prove as consequential as the one he delivered in the White House Situation Room on Feb 11.

Over the course of an hour, the Israeli prime minister reportedly laid out the case for why the United States and Israel should join forces in the kind of Middle Eastern war Donald Trump had always sworn to avoid.

Mr Netanyahu – perhaps mindful that the US president preferred to absorb information visually – buttressed his argument with video clips, soundbites and a photo montage of potential new leaders who could steer Iran to a pro-Western course should the regime collapse.

By the time the Israelis swept out of the White House that afternoon, Mr Netanyahu had once again shifted the course of history. Convinced to take the tide at the flood, the US president ordered his generals to draw up plans for a war that promised to eradicate the Iranian threat and potentially topple its weakened regime in short order.

Things did not go as planned. Despite establishing battlefield dominance, hopes of forcing Iran’s “unconditional surrender” faded within weeks, giving way to a ceasefire Mr Trump hailed as a triumph, but which quickly foundered under the double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Then came the ignominious conclusion to a drama that may yet have a final act, as the president was forced to accept what one Washington insider grumbled was “perhaps the worst deal in history”.


The saga is probably not over. Mr Trump, not known as the most assiduous student of history, signed the deal at the Palace of Versailles, whose record of producing durable peace treaties speaks for itself.

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But whatever the outcome, it is already clear that Mr Trump’s war will have profound and lasting consequences, reshaping the global economy as well as Washington’s ties with allies, partners and adversaries alike.

It may end up strengthening China, imperilling Nato, forcing a strategic recalibration across the Middle East and further isolating the United States itself. The irony, former officials in Washington tell The Telegraph, is that a war meant to reaffirm US primacy risks accelerating perceptions of its decline.

“I think we will find that the implications are long-lasting and will play out in expected and unexpected ways,” says Kurt Campbell, who served as Joe Biden’s deputy secretary of state. “It will hit businesses, consumers and geopolitics.

“There are clearly countries that come out of this stronger than before, China probably foremost among them. It is likely that, quietly, many countries will again question America’s strategic approach after another Middle East misadventure with dubious results.”

From Cyrus to Judas
Even Mr Trump’s ardent defenders would struggle to frame the Iran war as anything other than the greatest foreign policy failure of both his terms.

And there is no one he is likely to blame more for his predicament than Mr Netanyahu, a man whom the US president increasingly talks to – and about – in expletive-laced terms.

“Why did Bibi have to do a f---ing attack?,” Mr Trump asked Axios last Sunday as the Israeli prime minister ordered yet another air strike on Beirut as the US president was on the cusp of initialling the deal in the midst of his 80th birthday party.

“I was so p----d off. I let him know. He has no f---ing judgement. I let him know that.”

Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump
Benjamin Netanyahu’s relationship with Donald Trump has worsened as the Iran conflict drags on Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty
Months earlier, there had been no hint of acrimony. In fact, things had never been better. When Mr Netanyahu left Washington, there was unquestionably a spring in his step.

Little wonder – he had just achieved something none of his predecessors had. Since 1945, the US has led alliances in seven wars from Korea to Iraq, but it had never fought alongside Israel until now.

An easy triumph beckoned, Mr Netanyahu reportedly assured his host. Iran was too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz or retaliate meaningfully against Arab states in the Gulf. All Mr Trump had to do was embrace his destiny.

An inconclusive end to war has exposed the US president to criticism on the American Right, where opponents claim he allowed himself to be gulled by Mr Netanyahu – criticism some in Israel say is unfair. Israeli military planners, they maintain, urged Washington to hold off on military action for several months.

Not only would this have given Israel time to degrade Hezbollah, Tehran’s Shia proxy network in Lebanon, fully, it would also have increased the chances of a regime already weakened by widespread protests fracturing further.


Mr Trump disregarded the advice, seizing an intelligence opportunity to strike the upper echelons of the Iranian leadership. In doing so, he traded a campaign that could have delivered the decisive victory he sought for tactical surprise.

“Israel did not have a plan to go to war in February,” says Gen Yaakov Amidror, Israel’s former national security adviser. “Israel went into this war based on an American schedule, not an Israeli one.”

Recrimination has given way to accusations of betrayal. For months after Mr Trump negotiated the release of the last Israeli hostages in Gaza last October, his face was on billboards across the country, with some people calling him the greatest gentile leader since Cyrus, the Persian king who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC.

Now, many cry treachery, accusing Mr Trump of abandoning the field and striking a deal that has not only failed to topple the Iranian regime but could leave it hundreds of billions of dollars richer while retaining its enriched uranium, ballistic missiles and proxy network.


For now, Mr Netanyahu has kept his counsel. But he is unlikely to come to heel on Lebanon for long. Even though the Israeli prime minister reluctantly agreed to a truce with Hezbollah on Friday, he did so “under clear duress and with little conviction”, said one Western diplomat.

As he prepares for an election later this year, Mr Netanyahu’s political future suddenly looks less certain. With the most powerful man in the world at its side, Israel had seemed destined for undisputed military primacy in the Middle East. Instead, it looks markedly more exposed.

For some, the greater concern is not the strain between the two leaders but mounting evidence that Israel is falling into disfavour more broadly in US society.

Some 60 per cent of Americans now hold an unfavourable view of Israel, according to a Pew Research Center survey earlier this year – a rise of 20 points since 2022.

Despite Mr Netanyahu hitching himself to the Republican Party and abandoning the non-partisan approach of his predecessors, 58 per cent of Republicans aged under 50 now view the Jewish state with disapproval. Many Israelis fear that their country’s most important relationship has rarely looked more fragile.


For now, Mr Netanyahu has kept his counsel. But he is unlikely to come to heel on Lebanon for long. Even though the Israeli prime minister reluctantly agreed to a truce with Hezbollah on Friday, he did so “under clear duress and with little conviction”, said one Western diplomat.

As he prepares for an election later this year, Mr Netanyahu’s political future suddenly looks less certain. With the most powerful man in the world at its side, Israel had seemed destined for undisputed military primacy in the Middle East. Instead, it looks markedly more exposed.

For some, the greater concern is not the strain between the two leaders but mounting evidence that Israel is falling into disfavour more broadly in US society.

Some 60 per cent of Americans now hold an unfavourable view of Israel, according to a Pew Research Center survey earlier this year – a rise of 20 points since 2022.

Despite Mr Netanyahu hitching himself to the Republican Party and abandoning the non-partisan approach of his predecessors, 58 per cent of Republicans aged under 50 now view the Jewish state with disapproval. Many Israelis fear that their country’s most important relationship has rarely looked more fragile.


“I think the bottom line is that Israel should be worried about the erosion of support and even support turning into opposition or negative sentiment,” said Gen Assaf Orion, the Israeli Defense Forces’ former head of strategic planning.

“This is toxic and dangerous for Israel, given America’s role in our national security.”

Israel may be experiencing a rude awakening, but the Gulf states have already been through it.

When Mr Trump embarked on his misadventure in Iran, there was widespread disbelief in the gilded capitals of a region that had done so much to woo him, lavishing pageantry on his visit last year and pledging trillions of dollars in investments and commercial deals. Qatar even gave the president a jumbo jet to replace Air Force One. In the end, it all amounted to nought.

“This war was wholly opposed by all the Gulf states,” says Sanam Vakil, the Middle East director at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank. “They tried to lobby the Trump administration and they failed, which is problematic because they thought they had the president’s ear.

“They invested in him because they thought he was going to be a dealmaker president, not a regime change president. They were looking for protection and stability. They found instead a president who set the region on fire.”

Everything changed once the bombs started to fall, with Iran seizing the Strait of Hormuz, choking off the region’s most important economic lifeline. Fear over Mr Trump starting a war gave way to fear that he would end it with Iran still in control of the waterway, walking away from the blaze he had lit.

Keep fighting, some leaders initially urged him. But by last month, as the blockade by both the US and Iran dragged on and the economic pain threatened to become existential, even the hawks had concluded that the only option left was diplomatic mediation in pursuit of a deal they knew would be far from ideal.

Ships in the Strait of Hormuz
Iran’s actions have meant shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a halt Credit: Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP
If Israel has reacted to Mr Trump’s deal with anger, Gulf states have responded with resignation. They share many of the same concerns but ultimately face the same reality: there is simply no credible security alternative to the United States.

The region – more confident in its military abilities after intercepting the vast majority of the missiles and drones Iran launched against it – may seek to diversify, strengthening ties and deepening defence relationships with China, Europe and Asia. But none offers a genuine alternative.

Bound by their dependence on Washington, Middle Eastern states will have little choice but to swallow their indignation and smile at Mr Trump with gritted teeth.

Mutually assured destruction
If the war exposed America’s limits in the Middle East, it also weakened the wider system on which US power rests: alliances underpinned by military credibility and strategic focus.

America’s war caused harm, observers say, but no country was hurt as much as America itself.

Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to Nato, calls the war “the worst strategic mistake since Vietnam – arguably since the Second World War – because the consequences are just bad for the US across the board”.

He says: “We have permanently damaged our relationship with our allies, not only in Europe, but also in Asia. The president went rogue, launching a war with severe economic consequences for the world without consultation.

“The geostrategic advantage the US has over its competitors is that we have allies. They don’t. That geostrategic advantage has been broken.”

A rally in Tehran featuring an image of Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader. The regime has not collapsed under the fire of America and Israel
A rally in Tehran featuring an image of Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader. The regime has not collapsed under the fire of America and Israel Credit: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters
Mr Trump did not consult Washington’s European allies before launching the war, but he was quick to turn on them when things started to go wrong, publicly berating them after several countries restricted US forces from using their bases to strike Iran.

A diplomatic chill in the transatlantic relationship hardened into a bitter public rift – one that illustrated the cost of neglecting alliances.

“In the 21st-century era of great power competition between autocrats and democrats, we need allies,” says Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Moscow.

“We’ve seen in real time the restriction of access to bases in Europe and how that impacts us advancing what the president thinks are our security objectives. It would be even more dire if, God forbid, we didn’t have allies in Asia.”

Marines
Middle Eastern countries have long looked to the US for security
If Mr Trump’s war weakened Washington’s alliances, unnerving European partners who still fear he could turn again against Greenland or Ukraine once the dust has settled, it also strengthened America’s adversaries – particularly China.

Fifteen years into Washington’s “pivot to Asia”, the United States is again preoccupied by another Middle East crisis. Rather than focusing on the Chinese threat – which many Republicans argue should be Washington’s overriding priority – Mr Trump was forced to shift vital military assets from Asia to the Gulf as Iran refused to yield.

Few are likely to return quickly. United States Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, will argue that only a substantial military presence can deter Iran – a reasonable case, but one that underscores America’s chronic problem of overstretch.

“Many American military capabilities that had been basically devoted to a deterrent stance in the Indo-Pacific have now shifted to deployments in and around the Persian Gulf,” says Mr Campbell, one of the architects of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” before his service as deputy secretary of state. “That’s a problem, because the deterrent calculation in Asia is under enormous stress.”

Nor is it only the military balance that has shifted in China’s favour, unnerving not just Taiwan but countries across South-east Asia. There has also been a shift in soft power. Recent polling suggests that China is now viewed more favourably in many parts of the world than the United States, as Beijing presents itself as the more reliable, predictable and stable of the two superpowers.

Russia, too, has benefited, though to a lesser extent and in the face of its own mounting problems.

A windfall from higher oil prices is likely to bring only temporary relief to its struggling economy, helping stave off a fiscal crisis without addressing deeper structural problems. But Vladimir Putin has profited in other ways, most notably after the US and its Gulf allies burnt through a limited stockpile of Patriot interceptors and precision missiles.


“The Kremlin will be looking with great satisfaction at the depletion of defensive munitions that might otherwise have been available for Europe to defend itself against Russia, even if there was no prospect of them being supplied to Ukraine,” says Keir Giles, an associate fellow at Chatham House.

“Despite the fact that Russia will have been put out by once again losing the effective support of a coalition partner in its war on Ukraine, it will be looking at the longer-term implications of the war with satisfaction.”

The world is still trying to digest the impact of Mr Trump’s Middle East war. Businesses are still counting the cost; governments are recalibrating their policies.

But its clearest legacy may be a collapse in confidence – confidence in American judgment, in the security of global trade routes, and in the assumptions that underpinned international order for decades. Even before the war, that confidence was waning. Now it has been shattered.

What was meant to be a short, sharp campaign to eliminate the Iranian threat and reinforce US authority has instead unsettled allies, emboldened adversaries and left markets permanently alert to the possibility that the Strait of Hormuz could be turned into a weapon again at any moment.

“All we know is that we won’t go back to the status quo ante bellum,” says Mr Campbell. “It will never be like it was before. There will always be an Iranian Damoclean sword hanging over the Gulf.”