LIKE THE FIRST SUCCESS, THE FIRST TRAP: the language of victory and the reality of defeat for the US and Israel

The war launched by the US-Zionist alliance against Iran has entered its sixth week. What has emerged after six weeks on the aggressor side is not progress but exposure: This war has no strategy, only a drift.

THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS, BUT THIS TIME THE HOUSE IS NOT OWNED BY TRUMP

Yet neither Trump nor Netanyahu has entirely lost hope of achieving major results in the short term. They are like gamblers who, having won the first hand at a table that excited them, lose every subsequent hand yet keep trying to recapture the luck of that first hand. Trump, who has always conditioned himself to win as the owner of the house, thanks to the casinos he ran in Las Vegas, must this time be feeling like a toy in the hands of some other house.

In fact, the speech he gave on the morning of 2 April could have been a moment of decision. Everyone's expectation was in that direction too. The joy of early victory he was swept up in at the start of the war turned out to be the greatest trap. Saying "perhaps this time," he somehow never steps back. It did not happen. Not only that, it turned into an instructive text showing how a leader speaks when caught between war and politics. Sentences saying that victory was "near" and the hesitation of a will compelled to continue the war stood side by side in the same text. This is not a contradiction; it is a disintegration.

TRUMP'S REAL ENEMY IS NOT IRAN BUT US DOMESTIC POLITICS

For the reality Trump faces today is not at the front but at home. His real enemy right now is not Iran, but US domestic politics and society.

The objection rising from within American society has become the most decisive dynamic of this war. Anger spilling onto the streets, shrinking political support, loyalty cracking even within his own base... These are signs that a war has been lost not militarily but politically. The cost of the war is now felt not only in foreign policy but in everyday life. The economy, order, the sense of trust, all are eroding at the same time.

The moment a war is lost is not at the front but when society stops giving it meaning. This loss of meaning is what Izetbegovic pointed to, from another angle, when he said the moment a war is lost is "the moment you become like the enemy."

But explaining this picture with domestic pressures alone would be incomplete. There is a deeper problem: The rupture between the subject of this war and the one responsible for it.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this war is being waged not by Washington's rational calculations but under the compulsion of another political agenda, which we have also pointed out here before. For this reason Trump does not have two options; there is a single dead end. If he steps back he will collapse politically, and if he continues he will be able to do nothing more than postpone that collapse.

So the situation that emerges is a classic paradox of power: There is the power to continue the war, but not the freedom to end it.

THE GLOBAL COUNTERPART OF THIS SQUEEZE IS ISOLATION

The tension that has appeared in America's relations with Europe is not a simple diplomatic problem; it is a crisis of order. That an alliance sustained for years with the discourse of "shared values" began to unravel at the first serious test shows how fragile those values actually are.

Trump's condescending and belittling language toward his allies not only damages relations; it also erodes the legitimacy of the order America itself established. Europe's silence in the face of this erosion signifies not resistance but acquiescence.

What emerges is not a multipolar world; it is a world that has lost its center.

As for the military dimension of the war, there is a similar picture here: The gap between claims of tactical success and strategic results is widening.

A REGIME THAT WOULD TOPPLE WITH A FLICK, HOW DID IT STAND UP WHEN ATTACKED?

And at this point it is no longer only analyses made from the outside but confessions coming from within the war itself that speak.

Ehud Barak says openly: This war has failed and will fail. Because there is no plan; there is only a fantasy based on force. Barak's words are in fact the barest expression of the reality on the ground: A war built on wishes produces no results. A regime with a 2500-year tradition, further nourished by a culture of martyrdom such as Shiism and with millions of fedayeen, cannot be overthrown with bombs. The expectation of collapse imposed from the outside often produces the exact opposite, resistance within, and indeed it did. A regime that had reached the stage of collapsing on its own through natural means became virtually steeled by the war launched the moment it gave the impression that it "would topple if given a flick from the outside."

More importantly, the void Barak points to is not only military but political: There is no political goal. There is no diplomatic path. There is no exit plan. There is only a movement that continues, but toward where is unknown.

TRYING TO BE ATHENS WITHOUT BEING SPARTA

When asked about the way out of the war, and whether he would make a similar proposal citing the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Barak offers the following criticism:

"The security belts in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon do not work, it is all nonsense. Forward defense is of course important, but it must necessarily be carried out together with a political step. This is missing on all fronts. We missed the opportunity for dialogue with Lebanon through Saudi Arabia and France. There was also the possibility of political negotiation with Syria but it was missed. Benjamin Netanyahu is sabotaging all political agreements and initiatives."

Barak's words "You cannot be Sparta; you also need to be Athens" are perhaps the deepest criticism of this war from within their own ranks. Because an order built on military power alone is not sustainable. If a war has no political leg, the effect of its military leg remains limited. Undoubtedly this is the weakness of all the Pharaohs who consider themselves powerful and self-sufficient. That much weakness of the US-Zionist alliance becomes a path of glad tidings for the oppressed masses who suffer from its tyranny. May it turn out for the best.