His contribution to the 2018 US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran is considered one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's greatest achievements. His campaign against the Iranian threat combined with a close alliance with US President Donald Trump have yielded enormous political capital for Netanyahu. However, one year after the signing of the agreement, the sanctions policy he championed has failed to bring Iran to its knees. On the contrary, Tehran announced on June 17 that it would quadruple the pace of its low-grade enriched uranium production and pass the 300-kilogram limit set by the nuclear deal with world powers.

Thus, while the Iranians are upping the ante vis-à-vis Trump, the American president — Netanyahu’s ace in the deck — is seeking an escape hatch from a clash with Tehran. And while Netanyahu was posing for photos in the Jordan Valley with US national security adviser John Bolton June 23, Trump was voicing reservations about his hawkish, war-mongering aide and condemning people “who want to drag us into war.” In fact, the only campaign in which Trump is interested from now until November 2020 is the one for the presidential election. The New York Times reported that veteran Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson was the one who persuaded the president to abort the strike on Iranian targets and bring the bombers home. Tucker reportedly told Trump that instead of resulting in a regime change in Tehran, as Bolton hoped, a new war in the Middle East would bring about regime change in Washington.

Arab leaders are aware of Trump’s focus. The heads of the Arab League states were in no rush to accept the invitation to the economic workshop the president initiated in Bahrain. While they were sending low to mid-level officials to discuss aid to the Palestinians, their finance ministers headed to Cairo to discuss the same issue. The Arab leaders refused to cooperate with the US attempt to mask the dead end in its pro-Israel policy and pressure on the Palestinian Authority. Thus, in addition to Netanyahu’s vain attempts to isolate the Palestinians and develop a public diplomatic bypass with the Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu has also failed to bring Iran to its knees. Contrary to remarks by US Ambassador David Friedman in a June 8 New York Times interview, the Palestinians do “have a veto on progress.”

But along with failing to isolate or bypass the Palestinians, Netanyahu failed on another level. The third side of Netanyahu’s failure trifecta consists of the US proposal to re-open a corridor between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The “safe passage” initiative was originally part of the 1993 Oslo Accord, but since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, Israel has made separating Gaza from the West Bank a central element of its policy. And here comes Trump proposing to build a Palestinian bridge in the heart of sovereign Israeli territory. The “safe passage” idea does not appear to preclude continued Hamas control of Gaza and would therefore open the gates to those refuting Israel’s right to exist and allow them to cross into Jerusalem and the West Bank.