Netanyahu and Trump Are Running a Secret Grand Strategy — and It's Working

As Israel and Iran trade fire and television studios fill with alarmed commentary, a senior figure from Israel's religious-nationalist establishment is offering a strikingly different read: that what looks like chaos is in fact a carefully choreographed global strategy, and that Netanyahu and Trump are far more coordinated than they appear.

Netanel Eizak, a veteran former director-general of several government ministries and one of the most experienced senior figures in the religious-Zionist sector, made the case in an interview on Kikar HaShabbat's "Davar Rishon" program Monday.

"Everyone in the studios was saying Netanyahu and Trump were enemies, that they were fighting," Eizak said, referring to the weeks of reported tensions before Israel struck Dahieh in Beirut. "Then the attack came and it turned out it was all theater. The same thing happened now, until yesterday the studios were reporting 'difficult conversations' and 'blowups,' and then Israel struck Dahieh."

The Dahieh strike, Eizak argued, was not improvised. It was a deliberate move, coordinated with Washington, designed to break the deterrence equation Iran had sought to establish. "Israel told Iran and the US: there will be no equation where if I strike in Lebanon, I absorb an Iranian missile and don't respond. Israel struck Dahieh with America's knowledge and with a clear understanding that it would lead to escalation with Iran. And that's a good thing."

Zooming out to the global picture, Eizak dismissed the notion that the Trump administration is operating without a plan. "A superpower doesn't go to war, deploy four aircraft carriers, an air force, and marines, and build bases across the Middle East without a strategy," he said. "If the Gulf states or European partners think the US is bluffing and acting without a plan, it will lose them. Donald Trump wants to restore America's status as a superpower, and he wants to be seen as calculated and deliberate."

On Trump specifically, Eizak pushed back hard against portrayals of the president as erratic. "To say about Donald Trump — a multi-billionaire, a grand strategist who understands economics and politics and was elected president again — that he has no idea what he's doing? I don't accept that."

As for the endgame, Eizak was direct: "The organizing idea of the grand plan is first and foremost the fall of the Iranian regime. And if not that — then neutralizing their nuclear project and ballistic missile program. Otherwise, the cooperation between Israel and the US would never have been set in motion. No superpower burns trillions of dollars on an army and soldiers in the Middle East to achieve zero. Remember that."

Eizak also drew a parallel between Netanyahu and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, recalling Begin's famous rebuke to a young Senator Joe Biden who had come to Israel in the 1980s to pressure it against a military strike. "Begin told him: we are a people of 3,700 years of civilization. None of you came to help us when we burned in Auschwitz. Today Netanyahu stands as the leader of the Jewish people and says: not on my watch."

The program's host, Moshe Manes, closed with the obvious challenge: is this a conspiracy theory or a correct reading of events? "Time will tell," Eizak said with a smile.