Timing is Everything: On Bibi- (and Trump-) Preference 'For Now'

My impression for some time now has been that the temporal dimension, the priority-ordering of urgencies, as it were, of Israel's challenges right now is being overlooked by some people. That includes well- and ill-meaning people alike.

This in turn leads them, I think, to overlook this:

Many who believe Bibi's days are numbered - or that they should be numbered - seem still to support him, for the nonce, simply because they trust him most on that challenge which is most urgent for the nonce: the Jew-hating twelver regime tyrannizing Iran.

The calculation, which I myself find compelling, might run as follows:

(1) The mullahs still remain the greatest threat to Israel and civilization itself, and must be ended.

(2) This will be easier for Israel to do with US help, even if that help's not strictly necessary.

(3) The US help will likely come only while Trump is in office - that is, in the next two years.

(4) Bibi is by far the best 'Trump whisperer' among Israeli leaders.

Ergo ...

(5) Bibi should be leading Israel for the next two years, after which we can revisit what challenge or challenges should count as Number Two and what Israeli leader is best poised to deal with that next-in-line priority.

(Personally I lean provisionally toward friend Einat Wilf in the longer term.)

I see no obvious flaw in this chain of reasoning. One could accept it - indeed, as I say, many do seem to accept it - even while believing Bibi must retire ASAAP ('as soon as actually possible'). In such case our deliberator simply sees the 'P' in 'ASAP' as not quite yet satisfied.

I myself have no 'fully decided' opinion as yet about Bibi's future after Trump - I truly just don't yet know enough to feel as though I can informedly, and hence responsibly, 'weigh-in.'

I do feel confident, however, that the thought-progression from (1) to (5) above is sound. Indeed I've been saying as much, in my capacity as pragmatic mullah-loathing Trump-loather, in multiple fora for at least several years now.

Our enemies' enemies are not our 'friends' (we mustn't be 'campists'). Hence our task is to figure out which enemies to rid ourselves of first - using the other enemies in so doing when expedient. (Is there any less loathsome person than Trump who you think really would do what needs doing to the mullah regime?)

Those who prioritize ousting Bibi and Trump right now, then, above all else, before the Iran work is done, I fear might lack a sound sense of timing, or be strategically blind, or be obsessively person-focused in some cases.

I'd be happy to hear reasoned arguments that I have overlooked something relevant here, or that I have assumed something that just isn't so. So far I have not encountered any such. It's all about Bibi's and Trump's narcissim, corruption, and/or divisiveness.

My quarrel with those characterizations is not with their accuracy or otherwise. It's with their relevance - for now.