Iran Tries to Bribe Trump

Also, a war by any other name is still a war, and Tucker Carlson's layover in Israel.

Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi meets with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Geneva yesterday. (Oman Foreign Ministry)

It’s Wednesday, February 18, and has Iran gotten away with it? I doubt it.

U.S. officials say “progress has been made” in yesterday’s talks in Geneva. Tehran claims “understandings have been reached.” Oman’s foreign minister speaks of “serious efforts to define guiding principles for a final deal.”

Before we declare peace in the Middle East in our time, let’s decipher the diplospeak.

Nothing substantial has been settled. Nuclear enrichment was likely discussed, but the three core issues—ballistic missiles, the proxy network, and the regime’s killing of protesters—do not appear to have been put on the table. Trump isn’t going to ride to his Nobel Prize on a unicycle. If he’s making a deal, there had better be more than one concession.

That doesn’t seem likely. In a Trumpian move, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared during the negotiations that “the type and range of Iran’s missiles are none of America’s business.”

So why the upbeat language?

Iran floated rare-earth minerals and oil contracts, hoping to exchange ballistic misses for resources. It seems that may have been enough to whet Washington’s appetite.

Meanwhile, in less vague language, former IDF Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin warned, “I would think twice about flying [abroad from Israel] this weekend.” That cuts against Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s recent assurance that he wasn’t canceling his weekend plans—but it introduces an interesting possibility.

What if Washington takes a page from Tehran’s playbook—let someone else do the dirty work and absolve itself of responsibility?

I’m not calling Israel an American proxy. But imagine a scenario in which Israel, “on its own,” strikes the ballistic missile program. Trump shrugs: it’s them, not me. Let’s keep talking.

Unlike Tehran, when it comes to Trump’s negotiating style, everything is on the table.

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Yashar! Party chairman Gadi Eisenkot at the Ynet conference last night.

On Har Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery, there are hundreds of neat rows of garden graves, with thousands of identical headstones bearing the names, dates, and the war the soldiers fell in. Since October 7, 1,152 members of Israel’s security forces have been killed. More than 200 have already been laid to rest on Har Herzl. Their names have been carved. Their dates are set in stone. The war they fell in remains blank.

Among those graves is that of the son of Yashar! Party chairman Gadi Eisenkot, Gal Eisenkot, who fell in the early months of the war. At a conference last night, Eisenkot fired a volley on a different front of the conflict:

“As long as the prime minister and the cabinet of October 7 do not take responsibility, hand over the keys, and establish a state commission of inquiry—I will not allow a single letter to be changed on my son’s headstone.”

During the war, and even more so since, Israel has been fighting a parallel struggle over the war’s name, and by proxy, the memory of the war itself.

The IDF’s operational name—Swords of Iron—has been widely used. Early suggestions included the biblical Genesis War, the locational Gaza War, and the more religious Simchat Torah War. On the first anniversary of October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu settled on War of Revival, and a year later the security cabinet formally adopted the title.

All can be justified by Israel’s war-naming precedent. Simchat Torah War would follow the Yom Kippur War’s motif—anchoring the conflict to the day it began. Swords of Iron fits the pattern of recent Gaza operations. War of Revival echoes the more grand historical framing of the War of Independence.

But let’s not pretend this is about convention or precedent.

In every government document, memorial, and official history book, “Revival” will be the adjective. Israeli children will read in school that the complete failure of the state on October 7 led to the positive-sounding “War of Revival”—we all know who that benefits. The Defense Ministry announced that the new war name on headstones would be optional, but it’s bigger than words in stone.

For such an energetic people, Israelis can be remarkably gloomy. Despite ending the Yom Kippur War shelling Damascus and sitting on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal, the opening surprise attack enshrined it as one of Israel’s great national failures. This war is similar. Yes, Hezbollah is crippled. Yes, Iran is wobbling. Yes, the hostages came home two years and six days after they were taken. But this isn’t the October 13 war—it’s the October 7 war.

Israelis aren’t defeatist but “revival” is not the right term. According to the Jewish People Policy Institute, a plurality—42 percent—want it called the “October 7 War,” compared to just 16 percent who want “War of Revival.”

No matter how much branding goes into changing historical memory, the scars of October 7 will remain. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “a failure by any other name would hurt as deep.”

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Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

Tucker Carlson is coming to the Holy Land—well, the airport. After his visit to Jordan seemingly solely to bash Israel’s treatment of Christians, Carlson doesn’t seem interested in corroborating his claims, despite receiving an invitation.

Shadi Khalloul, founder of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association, even put together an itinerary: Jesus’s baptism site, the holy sites of the Galilee, and the places associated with the crucifixion and burial—you know, the most sacred ground in Christendom. He sent it to Carlson’s team and got no response.

Instead of following in the steps of his Lord and Savior, Carlson would prefer to visit the holy ground of Ben Gurion Airport, interview US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and immediately fly back to Europe.

I’m surprised he would even speak to Huckabee, given that he has said he dislikes Christian Zionists “more than anybody.”

But honestly, I thought Carlson was better at his job. Apparently, the reality of Israel’s treatment of Christians is so obviously better than the rest of the Middle East that even a master like Tucker couldn’t spin it into antisemitic propaganda.

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