He wouldn't credit Trump for ending a war he started, but the shift stunned him: a president at the G7 shrugging that of course Iran can keep its missiles, when those missiles were a top stated reason for the war.
Mehdi's read isn't that Trump turned pro-Palestine, too crude, it's ego and agenda, and anyone in the way gets crushed, including pro-Israel voices now too scared to even say Trump's name, branding it "JD Vance's deal."
The throughline he kept hitting was leverage.
He recalled Reagan phoning Begin in 1982 over one wounded Lebanese child and stopping the shelling in twenty minutes.
America is the senior partner.
Israel can't finish Hamas, couldn't have touched Iran without U.S. arms.
So a ceasefire is the floor, the real test is whether Washington forces Israel out of Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza.
@mehdirhasan
