The Puppet Master’s War: Is Trump Driving the Bus, or is Netanyahu Holding the Steering Wheel?

​THE ARAB BUSINESS elite has officially run out of popcorn. As the Middle East continues its transition from “chronic tension” to “impending apocalypse,” Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor—a UAE billionaire with enough capital to buy several small countries—has decided to stop playing nice. In a blistering critique that surely caused a few coffee spills in the West Wing, Al Habtoor asked the question everyone’s been whispering at brunch: Is Donald Trump actually running “America First,” or is he just the world’s most expensive errand boy for Benjamin Netanyahu?

​For Al Habtoor, the spectacle of Trump “insisting” on regime change in Tehran looks less like a superpower’s strategy and more like a pre-ordered takeaway from Jerusalem. We’ve seen the Supreme Leader fall and the skies over Tehran turn into a live-action Michael Bay film, but now that the nuclear reactors at Dimona are in the crosshairs, the billionaire class is getting twitchy. Al Habtoor is pointing out the uncanny “sync” between Washington’s military muscle and Netanyahu’s wish list. It’s almost as if U.S. foreign policy has been “subcontracted” to a firm that only cares about keeping one specific Israeli Prime Minister in office.

​The “Puppet Master” theory isn’t just for internet forums anymore; it’s now the collective headache of the Gulf’s economic titans. As the risk of radioactive fallout becomes a legitimate business concern, Al Habtoor is voicing the suspicion that Trump might not even have the keys to the war chest anymore. He’s suggesting that while Trump is busy tweeting about greatness, the strings are being pulled so tightly from Israel that the White House is starting to look like a marionette theater. If the U.S. is no longer a security guarantor but merely a “hired gun” for its neighbors’ vendettas, the Gulf allies might start looking for a new bodyguard—preferably one that doesn’t bring a nuclear suitcase to a knife fight.

“To ask if a U.S. President is going to war on his ally’s payroll is a massive diplomatic slap in the face. But in today’s Middle East, it’s the only logic left that doesn’t involve believing Trump does anything for free.”— AMBARA GLOBAL SATIRE INDEX