Not many people today remember the exhilaration so many Americans felt after Israel’s victory in the six-day War in June 1967. The liberal folks around me at work and law school then had been frustrated and puzzled at the lack of progress being made in Vietnam by the 448,000 U.S. troops stationed there, and the sudden and astonishing success of the Israel Defense Forces symbolized by the eye-patched general Moshe Dayan was a refreshing contrast. No talk then of Israelis as colonialist settler oppressors.
You will not encounter much in the way of exhilaration in similar milieus today at Israel’s multifront and even more astonishing victory, capped off by the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, in what is now called the 12-day War of June 2025. In contrast to the success in 1967, when there was minimal American involvement, this success owed much to American collaboration, appropriately kept secret before the fact.
It came also amid a series of significant and largely unexpected policy successes for Donald Trump — China trade concessions, NATO summit agreeing to 5% of GDP defense spending, Supreme Court overturning of single-judge national injunctions, G7 finance ministers climb-down on global corporate tax, negotiation of a Rwanda-Congo peace deal, Canada’s repeal of a digital services tax, S&P stock index all-time high, Senate passage of “One Big Beautiful Bill”. We are at “Peak Trump,” as Matthew Continetti wrote in The Free Press.
Democrats’ sour responses to Trump’s domestic successes, based on some mix of principled disagreements and opportunistic politicking, is understandable. Their sour responses to the Israeli and American success against the Iranian regime’s nuclear program are another matter.
The result of the six-day War elated both liberal and conservative Americans. The result so far of the 12-day War was, by many Democrats and many in the press, denounced as the overture to a massive ground war like the 2003 Iraq invasion, and deconstructed by leaked memos suggesting the mullahs would have their nuclear weapons program up and running in a few weeks.
It’s hard to resist the Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mead’s conclusion that Trump’s second term is “the most consequential foreign-policy presidency since Richard Nixon left the White House.” His scorn for outworn shibboleths and changed circumstances has produced successes that deserve respect, if not total agreement from his domestic opponents, instead of the knee-jerk opposition and shopworn sloganeering seen so far.
The aggressive nationalism of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, both rooted in historic tradition, have relegated the hopes of the Clinton and Bush eras that a post-Communist Russia and a post-impoverished China would adhere to international rules and foreswear predatory expansion.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted NATO partners, which ignored the Obama administration’s quiet goal of 2% defense spending, to agree to Trump’s louder demand and meet his raise to 5%. Far from destroying NATO, as his critics feared, he has strengthened it.
Similarly, he has ignored demands, like those of 2024 VP nominee Tim Walz, that he pressure Israel to accept the outworn goal of a “two-state solution.” Instead, he is working for a Middle East free from the Iranian nuclear threat and open to mutually beneficial agreements like his first-term Abraham Accords.
Trump’s adherence to his pre-escalator vows that Iran should not get nuclear weapons, while flummoxing supporters like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, has surely gotten Putin’s and Xi’s attention.
They surely didn’t miss, when Israel began its precision bombing and targeted drone attacks on June 13, that Trump told Reuters that he had given Iran 60 days to reach an agreement, “and today is the 61st day.”
Democrats were still busy disparaging Trump’s willingness to back down on trade deals with the acronym TACO (“Trump always chickens out”). But Xi may not want to risk a 61st day on Taiwan. And while Democrats dismiss Trump’s boast that Putin didn’t launch an attack on Ukraine while he was president, the fact is that he didn’t. Will he risk a 61st day surprise if Trump, losing confidence as his recent statements suggest he has in his good intentions, sets a time limit on his aggression in Ukraine?
Israel’s strikes on Iran, the historian Niall Ferguson tweeted, are “a decisive victory for the West.” Just as the Six-Day War largely removed the threat of Israel being overrun, the 12-day War largely removed the threat of Israel being annihilated by an Iranian nuclear attack.
WHEN WILL THE B-2S RETURN TO IRAN
The Six-Day War was followed in time by Richard Nixon’s resupply of Israel in the October War of 1973 and by his simultaneous maneuver of splitting Russia and China in what had been a stalemated bipolar world. His opening to China, though criticized in both parties’ presidential primaries, was followed by presidents of both parties past well behind what now appears to have been its sell-by date.
What will follow the 12-day War can’t be known for sure. But it looks like Trump’s policies have moved toward a more peaceful Middle East, a Europe more alert to Russian aggression, and perhaps an increasing caution by the leaders of Russia and China. These are consequential achievements, like Richard Nixon’s, that deserve to be taken seriously even by the president’s detractors.