HELP IS ON THE WAY?

‘Waiting for Godot,’ Israeli-style

Who knows if the living portrayal of this fictional character will turn out to be Trump, Khamenei or Netanyahu? 

 

By Ruthie Blum 

 

JNS

Jan 23, 2026

                                    

                                The Iranians are still waiting and getting slaughtered

 

 

Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” is often described as a play in which nothing happens. Two characters linger on a barren stage, convinced that this character is about to come and solve their unspecified predicament. That he never arrives is the source of prolonged anxiety.

This is how Israelis are feeling about an anticipated Iranian missile blitz.

The country went into high gear earlier this month, when U.S. President Donald Trump canceled scheduled talks with the powers-that-be in Tehran and announced to the protesters being slaughtered throughout the Islamic Republic to “keep going” because “help is on the way.”

And since the mullahs made it clear that if the United States conducts any military operation in or over Iran, the Jewish state will pay, whether or not Jerusalem is involved. Israelis know from experience—three direct attacks in less than two years—to take the threat seriously.

The first two were in April and October of 2024. The third, in June 2025, was part of the informally dubbed “12-day war”—officially: “Operation Rising Lion,” initiated by Israel, then finished off by the United States with “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

Though the stunning joint campaign succeeded in destroying Iran’s key nuclear facilities and much of its ballistic-missile capability, it forced us Israelis to spend many nights in bomb shelters.

This is precisely what we’re expecting to happen again at any moment, particularly since the ayatollahs aren’t going down—if at all—without a fight. A last hurrah, so to speak, even if that means depleting the remainder of their projectiles.

The trouble is that nearly two weeks have passed since Trump’s declaration, with no obvious movement on this score. Well, other than the reported deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East and clandestine meetings among Israeli security-and-defense officials.

Meanwhile, the Iranian people are being brutalized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij militia. For them, every minute without outside help is an eternity of pain and suffering.

In this respect, Israelis are fortunate. All we have to do is follow the instructions of the Home Front Command, which hasn’t raised the level of alert. And the worst we can say is that the suspense is exasperating, not figuratively killing us, as it is literally doing to the brave Iranian demonstrators.

Nor is Trump making any of the confusion easier. When he said last week that the regime had halted 800 scheduled executions, for instance, he made it sound as though there was no longer any cause for American intervention.

Aside from the fact that his premise was totally false—something the Iranian attorney general himself subsequently acknowledged—it was more than disappointing. Even worse was his comment on Jan. 22 from the stage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which he made while unveiling his dubious “Board of Peace” for Gaza, that “Iran does want to talk, and we’ll talk.”

The only optimistic explanation that those who champion a strike on Iran can come up with is that Trump has been misleading the regime on purpose to make sure that the upcoming offensive comes as a surprise. Since he’d already performed such a fake-out right before entering the 12-day war, many Israelis are harboring hope that this is what he’s doing again—and that the only reason for the postponement is the need for the U.S. and Israeli militaries to get their ducks in a row before taking swift and decisive action.

Still, the sense is that we’re waiting for Godot, and don’t even know if the living version of this elusive fictional character will turn out to be Trump, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We are keenly aware, however, that existential perils don’t dissolve on their own, and that ambiguity, like willful blindness, can be deadly.