Israel and Iran are using renewed strikes to try to force through their own agendas before Donald Trump manages to secure his elusive peace deal.
The latest exchange of violence between Israel and Iran shows that both sides have the same goal – convincing one man that they have the upper hand to better position themselves for future discussions – and try to push him to agree a deal on their terms, experts believe.
But for Trump, this is a moment of jeopardy as he tries to extricate himself from a war in the Middle East that has spiralled out of his control.
On Sunday, Iran launched waves of missiles at Israel, targeting airbases in the north of the country. Israel, defying demands from the US President not to retaliate, responded with large-scale strikes on Iran’s air-defence systems, in the largest exchange of fire since the ceasefire was announced in April. Both countries also targeted each other’s energy facilities.
On Monday, both nations said they had paused their strikes on each other, after a call from Trump on Truth Social to “immediately stop ‘shooting'”. Both added that they would respond with force again if the other attacked.
However, Israeli forces struck targets in Lebanon again on Tuesday, killing at least five people in the southern coastal city of Tyre and other nearby settlements, according to Lebanese media.
The Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said that negotiations between the US and Iran had “nothing to do with Lebanon” and that Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah were a separate issue to the US-Iran peace talks. Iran has consistently tied the fate of Lebanon to a wider end to the war.
Trump denied on Monday that Israel had defied his ceasefire orders, claiming that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had already fired his missiles at Iran by the time the two leaders spoke by phone. “If I tell him to do something, he does it,” he told the BBC, adding that he was close to reaching a “very good deal” on ending the war.
Tensions are growing between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Evan Vucci – Pool/Getty Images)‘Trump is on the ropes’
It is unlikely either country would have attacked if they felt talks between Trump and Iran were moving towards a resolution, experts said. The latest tensions point to the major weakness in Trump’s approach to a war he expected to last days – and which a growing proportion of the US population is turning against.
“For Iran, the calculus is that Trump is on the ropes here”, Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at Durham University, told The i Paper.
Ehteshami sees Iran’s strategy as trying to divide the US and Israel, while linking the conflict in Lebanon to a wider agreement. “The Iranians believe that Trump wants a peace deal at all costs and are hoping to exert enough pressure on him to try and extend the ceasefire to both Lebanon and the Gulf,” he said.
Meanwhile, Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the Iranian regime was seeking to capitalise on what it perceived as a successful approach to the conflict so far.
“Iran believes increasingly that it has won the war and that it cannot make concessions without reward,” she said.
For Israel, the calculations behind its recent strikes, as well as its attacks on Lebanon, show a country with a vision of what it wants and a desperation to get as close to that as it can before the dust settles. Trump has said that Israel will have to accept whatever deal he makes with Iran, despite it being a key partner in launching the war three months ago.
“Trump is in a difficult position,” Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told The i Paper. “He started this war alongside Netanyahu, and now he wants to end it, but his partner does not.”
Rahman said that Trump’s credibility was on the line when it came to whether he could bring Israel along in any peace deal.
Ehteshami, meanwhile, said the the conflict had, in some ways, become defined by the relationship between Trump and the Israeli Prime Minister. “Netanyahu knows full well that he cannot win without American support. Iran knows that, and Trump knows that”, he said, adding that the Israeli leader was losing control over his options – unless he could apply pressure to Trump.
Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow at Chatham house’s Middle East and North Africa programme, sees the latest wave of attacks by both sides this week as part of a ploy to set the agenda, with Israel seeing the window to weaken Iran – and to keep Hezbollah suppressed in Lebanon – closing as Trump pushes slowly towards a deal in which it has little say.
Pro-government Iranian demonstrators wave flags from Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah in Tehran on Sunday (Photo: Vahid Salemi/ AP)On the Iranian side, the intervention could be to signal that its military and proxies are still able to go after targets across borders, adding another element to its key bargaining chip of pressure on global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
“I see this as a prelude,” Quilliam said, adding: “It is about setting red lines before a deal between US and Iran is reached.”
Events could spiral out of Trump’s control
Under pressure from the latest strikes, and from political forces at home, Trump is now at risk of allowing events to spiral out of control.
Ozcelik said that what Trump did next – and how the Iranians reacted – would be critical. “The question now is whether additional pressure can deliver different results, or whether it risks provoking further escalation without fundamentally changing Iranian behaviour,” she said.
But “Trump risks more strategic muddle because his objectives keep changing. He doesn’t appear to have a coherent plan”, said Quilliam.
Experts say the US President is increasingly being boxed into a corner by events taking place in the Middle East, and risks losing control over both the conflict and the war of words.
“Trump desperately needs a deal”, according to Quilliam who warns that if the President settles for a watered-down agreement he risks remaining vulnerable to Iranian mischief – and more violence in the region.
The Iranian regime may have had mischief in mind when they named their latest missile strikes on Israel “Operation Nasr” – meaning victory.
But Trump gets it wrong now, it could be lose-lose for everyone.
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