The latest escalation in the Middle East, although “controlled”, would have been more significant without the intervention of the US president, Israeli and US sources tell CNN. But the situation appears to be slipping out of the administration’s control at a “crucial” moment in the peace process – and recovering it will be “quite difficult”
A new wave of retaliation between Iran and Israel gave the world the feeling that the conflict in the Middle East had, for a moment, been reignited. Against all expectations, at least those of Donald Trump, who assured in an interview with the Financial Times that only on his orders would the war be resumed, Tel Aviv responded in kind to Tehran’s offensive this weekend.
“It’s not him [Benjamin Netanyahu] who makes the decisions”, assured the American president to that newspaper only to be contradicted, minutes later, by reports of several explosions in Iranian territory. The Israeli Prime Minister, agreeing with the interruption of hostilities in Iran, as the path to peace appeared promising.
Perhaps in an attempt to ease the tension between the two sides, it was later learned that the result would have been more devastating if it had not been for a second telephone call between the American president and the Israeli head of government, according to CNN. According to the Israeli source and the American official cited, , when he was interrupted by Trump, who called for an end to the aggression. The request, however, came in a more serious tone, accompanied by: “I said: ‘Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon’”, threatening the partner with losing US support in Iran.
Although Israel has since announced the suspension of attacks, as long as Iran does not retaliate again, the idea that remains is that Donald Trump “never had political control over the matter”, international relations specialist Tiago André Lopes tells CNN Portugal.
“North Americans, strictly speaking, in the Middle East, have a tendency to blindly trust their partner Israel, and this ends up making them pay some diplomatic embarrassments”, he highlights, realizing that we are facing a “very unbalanced and asymmetrical” relationship.
If, on the one hand, the US follows a “somewhat erratic” logic without “properly having an agenda”, on the other, Israel remains faithful, from the beginning, to “a clear agenda and purpose”: “For Israel it was important to have a military dynamic that would allow it to consolidate a distraction from the continued annexation of Palestinian territory, and this dynamic of belligerence against Iran was equally important.”
After failed attempts to sell the war with Iran to Joe Biden and Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu found jackpot in Donald Trump. And now, warns the CNN Portugal commentator, it is precisely Trump who finds himself grappling with two new problems.
“The US president has already realized that not only does he not have the military capacity to carry out such a rapid campaign on Iran, he also cannot control his partner in Israel”, he states, recalling that “whenever Donald Trump asks Netanyahu not to do something”, the head of the executive “does the opposite”.
According to Tiago André Lopes, this is also because the American leader appears to have “few instruments to politically punish” his ally, while Netanyahu has several tools at his disposal “to condition Trump’s decisions”.
For Major General Agostinho Costa, security affairs specialist at CNN Portugal, Israel’s apparent disauthorization is part of a “coordinated action” between both parties facing Iran.
“The United States plays the good police, and Israel plays the bad police. Donald Trump plays the moderate person, Benjamin Netanyahu plays the madman, the leader who is completely out of control”, he emphasizes, adding that the two powers “are almost Siamese brothers”, with Israel almost like a US state.
With the current instability in negotiations and the ceasefire, the TACO doctrine (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) is what is gaining more strength, since “each step forward” by Donald Trump is equivalent to “two steps back”, highlights Agostinho Costa.
“When faced with a situation that involves decisively committing resources, particularly when it involves North American casualties, then we have TACO, because in North American strategy the only theater of operations where Americans understand that they will truly commit decisively – that is, where Americans can die – is the Indo-Pacific, not the Middle East”. This, explains the major general, is an issue for the Israelis: “Whenever there is a need for the Americans to commit themselves in some way that involves costs in the operation, the Americans “strike”, because there are no vital interests for the US at stake.”
“Israel knows it’s now or never”
Everything indicated that the moment was “crucial” in the peace process, according to an American official cited by the Axios portal. But one of the Iranian regime’s main demands, which demands the interruption of Israeli attacks against Lebanon, has not yet been fulfilled.
“The Iranians already understood the maneuver. And what they did was a small rape, an attack on an empty building, that is, they responded with a moderate escalation. The Israelis, for the sake of clearing their faces, also attacked moderately”, highlights the military expert, who has no doubt that what is at stake is a “controlled escalation” in the form of an “arm wrestling game”.
Tehran claims to have come to the defense of the people of Lebanon, but simultaneously seeks to “maintain very limited military action”, placing the resolution of the conflict in the hands of the economy, since it is “convinced that it has time on its side”.
In turn, Tiago André Lopes classifies the war as an authentic “proof of resilience”, which, he says, will make Iran “the regime that clashed with the Americans and survived”, providing the country with greater diplomatic power.
Israel’s goals are equally clear, commentators conclude. An “amazing plan”, as Agostinho Costa describes it, is underway to build a “Greater Israel”. This plan can only be carried out with the help of the USA, responsible for “doing the work that Israel does not have the capacity to do”.
“Israel knows that it is now or never. It will never again have a president in the White House as aligned with Israel as Donald Trump. So much so that none of the previous presidents were directly involved in the war with Iran”, he explains, highlighting that, with this attack, Israel manages to “maintain pressure on Iran, retain the United States in the process, prevent the peace agreement and maintain this fantasy”.
Trump has lost control and it will be “quite difficult” to gain it back
The US president has shown signs that he is committed to a real way out of the conflict and what “he is doing is letting the process mature until the issue resolves itself”, recalls the military expert. But the situation already threatens to go beyond the control of the US administration – and defeating it again will be “quite difficult”.
“We are in a situation of strategic impasse. The Americans do not have a solution: they have two aircraft carriers there, they have an amphibious landing force, they have tens of thousands of soldiers, around 40 thousand soldiers, they have an immense volume of forces in the region, but, strategically, they are prevented. They are prevented, because, on the one hand, they have pressure from the countries in the region, which serve as a lot of guinea pigs and, on the other, a kind of Heel of Achilles, which is the entire energy production device – if Iran attacks it, oil will go to obscene levels in terms of cost”, he concludes.
Returning control to Benjamin Netanyahu is as difficult or even more difficult, as the international relations expert says, since the head of the Israeli government faces “electoral pressure and requests for more muscular military action from opposition parties and the population of northern Israel”.
He is therefore left with two solutions: “Either Trump is willing to fight arm-in-arm with Netanyahu – which I don’t think so – or he will be unlikely to have the political initiative in his hands again.”
