Analysis update: Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon fronts after Trump-Netanyahu meet
1. Netanyahu had seven in-person meetings with President Trump in the first thirteen months of this second term—but they had not met since jointly launching a war against Iran. Politically, Netanyahu had to attend the funeral of his Senator, Lindsey Graham, and by extension had to get an audience with Trump. He achieved that.
Netanyahu’s unmistakable priority is his election back home—just three months away and trailing in the polls. To the Israeli public, the visit was intended to signal that, in spite of recent tensions, Bibi is still “the guy”- uniquely experienced and positioned to manage the relationship and to deliver the U.S. for Israel (the Netanyahu-Trump meeting was the focus of an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition here).
Ideally, Netanyahu would get the kind of electoral hug and endorsement that Trump has offered elsewhere. As a fallback, dispelling any possible Trump flirtation with Netanyahu’s prime competitors (Eisenkot and Bennett—some of the Israel Lobby will see those alternatives as useful for resuscitating Israel’s image without meaningful changes in policy).
2. Pulling that off is more tricky for Netanyahu, given the unprecedented shifts taking place in U.S. politics and public opinion vis-à-vis Israel. Israel First versus America First is a source of internecine MAGA warfare, while Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians and constant regional warmongering are deeply unpopular among Democrat voters.
The widely held (and very justified) suspicions that this failed U.S. war against Iran would not have happened without Israel’s urging, added a layer of risk and trepidation to this Netanyahu meeting with the President. Trump signalled in advance that Netanyahu should not make current and future developments in the war look like they were serving an Israel First agenda.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu would still be confident, and have precedent on his side, in assuming that even if Trump is aware of the playbook and sees it coming, Netanyahu is a deft hand at massaging the relationship and still maintains a formidable lobby in Washington (including within the administration) of insiders and influencers.
Netanyahu can also offer Trump something more unorthodox—that presidential life would be so much more boring sans Netanyahu. Together, they had achieved what Trump always likes to refer to as historic breakthroughs—from the Abraham Accords in the first term to two wars against Iran (so far), claims of making peace in the Middle East after 3,000 years, the Gaza so-called ceasefire and release of hostages, creating a Board of Peace etc. In reality, most of that list amounts BS, for Trump those things feature prominently in any “Best Of” presidential reel.
3. The real test rests on practical deliverables that Netanyahu can take home, foremost amongst those, what next in the war against Iran?
Having succeeded in pulling America into a major war with Iran after decades of trying, Netanyahu is in no mood to stand down. In a bleak domestic electoral landscape for the Israeli premier, a main hope remains that, contrary to the evidence of the last months, this time a massive American military assault delivers for Bibi the lottery ticket of Iranian state and/or regime collapse.
There are three basic scenarios: (i) the war ends either by way of an agreement or America walks away claiming victory (whatever the actual circumstances); (ii) an ongoing war of attrition, with ups and downs in intensity, but no exit; and (iii) a massive escalation intended to deliver a decisive outcome—from a US/ Israeli perspective an Iranian collapse or capitulation—but more realistically the escalation leads back to the first two scenarios.
Israel’s goal is to prevent an end of war and either jump straight to escalation or to nurture attrition as an eventual on-ramp to the Big Bang.
i. Israel was instrumental, though not alone, in successfully working to collapse June’s Islamabad MOU. That deal, reflecting the balance of power and the gaps between the anticipated outcomes of Israeli-US war plans and the reality, faced stiff opposition inside the administration and from Israel. The deal itself reflected what has become the standard modus operandi of Trump’s negotiations—deliver a text that is sufficiently inchoate and undetailed as to quite easily unravel.
The U.S. led in collapsing the MOU with its insistence on delineating a Hormuz passageway, abrogating Article Five of the memo. Simultaneously, Israel contributed to convincing Iran that the deal was not serious, successfully upending the Lebanon clause in the agreement by reaching a separate, American-brokered deal whereby the government of Lebanon handed its sovereignty over to Israel, endorsing the ongoing occupation of its own territory. Iran offered its own contributions to resumed hostilities (this was one of the items we talked about on Afshin Rattansi’s Going Underground)
Israel will be working to ensure—even though Trump is frustrated with the war, stuck and eager to find a way out—that any further negotiated deal will remain sufficiently fragile as to be collapsible. Given the dynamics that have emerged during this war, any exit strategy for the U.S. will involve the kind of climb down that no leader, least of all Trump, enjoys (even if Trump has a unique ability to make and endlessly repat claims entirely and demonstrably divorced from reality).
Netanyahu arrived in Washington during a brief pause in hostilities following two weeks of escalation, and while new bridging proposals for a ceasefire were under discussion. That pause has sufficiently frayed as to have possibly been eclipsed for now.
ii. While Netanyahu’s preference is for a massive escalation, if he considers that unattainable in the short term, his efforts will be to nurture the current U.S. predisposition as a parking space (the assumption that it can win in an ongoing war of attrition).
That scenario has the added benefit of Israel militarily sitting on the sidelines in this current phase. That spares Israel the cost of munitions depletion, especially interceptor stockpiles, and of absorbing incoming Iranian strikes, allowing Israel to focus on its multiple other fronts of military aggression (Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon and Syria for now).
On the U.S. side, this creates some space to distance unpopular perceptions of this being a war driven by Israel (although the argument may strike many as not being particularly credible). One caveat is that Iran may not indefinitely indulge Israel’s preference of cheerleading from the side. Israel will attempt to nurture the working assumption behind the attrition idea—namely that Iran is suffering more, that its position is economically unsustainable, and the regime is running out of steam as long as the U.S. maintains its blockade, including naval deployment, that America has the staying power and Iran will cave first. Israel will particularly encourage harsher economic measures and will continually seek to provoke Iran.
A second caveat is that the initial fifteen-plus weeks of this war did not play out that way. Despite forty days of bombing and repeated spurious American claims of victory, America was continuously looking for a way out. Trump moved to a de facto ceasefire for eighty days and then agreed to the short-lived Islamabad MOU.
In absolute terms, there is no doubt that Iran is absorbing more painful hits, including to its economy. But once the American and Iranian respective thresholds of pain and resilience capacity are factored in, the equation according to which this war is being run offers a different outcome—that the U.S. side is more inclined to reach first for the de-escalatory ladder.
Iran shows signs of being able to absorb the pain. While it is being bombed (and still being threatened with civilizational and infrastructure erasure), it is easier to hold a more unified public front (one that might come under more strain after the war is over). Meanwhile for the U.S., rising energy costs will carry a knock-on political pain factor (Trump’s apparent indifference towards the midterms is not shared by the GOP ecosystem), the stock market is wobbly, and there is repeated evidence of U.S. military defence stockpiles under strain, and of public opposition to the costs of this war.
iii. Israel’s gambit is that Trump remains sufficiently unpredictable, unstrategic and disconnected from reality that he can be persuaded to pursue the kind of escalatory intensity which has thus far been rejected. Even if there is an apparent awareness inside the administration that this war has gone badly and could get worse, both in terms its domestic and international consequences, the thin-skinned presidential susceptibility to criticism over a weak deal and impatience means the ball of a Big Bang escalation, even including partial ground operations, remains in play.
Netanyahu will likely have gone into his July 28th meeting assuming that even if Trump is not immediately amenable to an Israeli desired level of escalation, that the foundations could be built and the seeds planted for a Trump embrace of “the big one” when frustration next hits a peak. Netanyahu will be carefully calibrating how far to push and when, while consistently creating the conditions and building the case for the next phase. Netanyahu’s political antennae are probably telling him to pursue public messaging which downplays Israel leading on escalation right now—that accords with some of the Israeli briefings coming out of this visit.
That could be in ten, thirty or fifty days from now (Netanyahu still has ninety days until he faces Israeli voters). Israel will keep drip feeding its case for escalation, deploying intel (whether real or cooked), creating provocations where possible on the ground, and hoping that at some point Trump turns around and says, “hey, let’s look again at that plan Bibi shared at Lindsey’s funeral”. None of which should imply that there is actually a plan up Netanyahu’s sleeve that is game-changing and that America could successfully sustain at an acceptable cost.
4. Israel’s pilot zones in Lebanon and Gaza
A PR narrative was doing the rounds in advance of Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington—namely that the Israeli premier was bringing to Washington meaningful steps towards progress in advancing American so-called peace proposals in both Lebanon and Gaza.
On the eve of the visit, the Israeli cabinet approved a pilot program regarding Gaza and the Board of Peace, while implementing three pilot zones in Southern Lebanon. But once those are interrogated at a granular level, they rather serve to underline the extent to which centres of American power remain committed to carrying water for Israel. Under scrutiny, it is very clear that these gestures are so minuscule as to be considered an insult in any other setting.
In Gaza, the sliver of territory in question is in part of the additional areas seized by Israel since the so-called ceasefire (beyond the so-called yellow line outline in the twenty-point plan). The prospective international force (ISF), if it ever enters, is envisaged to number in the low tens of personnel, with no mandate to protect Palestinians, rather it forms part of a revamped modality for Israeli control.
In Lebanon, the pilot zones were not part of Israel’s self-declared security buffer zone, in other words, its occupation. Israel is not allowing for the return of civilians, and the pilot program is part of an arrangement which legitimizes Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty and ongoing control until Israel decides otherwise.
Anyone claiming that the U.S. is pressuring Israel to make serious moves towards de-occupation in Lebanon or Gaza (or Syria or the West Bank, for that matter), apparently struggles to understand the meaning of the word “pressure”.
5. Lebanon, Palestine, and the regional front
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s head of national public diplomacy and part of the delegation in Washington, told reporters following the Trump-Netanyahu meeting that “there is no pressure on Israel to withdraw from the important achievements it made in Lebanon or Gaza”. Hard-right Israeli media commentator Amit Segal repeated the claim, attributing to an anonymous Israeli official, that “Trump did not demand an Israeli withdrawal from any front during the meeting”. While I would not ordinarily consider these sources to be particularly reliable, there seems little reason to question their claims on this occasion—those positions have not been contradicted or challenged by American officials.
i. Lebanon
Israel continues to not only militarily occupy a zone ten kilometres deep into Lebanese territory, it is also carrying out ongoing destruction and levelling of entire neighbourhoods and preventing the return of displaced civilians. Israeli Defence Minister Katzhas proudly asserted that “Southern Lebanon would become Gaza…we would destroy everything there…the infrastructure has been destroyed…homes in 24 villages along the border—villages that had existed for hundreds of years…have been demolished. The army systematically flattened the villages with bulldozers and explosives.”
There was a very telling sidebar during the Lindsey Graham commemorative events in Washington this week—a dinner in his memory hosted by Lebanese businessman and pro-Israel agitator Antoun Sehnaoui and his partner Morgan Ortagus, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his wife and ambassador in attendance, alongside Stephen Miller and various senators.
Sehnaoui comes from the family that financed Israeli-aligned Christian militias who conducted the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians in 1982. Sehnaoui has courted a profile of working with Israel, and is considered to lead a lobby in Washington which significantly influenced President Joseph Aoun’s move to agree to the Trilateral Framework surrender document of June 26th (I discussed that agreement and its role in the Greater Israel regional picture here on BreakThrough News). In part, this is designed to ensure the undermining of any sustainable quiet on the Iran front.
While the Lebanese government is trying to claim a win with the implementation of the three pilot zones, Israel is making clear that these are not only insignificant, but will not be repeated, and the occupation is going nowhere. Israel’s supposed Lebanese “partner” should prepare for further humiliation.
Michael Young, a senior Lebanese commentator at Carnegie Beirut, was right to point out that the pilot zones could have been a good idea if the withdrawals were significant and were a prelude to and part of a clear commitment to a full withdrawal, as well as being an on-ramp to the quick return of displaced inhabitants—which is precisely the opposite of Israel’s intentions.
Israel’s approach in Lebanon is that the only alternative to direct Israeli control is internal Lebanese clashes, trying to turn the LAF into a de facto proxy. It fits with a bigger picture approach—mirroring what Israel is attempting in Gaza by arming clan militias, in Syria with Druze forces, and its attempt to back an armed Kurdish incursion in Iran.
ii. Palestine
Signs are intensifying that Israel’s pre-election approach on the Palestinian front will be to intensify and maximise creating more facts on the ground in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to intensify displacement, and test how far elements of a new regime of control can be embedded in Gaza. The Board of Peace is working exactly as intended in Gaza, enabling Israel to maintain the occupation with greater international complicity, Israel expanding its backing to militia forces designed to engender civil war, and with some profiteering on the side for Americans and others.
The plans of High Representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov including the intentionally unreasonable demands surrounding demilitarization, are serving to achieve that end (partially now being advanced via the prospective Board of Peace mini-pilot zone). Reports of imminent breakthroughs on the Gaza governance and arms decommissioning front are more spin than substance. Meanwhile the killing of Palestinians continues on a daily basis, with the count now at more than 1,200 fatalities since the declaration of the so-called ceasefire.
In the West Bank, the Israeli state is advancing additional land confiscations, designations of new settlements and legalization (in Israeli terms) of so-called outposts and farmsteads as well as settlement budget appropriations, in part for more apartheid infrastructure. The tag team coordination between state and settler militias has assumed new levels of sophistication, whereby occasional settler provocations are designed to generate a Palestinian counter-response, in turn providing the backdrop for the IDF to finish the settlers’ work.
After one recent altercation, Defence Minister Katz committed to expand offensive activity in the West Bank and to take over another refugee camp in accordance with the model applied in Jenin, Tulkaram and Nur al-Shams. That was described as including the evacuation of residents and the maintenance of a permanent IDF presence. In parallel, Israel is intensifying its provocations and seeking to create a new status quo at Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.
When one adds the financial crisis being imposed by Israel on the PA, then it is clear that some in the government are seeking to collapse that PA structure and perhaps to generate a massive clash and subsequent IDF operation in the West Bank before elections. Other parts of the Israeli state apparatus prefer to maintain the useful security collaboration of the PA security forces.
iii. Regional front
Finally, it is worth noting that the theatre of confrontation may yet expand further, notably in the context of a re-escalation in the US-Iran war.
As tensions rise with Yemen and Saudi, the Ansar Allah Houthi movement and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, direct clashes could yet resume with Israel. Iraq is becoming a more active front—Israel has taken action there in the past and continues its occupation zone and periodic strikes in Syria. The targeting of a U.S. gas port installation at Damietta on the Mediterranean coast may just be a one-off, though it could presage unpredictable developments on the Egypt front.
And as American forces have increasingly re-located from the Gulf to Jordan, the Hashemite Kingdom has been absorbing more intense Iranian strikes, with hints that domestic discontent is growing (or is at least being given permission to vocalise) at the predicament Jordan is in, especially as Israel doubles down against Palestinians in the West Bank.
And a final coda on Saudi/Israel. Against the backdrop of all the supposed U.S. frustration with Israel, when President Trump signed a U.S. Nuclear Cooperation Agreement with Saudi, he then conditioned its implementation on Saudi normalization with Israel (Biden tried to pull off a similar stunt).
It is worth letting that sink in—if the deal served American national security or economic interests, then why make it dependent on benefits for Israel? Echoes again of Israel First versus America First (the tensions surrounding that Saudi deal were one of the main subjects of this interview with Democracy Now). And from a Saudi perspective, it was surely a reminder that the U.S. remains wedded to a regional approach which front-loads doing Israel’s biddings above all else. In other words, another gentle nudge toward encouraging hedging and diversification of options.