Leon Kouider: Israel’s sustained effort to sabotage peace with Iran

Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon with the ostensible strategic objective of demilitarising Hezbollah has achieved an unspoken, yet more crucial geopolitical function in the service of Israeli interests. It has successfully sabotaged peace talks between the United States and Iran.

For decades, Israeli officials have lobbied consecutive US presidents to initiate a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, seeking to fabricate urgency to act against an imminent existential threat by exaggerating the maturity of Tehran’s nuclear programme. For 30 years straight, Iran was just two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself has a staggeringly formidable record of seeking to draw the US into a war against Iran that would – should the campaign succeed to the desired scale – effectively secure Israel’s regional pre-eminence. His first attempt to embroil Washington into a regional war came in 1992 as a member of the Knesset. The campaigning only continued from there.

The ammunition Netanyahu hurled at occupants of the White House to bring about his jingoistic fantasy was subsequently dismissed as unsubstantiated by George Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. Even Donald Trump in his first term managed to resist the urge to ignite a war against America’s enduring bogeyman.

As long as Israel continues to leverage conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon to obstruct a permanent settlement between the US and Iran, the tail will continue to wag the dog.

So, what changed this time? Well, this time Trump is facing a domestic political crisis of eyewatering proportions. His repeated efforts to downplay and deny the sickening Epstein scandal only further implicated him. In all but six US states his approval ratings are in the negative and his national approval rating is well below 40% and still sinking.

It was likely not lost on Trump that the prospect of wiping out Iran’s nuclear programme, or even deposing the Islamic Republic and its apparatus would be a political miracle for him. His abysmal ratings ahead of the US’ midterm elections in which he faces impeachment if the Democrats regain control of congress place him in desperate need of a deus ex machina. When Netanyahu inevitably came calling again, it seems Trump simply could not resist indulging him.

Despite all 18 US intelligence agencies persistently verifying that Iran is neither in possession nor pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Trump seemed all too eager to lunge at the prospect of bragging about decimating it, even if it only existed as the central figment of a fabricated casus belli. Moreover, the geopolitical balance of power in the region has shifted in favour of Israel. Since October 7^th, Iranian influence has weakened considerably following Hezbollah’s decapitation in 2024 and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, which was an integral link in the arms supply chain between the Islamic Republic and its Shia allies in Lebanon.

Judging by the sanctimonious rhetoric lacing Trump and Netanyahu’s announcements of the war, the stage was set for a swift and resounding victory. However, what ensued was a wildly unpopular war against Iran – the most unpopular in American history with only 41% approval – that has achieved no strategic ends and has directly caused the worst global energy crisis in history, according to the International Energy Agency. Trump’s astonishing strategic blindness to Iran’s power to cripple the world’s energy supply chain by closing the Strait of Hormuz has accelerated inflation worldwide, spiked mortgage rates considerably, and alienated once staunch US allies in Nato and the Gulf.

The Trump administration has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to save face by working with an array of mediators to negotiate a political settlement with Iran to reopen the Strait, extract nuclear concessions, and permanently put an end to hostilities. However, Trump’s capitulation to Iranian temporary truce terms in early April, just a day after he threatened that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” highlights clearly that Tehran is negotiating with vastly superior strategic leverage.

Proving to be a persistent thorn in his side, Trump’s coalition ally Netanyahu has not expressed the same interest in curtailing the chaos. Following Ayatollah Khamenei’s assassination on the first day of the war, he declared that “this coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years”. Those are not the pronouncements of a man willing to settle for peace. They are the words of an unscrupulous war-hawk revelling in the opportunity to finally reshape a region in his image.

America’s inability to coercively impose a favourable settlement on Iran, alongside Tehran’s terms that Israel halt its invasion of Lebanon ultimately placed all the cards to chart the course of the conflict in Netanyahu’s hands. As the other two belligerents were locked in an impasse, Israel had the power to reignite the tinderbox.

READ: Abdulrahman al-Rashed: Iran fighting for survival amid ongoing war

As Israeli carpet bombing of Lebanon persisted, Iran withdrew from peace negotiations and Trump berated Netanyahu over the phone for his recklessness, an act dismissed by many as classic Trumpian political theatre due to the lack of material constraints to supplement the verbal tirade. A mere five days later, Israeli military brinkmanship arrived in Beirut, and as the bombs fell once again on the Lebanese capital, the Iranian redline was crossed. Renewed tit-for-tat strikes between Tel Aviv and Tehran gravely undermined the prospect of a permanent peace deal. Another two days later, the US was embroiled in the salvo exchanges once again.

Trump’s desperation to resolve the conflict and reverse its adverse consequences on his personal reputation alongside America’s political and economic wellbeing will likely be in vain for the foreseeable future. Netanyahu’s bombardment of the predominantly Shia suburb of Dahiya in Beirut has sucked the US back into the escalation ladder, hardened Tehran’s posture, and has ultimately made future Iranian nuclear armament a more realistic possibility than ever before.

The consequences are not just geopolitical. The Persian Gulf Strait Authority announced that in light of the resumption of hostilities, the waterway “is closed until further notice” to all commercial traffic. The fiscal implications of a protracted armed conflict with Iran are staggering once the US’ debt crisis is factored in. Top American economists estimate that the actual cost of the war ranges between $630 billion to $1 trillion, a crippling amount to a country $39 trillion in debt whose investors are rapidly withdrawing treasury holdings.

The simple truth of the matter is that this war is unsustainable for the US and Trump knows it. However, as long as Israel continues to leverage conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon to obstruct a permanent settlement between the US and Iran, the tail will continue to wag the dog.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. Leon Kouider is a news editor at Maghrebi.org and founder of The Digital Dissident. You can follow him on X: @lkouider24

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