US President Donald Trump's efforts to find a way out of the war with Iran have already become more difficult.
The Israeli-Iranian conflict escalated dramatically within an hour on Sunday, exactly two months to the day since Trump announced a ceasefire.
- In response to the Iranian military's Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel, the Israeli military attacked what it called Hezbollah infrastructure in areas south of Beirut.
- Iran immediately responded with a wave of missiles aimed at Israel, the first since April. The Israel Defense Forces said it intercepted all the missiles.
- Israel then fired back, hitting Iranian targets including an air defense installation and a petrochemical plant.
The Israeli missile attack came despite Trump publicly saying he would urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate.
As bad as Trump wants a deal to end the war with Iran, the rapid escalation suggests he will be hard-pressed to reach the kind of long-term deal he wants with Iran until — and unless — he ends the related but separate conflict between Israel and Tehran/Hezbollah.
Iran's military command says it will halt attacks on Israel – unless Israel's attack on Beirut continues. Thomas Juneau, a professor of public and international affairs, says the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah will likely continue to be a bone of contention in the peace talks between the US and Iran.
Both Israel and the US clearly want to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but beyond that, the priorities of these allies are beginning to diverge, in part because of their leaders' domestic political concerns.
Trump is currently more concerned with reopening the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers than Netanyahu. Netanyahu's main goal is to protect Israel's security by crippling Hezbollah's operations in Lebanon, something Trump has shown interest in pursuing.
Iran feels 'bold'
Above all this is Iran's position: that any deal with the US to end the war and limit its nuclear program must include Israel stopping its war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Washington's efforts to lobby Lebanon to end the war have had little success, as Hezbollah rejected it and Israel refused to withdraw its troops.
Nathan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, says Iran appears to be calculating that Trump's strong incentive to secure an armistice means it could attack Israel over the weekend without facing retaliation from the US.
“What we have here is a bit of a game of chicken. Iran feels that it has been strengthened by the results of the war so far and is holding the cards, because it thinks that Trump is very interested in this deal,” Sachs told CBC News.
“That means [the Iranians] they are willing to push the envelope. They don't think they're going to go back to full-scale war with the United States if they do this,” Sachs said.
Sachs says Netanyahu and his government are more concerned about the prospect of Trump striking a deal with Iran that is too soft on Israel's priorities, including dismantling Iran's support for Hezbollah.
“It's really possible to break up here [between Trump and Netanyahu] because the interests are very different,” he said.
The Trump-Netanyahu rift
Although Israelis are “very afraid that Trump will turn on Netanyahu,” Sachs said the two countries are still allies, and the differences between the two leaders have not yet developed into a major rift.
That comes despite reports that Trump insulted Netanyahu during a phone call last week about Israel's strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What Iran is doing “serves a number of purposes,” according to Michael Young, an author and editor of books on Lebanon and a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, a think tank in Beirut. He says Iran is trying creating problems in US-Israel relations.
“Trump is looking for a deal, while the Israelis are trying to make any progress in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran,” Young wrote Monday in a social media post.
More than 10 weeks into the war and without a clear end, US President Donald Trump says the cessation of hostilities between the US and Iran is based on 'great support for life.' Andrew Chang explains why the US strategy to end the conflict – which Trump says will last no more than a month – is falling apart. (Image credits: The Canadian Press, Reuters, Adobe Stock and Getty Images)
There is a gap between what the US and Israel want next in their war with Iran, said Thomas Juneau, a former Middle East analyst with Canada's Department of National Defense and now a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa.
Basically, Trump wants to wrap up while Netanyahu believes the job is not done, Juneau said.
Israel's fears about US-Iran talks
“Israel is very concerned right now because it is not directly involved in these US-Iran negotiations, and it is very afraid that the outcome of these negotiations could be harmful to Israel's interests, or at least how Netanyahu sees Israel's interests,” Juneau told the CBC News Network on Monday.
But Juneau cautions against reading too much into the apparent differences between the two leaders.
“Since that separation is real, it's important not to exaggerate it. They are very consistent, especially,” he said.
Juneau foresees the conflict in the Middle East continuing as it has for weeks, with a fragile truce constantly breaking down.
“There is no war, there is no peace, there is no one,” he said.
It is reported that Trump spoke with Netanyahu twice between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.
“Israel and Iran must immediately stop 'shooting,'” the US president wrote on social media shortly after 5:30 am. ET Monday, when the missiles were still flying.
By the end of the day, Israel and Iran had withdrawn their protests.
Still, Trump's biggest challenge remains getting a deal with Iran that has eluded him since April, even though he has repeatedly said it was very close.
On Monday, he again predicted that a deal was coming soon.
“The final negotiations about 'peace' continue, under ignorance or stupidity that gets in your way,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Things have to move quickly.”
