It was a day that showed why the Middle East’s generational hatreds are so often treacherous for American presidents.
On Monday morning, US President Donald Trump’s brittle diplomatic push to get out of the Iran war suddenly seemed to buckle. The causes, this time, were an Israeli threat to strike Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Beirut’s southern suburbs and militia missile attacks on Israel.
The sudden escalation prompted an outpouring from Trump that betrayed his frustration with a conflict he launched in February that has now stretched into June, defying his hopes for a swift and clear-cut victory.
“I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less,” Trump told CNBC, when asked about Iran’s claim it had suspended talks with the US because of what it regarded as Israeli ceasefire violations in Lebanon. The talks have become “very boring,” he said.
But Trump nevertheless launched emergency diplomacy, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a conversation that became acrimonious, with the US president using expletives to express his disapproval of the planned offensive in Lebanon.
Trump also talked to Hezbollah through what he called “highly placed” representatives. He then announced on Truth Social that both sides had agreed not to shoot and said Iran talks were continuing at a “rapid pace.”
Lebanon’s embassy in Washington later said Hezbollah had confirmed it would refrain from attacking Israel in exchange for Israel ceasing strikes in Beirut. Israel said in a statement that it would continue operations in southern Lebanon but tacitly announced that, for now at least, it would not strike Beirut.
Trump’s intervention may have kept alive his Iran push — and along with it, hopes that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen and halt fast-worsening consequences for the global economy.
Monday’s drama may also have demonstrated to Iran that Trump still has the capacity to rein in Netanyahu — a factor that might be crucial to the survival of any US-Iran deal that Israel may oppose. Ali Fathollah-Nejad, founder and director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order, told Max Foster on CNN International that the call “speaks to the kind of power relations that exist between the United States and Israel.”
Trump later told ABC that “there was a little glitch today, but I turned that one around very quickly, as you probably noticed earlier.”
But history and the brutal realities of Middle East politics suggest that his diplomatic firefighting may be a temporary fix. The clashing pan-regional interests of powers such as Israel and Iran are likely to recur; so is the mistrust that has destroyed far more in-depth US Middle East peace initiatives than Trump’s. These intractable factors threaten the president’s hopes of finding a satisfactory way out.
Why is Lebanon even a threat to US-Iran peace talks?
The country, a narrow strip on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, is some 1,000 miles northwest of the Strait of Hormuz, the critical artery of the global carbon economy that Iran effectively closed when the war started.
The Trump team insists the tensions in Lebanon are distinct from its showdown with the Islamic Republic and should not affect progress in two-way talks on nuclear and missile issues.
But Iran doesn’t see it that way.
Lebanon lies to the north of Israel and has therefore long been a forward operating base for Iranian proxies that threaten the Jewish state. Tehran wants to keep Hezbollah as a viable force after years of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pumping in financial and military aid.
Although diminished by relentless Israeli attacks in recent years, Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political network — which is embedded deep in Lebanon — remains a critical nexus in Tehran’s wider regional ambitions and to any hopes the IRGC could rebuild its capacity to threaten Israel after the war. Iran, unlike Washington, makes no distinction between US and Israeli interests — perhaps not surprisingly, given the joint bombardment that started the current war and killed its former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
“Iran desperately wants to preserve what it built in Lebanon over the past four and a half decades,” Ronnie Chatah, a regional analyst and host of “The Beirut Banyan” podcast, told CNN International’s Isa Soares.
While Trump may have headed off an Israeli escalation in Lebanon on Monday, he’s unlikely to have reshaped Israel’s enduring strategic assessments.
Israel sees Hezbollah as a terrorist group and threat to its security. It is demanding the group be fully disarmed and holds Lebanon responsible for doing so. Yet many analysts argue that the weak Lebanese government — which rules a fragmented state that includes Maronite Christians and Shiite and Sunni Muslims — has no power to fulfill Israel’s demands. Lebanese leaders support Hezbollah’s disarmament, but argue it must follow a comprehensive political settlement likely to involve long negotiations with regional powers.
In the meantime, Israel is likely to continue to seek to suppress the power of Hezbollah. This means the Lebanon conflict will pose a constant threat to boil over and disrupt the US negotiating process with Tehran. It’s another example of a difference in outlook between the allies that started the Iran war. Israel regards protecting its security as an endless mission that may entail periodic wars. Trump is looking for a definitive resolution — and to get out of the region.
The Trump administration understands how Lebanon threatens that goal. It recently held peace talks in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli officials. The meeting made only rudimentary progress on extending a ceasefire on the Israeli-Lebanon border — and already seems to have been overtaken by events.
That leaves Lebanon what it has been for half a century — a victim constantly pulled toward political collapse and into humanitarian crises. It’s in the crossfire of proxy clashes involving regional rivals like Israel, Iran, Syria and various Palestinian groups. It’s still recovering from a 15-year civil war and an Israeli invasion in 1982 that tore it apart.
While Trump jumped in to save the day on Monday, there are few signs he’s got the appetite or political capital to mastermind a more permanent peace in Lebanon. That would require a regional compact. He’s envisaged such a framework with his call to expand his Abraham Accords to encompass all regional Arab and Muslim powers in recognition of Israel. But other issues, including the Palestinian question, make this an elusive goal.
So Lebanon will remain a festering sore that could undermine his Iran war diplomacy.
And Lebanon is not the only threat to that diplomacy.
Iran’s intransigence further undercut Trump’s credibility at home and his claims about the war, such as his social media post Monday saying that “Iran really wants to make a deal.”
Tehran’s behavior seems to indicate that it believes it can push the president and that he is the one who really wants a deal — after he sent back a proposed framework at the weekend with edits covering Iran’s nuclear commitments and its agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Hope for a breakthrough is not dead because, behind the spin, both Iran and the US have an interest in formally ending the fighting. Trump has been politically humbled by high gas prices. Iran gets most of its imports by sea, and the US blockade of its ships and ports is biting hard.
But the stalemate endures.
The US still insists Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Tehran insists on its right to enrich uranium. While US bombing might have destroyed Tehran’s nuclear plants last year, its stocks of highly enriched uranium are still in the country.
The ceasefire between the US and Iran is nominally holding, but it’s being tested by both sides. US forces attacked Iranian radar and drones at the weekend, and Iranian forces claimed to have hit a US airbase.
This situation is tenuous enough on its own, without the added peril of a distant front in the US-Israel proxy war destabilizing it further.
Trump may have contained the damage on Monday. But he got a fresh lesson that presidential ventures in the Middle East are easily begun but can be nearly impossible to escape.
