The Middle East Ceasefire

We’re often told that more useful than “good” answers are new questions. If, as most of humanity hope, the Iran-Israel ceasefire lasts for a decent while, some of them will also want to know how it was obtained. 

It was President Donald Trump who announced the ceasefire to the world, but Prime Minister Netanyahu and Supreme Leader Khamenei surely gave Trump the greenlight, directly or through credible intermediaries, to announce it. Surely, moreover, Trump played an active part in achieving it. He had the motivation: ending wars and obtaining the Nobel peace prize is his declared goal. 

Trump also has enormous leverage. Israel cannot fight its battles without America’s aircraft, weapons, intelligence, and dollars. 

We should recognize, and some may applaud, the drama that governments play with the rest of us. Trump has been candid about the Iranian “attack” on the US base in Qatar: 

“Iran has officially responded to our obliteration of their nuclear facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered. Thirteen of the fourteen missiles were intercepted, with one being “set free” as it was heading in a “non-threatening direction”. I am pleased to report that no Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done. Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system’, and there will, hopefully, be no further hate. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured.” 

Prior to the “attack” on Qatar, word was leaked by Israel that it was “wrapping up” its attacks on Iran. 

WHO ELSE HELPED? 

Did Trump have partners in his effort to stop the war? Did Putin help? Trump and Putin did engage in long conversations. Was a role played by the June 23 meeting between Putin and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi? At that Moscow meeting, Putin said in a televised comment: 

“The absolutely unprovoked aggression against Iran has no basis and no justification.” 

But we don’t know what if anything Putin did toward the ceasefire. What about Xi Jinping? China may get large quantities of oil from Russia, but it is dependent on larger quantities that flow from the Middle East. From Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, via waters which Iran can turn into walls. Did Xi send messages to Trump, to Tehran, to both? Was there collaboration between Xi and Putin? 

Global Times, the Chinese government mouthpiece, quotes the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, as follows: “Facts have proved that military means cannot bring about peace, and dialogue and negotiation are the right way to solve problems. China calls on the relevant parties to return to the correct track of political settlement at an early date. China is willing to work with the international community to make efforts to maintain peace and stability in the Middle East.” 

There is no claim here of a Chinese role, but the ceasefire has clearly been welcomed by Beijing. If for some years Trump has backed the so-called Abraham Accords involving Arabs, Jews, and the West, China has sought to widen the orbit of those “accords” by including Iran. Given the deep offense caused in the Arab world by the Gaza devastations, the quotation marks are perhaps justified. 

China’s efforts to strengthen relations with all of the Middle East’s major players, including Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, are not irrelevant to our understanding of what the world hopes can be called “the short-lived Israel-Iran war.” Since, apart from China, countries like Japan, India and Korea also rely greatly on the Middle East’s oil, much of the world has a stake in an end to the conflagration there. 

FORDO BOMBING 

Surely, again, the bunker-buster bombing by American planes of the underground Fordo facility played a major role, even if some subsequent stories have cast a doubt. 

“U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Monday (June 23) Iran was no longer able to build a nuclear weapon after U.S. strikes destroyed its infrastructure. 

“‘Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon,’ Vance said in an interview on Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier. ‘Now Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon with the equipment they have because we destroyed it,’ Vance said.” 

Reports that significant kilos of enriched uranium were moved to other locations in Iran before the U.S. conducted its long-distance strike may or may not be correct, but the question has rightly been posed: “Hasn’t the Iranian desire for a nuclear bomb, as distinct from currently possessing that capability, gone up following Israel’s pounding of targets all across Iran?” 

There are other questions the people of Israel may have to think about even after they are reminded of their country’s assets. These assets include (1) the country’s skilled and dedicated military, to which most Israeli families appear to contribute their sons and daughters; (2) an amazing technology, almost but not totally perfected, of intercepting an incoming missile; (3) its nuclear bomb, making Israel the sole country in the Middle East to have this power; (4) the frightening ability to kill enemies by blasting their cellphones; (5) a security agency that can eliminate commanders of enemy forces in their beds or vehicles; and (6) a press and citizenry that fearlessly criticize government leaders. 

WOUNDED NEIGHBORS 

Some of these assets have major ethical implications, but here I only wish to raise three purely pragmatic questions. One is this. Are the people in its neighborhood friendlier to Israel today than they were before Israel attacked Iran? Are the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Syrians, the Turks, the Iraqis, and the Arabs of the Gulf region, not to mention Iranians, friendlier than they were toward Israel? I believe the answer is in the negative. 

The second pragmatic question is connected to the first. Has the historic mistrust between the Middle East’s Sunnis and its Shias, which translates also, if imperfectly, into a tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, increased or diminished as a result of Israel’s attacks on Iran? 

The Islamic world is just about to observe one of its most sacred annual days, Muharram. Among the millions who have already gathered for Muharram in Saudi Arabia’s prestigious sites are a large number of Shias from Iran. It seems that a few days before Trump announced the ceasefire, the Saudis took care to assure the Iranians that they would be looked after and protected during their pilgrimage and returned safely thereafter to their homes. Was this an indication that the Muslim world’s sectarian divide that thus far has benefited Israel was to some extent reduced by Israel’s attack on Iran?

The third pragmatic question was being asked even before Israel attacked Iran. It is connected to Gaza’s hard-to-watch happenings. Before Gaza, Israel had stout defenders in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. The cause of Palestine did not seem to elicit much sympathy or even interest in these countries. 

While people in Africa, Asia and Latin America identified readily with the resistance of Palestinians to what appeared to be firm plans to oust them from what for centuries had been their land, populations in “the Europeanized world” appeared to empathize with Israel’s declared goal of creating and preserving a secure, democratic nation in a region hospitable to autocracies and theocracies. 

Prior to Gaza’s devastations, Hamas’s surprise attack across Gaza’s border with Israel saw hostage-taking and horrific cruelties against Israelis in October 2023. However, Israel’s subsequent conduct in Gaza and the West Bank seemed to alienate large sections of the just-mentioned Europeanized or Western world. Haven’t Israel’s attacks on Iran this month widened their alienation? This is the third pragmatic question. 

This third question can be phrased differently. Especially among younger generations in North America and Europe, won’t the idea of forcing Palestinians into exile “somewhere, anywhere” run henceforth into fierce opposition? 

REGIME CHANGE? 

In his post-ceasefire statement, Netanyahu has claimed that the final instalment of Israel’s attacks on Iran were the deadliest and the most effective, and suggested that Iran now has little or no capacity left to build or fire missiles. Whether or not the Israeli prime minister repeats his earlier calls to Iranians to take down Khamenei and the regime, will that objective now be shared by more Iranians than was the case before Israel’s attacks? 

That is a question that many inside and outside Iran must be asking. As Iranians rebuild their lives after a hurtful and shaking twelve-day war that Israel began, will they really be offering thanks to Netanyahu? Or wanting to do as he asks? 

As for the Tehran regime’s leaders, will they have the courage to ask themselves frank questions, including why some of their well-placed compatriots were willing to go so far as to assist Mossad in assassinating key commanders in their own country? Will they ask the women of Iran for their frank opinions?

Iran is a land where poets have searched their hearts and come up with piercing truths. It is also a land where love of country and pride in the nation run deep. Isn’t the same true for Israel too? 

“God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the USA, and God bless the world.” I don’t know how often I will agree with Trump, but with this sentence I am in total accord.