According to the Wall Street Journal, the major escalation in fighting that broke out between Israel and Iran over the weekend highlights “growing disagreements” between President Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu about how Lebanon fits into the wider peace deal with Iran.
“Iran has conditioned that deal on an end to the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and its militia ally, Hezbollah,” explained the Wall Street Journal. “Tehran upped the ante overnight by firing waves of missiles at Israel after Israel attacked Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Despite Trump’s effort to calm the growing tensions, Israel retaliated against targets in Iran including an important petrochemical facility, extending an exchange of fire that Iran warned could pull in energy facilities across the region.”
“Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting,’” Trump posted Monday morning, followed shortly by the assertion that “Both sides, Israel and Iran, are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE! Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way.” The countries have broken off their attacks while threatening that they could resume.
Trump spoke with Netanyahu before and after the Israeli strikes, reports the Journal. These are the latest communications between the two leaders since it was previously reported that Trump had cursed Netanyahu out in another recent call following an attack against Lebanon, shouting that the Israeli prime minister is “crazy." In that call, Trump asserted that “everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this,” and suggested that Netanyahu would have been imprisoned for corruption were it not for the president’s backing.
According to Ofer Guterman, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, “Israel’s government wants to maintain the use of force as much as possible to achieve its interests in Lebanon and Iran, while the Trump administration is on a different page.” The latest burst of violence “brought new urgency to a simmering disagreement.”
“The tensions between the U.S. and Israel are becoming a defining characteristic of the current phase of the war,” explained the Journal, “much as unprecedented close cooperation between the two allies marked its beginning.” While the two countries are still militarily aligned, “election year political pressures are pushing Trump and Netanyahu farther apart.”
Both leaders are facing political headwinds. Trump and the Republicans are projected to receive major losses in the upcoming midterms due largely to skyrocketing gas prices resulting from the war. For his part, Netanyahu is under internal pressure over allegations that he’s let the U.S. decide issues that are considered vital to Israeli national security. Israel is “eager to keep fighting Hezbollah and Iran to degrade their capabilities,” and was on the verge of launching a major assault on Beirut last week when Netanyahu was stopped by Trump’s phone call.
According to the Journal, “While Trump wants to end the war with a deal that eases the pressure on oil markets and global consumers, Israel still holds on to hope it could end with some kind of Iranian capitulation.”
Iran is using Lebanon to test the credibility of U.S. security commitments, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, an economic think tank. “They want to see if Trump can restrain Israel in its own backyard. If Trump is able to do that, then he might be able to defend his own deal with Iran from further Israeli sabotage.”
