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London: As soon as Donald Trump declared an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Iran on Monday, the two countries undercut his latest boast about dictating the terms of a truce.
“I call the shots. I call all the shots,” the US president told The Financial Times at the weekend. Acutely sensitive to questions about the war, he argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no choice but to accept what the White House wanted.
In fact, the leaders in Israel and Iran are talking about halting attacks on their terms, not Trump’s. And they have sharply different positions on what this means.
Yes, the Iranian central command announced a halt to missile strikes on Israel after its attacks over the weekend. But it set a key condition: it would fire again if Israel struck southern Lebanon.
“Should acts of aggression and hostility continue, including in southern Lebanon, much more severe and crushing measures than before will follow,” said the Khatam al-Anbiya central command in a statement on state television.
Israel, meanwhile, halted its attacks on Iran after hitting military targets and an oil refinery. But the country’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said airstrikes on Lebanon would continue to destroy Hezbollah and stop its rocket attacks on northern Israel.
Katz set a condition totally at odds with the Iranian declaration. He said Israel would strike targets in southern Lebanon and the Dahiyeh area of southern Beirut where Hezbollah – listed as a terrorist group by Australia and others – has its strongest support.
“Any attack on the northern communities will lead to an attack in the Dahiyeh,” Katz said.
So, as usual, it pays to look beyond Trump’s social media posts to the reality of the war.
This is not a comprehensive ceasefire. It is a fragile and conditional halt to the conflict in one theatre, Iran, while attacks continue in another, Lebanon.
The cycle of conflict continues whenever Hezbollah fires another rocket at Israeli civilians and the Israel Defence Forces launch another airstrike in response.
Trump is at odds with Netanyahu about the war in Lebanon. “You’re f---ing crazy,” the president is said to have told the Israeli prime minister earlier this month. “Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
Trump confirmed last week that Lebanon was the key dispute in his row with the Israeli prime minister. “I wouldn’t say angry,” he said on the Pod Force One podcast with Australian journalist Miranda Devine. “I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, you know.”
The key point is that Trump and Netanyahu see this war in completely different ways. Trump wants out, but Netanyahu cannot accept the terms of the exit.
The Israeli prime minister said as much on Monday when he dismissed the Iranian idea of a ceasefire that shields Hezbollah.
“In the last 24 hours, Iran and Hezbollah tried to impose a new equation upon us,” Netanyahu said.
“And it is an equation I find intolerable and unacceptable. They thought they would fire at Israel from Lebanese territory and from Iran – and we would not act. That did not happen, and it will not happen. Not on my watch!”
Trump told news site Axios at the weekend that he would phone Netanyahu to tell him not to retaliate against the Iranian attacks on Israel. Netanyahu retaliated anyway – and is willing to do so again if necessary.
The president is clearly struggling to escape the conflict he began with Netanyahu on February 28. No wonder he cut short his interview with NBC on Sunday after being pressed on matters including his repeated election promise not to go to war.
The argument between Trump and Netanyahu is shaped by their competing election goals. Trump needs to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz so he can ease economic pressures on American consumers before the midterm elections on November 3. Netanyahu, however, will not want to retreat when he must face voters at a parliamentary election due by October 27.
That is because the war in Lebanon has strong support in Israel. The Institute for National Security Studies found in May that 59 per cent of voters believed Israel should intensify the fighting against Hezbollah, and 57 per cent supported a permanent Israeli security zone within Lebanese territory.
The human cost is daunting: the Lebanese Health Ministry says the Israeli attacks have killed 3637 in Lebanon and left another 11,188 wounded since March 2. On the Israeli side, an estimated 61 have been killed and another 9026 wounded by the attacks from Iran and Hezbollah. And the economic cost is immense.
Even so, Israeli voters do not want an outcome that leaves their communities exposed to Hezbollah rockets. Netanyahu is not alone in reflecting this view.
One of Netanyahu’s most significant rivals at the looming election, former Israel Defence Forces chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, appears ready to accuse the prime minister of giving in to Trump.
“Everywhere Hezbollah is deployed it must be struck and the hands of the IDF should not be tied,” said Eisenkot, according to a report by Reuters on a speech he gave last week.
A sharper criticism of Netanyahu is coming from those who argue that there will be no greater security for the Israeli people from the way the prime minister pursues the war.
“The current round of fighting does not serve any strategic purpose of the State of Israel,” said Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on Monday. Lapid, a former prime minister, has joined forces with another former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to try to topple Netanyahu at the coming election.
The sudden escalation of the war might have been much worse if Trump had not demanded a halt. Trump told Israeli network Channel 12 on Monday that he intervened to stop Netanyahu launching a much greater attack on Iran that day.
“I told Bibi, you’d better be careful what you do, because you could be left alone against Iran very soon,” Trump told the network, using the nickname for the Israeli leader.
This is only Trump’s account of what occurred, of course. There will be days of media spin about who exercised the greater authority, but the events showed there are serious limits to Trump’s ability to set the terms of a ceasefire.
“I call the shots,” Trump said at the weekend. Well, he calls some of them. But not all of them.
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