Ceasefires and future fires — unholy trinity of Iran, Israel and the US presages a murky future

Daily Maverick

a day ago

Following a week when the ceasefire between Israel and Iran (with the US as a supporting actor) took hold, it is still unclear what happens next, how things will evolve, or if a more permanent, peaceful settlement among the protagonists is even possible.
The newly negotiated — and, so far, holding at the time of this writing — ceasefire between Iran and Israel (along with the US in its supporting role as both a midwife of the ceasefire and the deployer of those bunker-buster bombs) opens the door to several possibilities. Some of them are good, some are bad; some are exciting, and, of course, some are truly terrifying. What might some of those possible futures look like?
Over the past three-quarters of a century, the Middle East has been the cockpit for a catalogue of ceasefires between combatants. Some have eventually — and painfully — evolved into actual peace arrangements, such as the negotiated settlement between Egypt and Israel via the Camp David Accords. Others barely survived their announcement before fighting began anew.
Still others produced cold cessations of hostilities, usually monitored by the UN but without an actual peace agreement or treaty. This could include the line-of-control arrangements that ended fighting in 1948 between Jordan and the then nascent state of Israel. That ceasefire did not, of course, lead to the establishment of state-to-state relations between the two parties. (Jordan later relinquished a claim to administer the West Bank following the Six-Day War in 1967. Only years later was a chilly peace between Jordan and Israel achieved.)
Meanwhile, further to the east, the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir and Jammu has remained unsettled since 1947. This has been despite ceasefires following bouts of fighting that have periodically erupted across the disputed Line of Control.
Or, consider the fighting between Iran and Iraq that began with Iraq's invasion of Iran over a land dispute (and with some important foreign encouragement) in 1980 and lasted until 1988. That conflict raged on until the two exhausted nations grudgingly accepted a UN Security Council resolution.
Ceasefires thus do not always bring about a longer, more permanent peace unless one side is vanquished completely — thus the periodic fighting between India and Pakistan that resists a final resolution.
Alternatively, consider the rivalry between Rome and Carthage over two millennia ago that lasted for more than a century, a struggle that included wars and peaceful periods, until Carthage was destroyed by a rising Rome.
Or consider Europe in the 1600s with conflicts that ran for more than four destructive decades as part of a monumental struggle between the Catholic Church and rulers insistent on individual state sovereignty in matters of faith.
Then, throughout the 1700s and early 1800s, the rivalry between Britain and France generated conflict around the globe, including the Napoleonic Wars. It was a rivalry that was only brought to an end when the competition was redirected into building colonial empires at the end of the nineteenth century.
In the immediate aftermath of the most recent clash that pitted Israel — and the US — against Iran, one key variable, at least publicly, has been that leaders from all three nations are claiming versions of success as a result of their respective aerial actions.
US triumphalism
For the US, as the whole world knows by now, President Donald Trump's typically over-bombastic claim has repeatedly been that three Iranian nuclear processing plants (with their uranium isotope, gaseous separation centrifuges and stockpiles of already enriched U-235) were 'totally obliterated' by a group of B-2 stealth bombers, employing 30,000-pound (13.6-tonne) bunker-buster bombs designed to reach deep into the ground and then explode.
Almost immediately after that mission was completed, the president (and his eager subordinates) engaged in public chest thumping, insisting the attacking planes had carried out an unparalleled mission. However, the glow from neutralising the three Iranian nuclear sites was soon undermined by a leaked, initial evaluation from the Defense Intelligence Agency (the US government has more than a dozen separate intelligence gathering or analysis agencies, each focusing on different aspects of intelligence) that the bombing had not come close to obliterating the sites.
In fact, per the agency's leak, rather than obliteration, the bombing may have only set back potential Iranian nuclear weapons developments by some months. It is important to note that all of the other intelligence agencies and their analyses have yet to be released publicly, and they may (or may not) have different conclusions or interpretations.
Nevertheless, in the days that followed, Trump continued to insist the bombing's objectives and their effects were the 'obliteration' of Iran's nuclear capabilities. In rebuttal to the leaked report, Trump cited information apparently gleaned from Israeli sources and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — as well as arguing that other US intelligence bodies would reinforce his assessment once their analyses were in.
And so, what is the course for the US's strategic framework vis-à-vis Iran? The bottom-line US objective remains a non-nuclear-capable Iran, especially after the Iranians managed a symbolic attack on a major US military base in Qatar. The effect of that, however, was performative rather than substantive. But the continuing ability of Iran to launch missiles remains a concrete threat to the US, given that 40,000 military personnel are stationed in facilities in the Persian Gulf region in several nations, along with naval berths and airfields.
Reports indicate that most US aircraft and personnel had been removed from their base in Qatar before the missiles were launched, and the Iranians gave a heads-up to Qatari authorities that the missiles were coming. Further, it has been reported that the Trump administration gave quiet acquiescence to the attack and its symbolic rather than substantive impact, once there was little possibility of harm to personnel or military assets.
Still, despite everything, there are comments from Trump administration officials that they would entertain negotiations with Iran over its presumed nuclear programme, effectively recapitulating in some way the agreement that had been hammered out during the last stages of the Obama administration.
This is except for the fact that Iran's nuclear programme has presumably advanced since the Trump 1.0 administration's withdrawal from that agreement. Unwisely, the Trump administration rescinded its participation in the five-nation agreement, a decision effectively lowering restrictions for future Iranian nuclear developments.
If the Americans have a realistic plan to address their relationship with Iran, they have failed to articulate it plainly in any public forums. In the absence of such a plan, the mutual hostility is likely to continue, absent a plausible Plan B and off-ramp from confrontation.
Stark choices for Israel
As far as Israel is concerned, the policy choices are more dramatic — and starker. One reason is that while most Iranian rockets launched at their nation were destroyed before they could do grievous damage and fatalities, Israel's Iron Dome air defence system was not infallible. The immediate, primary threat, therefore, is not a nuclear-armed Iran, but the possibility of a vengeful Iran eager to even the score somehow.
That 'somehow', of course, is the question. Does Iran still have a significant supply of launchable rockets and the means to launch a major salvo of them? While the Israelis have made a major success in greatly blunting Hamas and Hezbollah as credible fighting forces (at enormous, continuing cost and suffering to the inhabitants of Gaza), as well as being able to applaud the change in the government and orientation of Syria, they have been unable to offer a clear plan for their withdrawal from Gaza — or who will take over the governance of the shattered territory.
Moreover, Israel's policies towards the West Bank remain seriously problematic, especially as the Israeli government continues to authorise new Jewish settlements in the territory. As some observers argue, while Israel's strategic position has improved significantly vis-à-vis the region at large, the closer one looks at its immediate neighbourhood, the more troubling the lack of a coherent strategy becomes.
For many Israelis, furthermore, the key issue remains gaining the release or return of the remaining 7 October hostages — or the remains of those who have died in captivity — rather than continuing the attacks in Gaza. Major complicating factors for the Netanyahu government remain its slender coalition in the country's parliament — which is dependent on some serious hardliners — and the growing likelihood of an imminent corruption trial of the incumbent prime minister.
Difficult questions for Iran
And what of Iran? After undergoing serious nuclear and missile infrastructural damage (albeit without real clarity of just how much), as well as the deaths of key military leaders and nuclear scientists, the country's leaders must face the question of just how they plan to address the new strategic imbalance.
Do they wish to 'double down' on nuclear developments and continue to enrich uranium to near or at weapons grade and assemble sufficient amounts to begin a nuclearisation process — at great cost and sacrifice — and the possibility of additional raids against such efforts?
Once they do that — if they choose to do so — do they want to create potential weapons out of that uranium? The next choice is whether they would signal that effort quietly (as with Israel) or publicly (in the manner of North Korea some years ago).
If they do so with the strictest secrecy, would they choose to avoid inspections by the IAEA, and formally leave the limitations of the non-proliferation treaty — an agreement to which they remain signatories?
Beyond their nuclear conundrum, do they want to — or can they — reconstitute their collection of allies and proxies surrounding Israel? This would be despite Syria now being in very different hands, Hamas and Hezbollah being shattered, and Russia having its hands full with its own war of choice in Ukraine. Would they try to prevent the flow of oil and natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz — a seaway used by around 20% of all such flows globally?
Regime change
Hanging over all of this, of course, is how Iranians decide to respond to the authoritarian theocracy they live under, which has brought them to this place. Will there be a push for a fundamental change of government by restive minorities around the periphery of the core of the Iranian state, as well as younger people (and especially women) tired of the restrictions on thought, travel and free expression that the supreme leader's government continues to carry out?
Even as those muttered semi-threats of 'regime change' from the outside are unrealistic, the country's leadership must surely be casting a wary eye in all directions over the possibility that a change of regime could be pushed for by Iranians on their own. (It did, after all, happen in 1979-80 with the fall of the shah and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini as supreme arbiter of the country. This was true even if the original student proponents of the change to eliminate the shah's regime were shoved aside by religious fanatics.)
What this points to is that it is impossible, now, to predict what the outcome of any change of regime would look like in Iran. Would it be a more fanatical regime eager to rebuild its influence in the region, or might it be one focused on rebuilding the fabric and economy of the nation?
In sum, among the three antagonists, an aura of unpredictability remains. There are too many ways things could go sour. Given the unpredictability of Trump's foreign policy, fissures in Israeli society over the country's current strategies, and the impossibility of knowing which course of action the Iranian government will take, the best that can be hoped for may be a tense, cold ceasefire, but one that holds.
Nevertheless, a more permanent settlement via the hard work of real diplomacy, rather than weapons flexing and chest beating, will almost certainly be the only way to move forward more permanently. Right now, such an outcome is unlikely. DM