Donald Trump’s offer to talk peace with Iran sent a shiver of alarm through Israel’s political and security establishment last week. With a too-close-to-call general election looming on 17 September, Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on his hardline anti-Tehran alliance with Washington – and fear of conflict – to win him crucial votes. A North Korea-style Trump tryst with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, was the prime minister’s “ultimate horror scenario”, one analyst noted.
Yet after a recent series of escalatory strikes against Iran-linked forces in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, Israel’s voters may reflect that if one thing is worse than peace with Iran, it’s war with Iran. Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Tehran, strongly backed by Netanyahu and fellow Tel Aviv hawks, is placing Israel squarely in the firing line. The intensifying confrontation is also sucking in regional states, notably Iraq.
Netanyahu constantly brags about his close ties to Trump, taking personal credit for US recognition of Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights and of Jerusalem as its capital. He encouraged Trump’s decision to renege on the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which is the primary source of today’s tensions. And he applauded punitive US sanctions – including an oil embargo that swiftly led to clashes in the Gulf.
But slavish allegiance comes at a price. The US-Iran confrontation is increasingly endangering Israel’s own security amid evidence that Tehran, wary of direct conflict with US forces, is focusing its military pushback on an attritional campaign by its proxies against the Jewish state. In this respect, Trump and Iran’s leaders have something in common. Neither wants an all-out war, but neither will back down. Both prefer that others fight their battles for them.
The recent spate of covert strikes on Iran-linked targets, reportedly ordered by Netanyahu with tacit US backing, appeared to have the shared aim of preventing Tehran equipping Hezbollah in Lebanon and allied Shia forces in Iraq and Syria with precision-guided missiles, drones and other advanced arms. It’s uncertain whether the strikes did lasting damage. But they did provoke a defiant response from Iran, which vowed to redouble its efforts. And together they marked a significant escalation.
At this critical moment, Trump’s word plainly cannot be trusted. His impetuous shift at the G7 summit, when he offered a peace summit, did not impress Rouhani, who insisted sanctions be lifted first. Who knows what Trump really intends? Probably nobody, including Trump. What is clear, however, is that the regional security situation is worsening, with Netanyahu’s Israel in danger of becoming the fall guy in the wider, undeclared American “shadow war” with Iran – a war Trump is loth to fight himself.
Trump’s Iran policy, swinging indiscriminately like a wrecking ball through the most brittle regions of the Middle East, is taking a toll on Iraq, too, whose government is being pulled both ways. The US is pressing for an end to Iraqi gas and electricity purchases from Iran and closer ties between Baghdad and Washington’s Arab allies. But Tehran continues to exercise considerable influence among the Shia-majority population, not least since the US invasion in 2003.
Recent attacks on Iran-linked militias and US installations in Iraq were “clear warnings of how badly escalation between the US and Iran could destabilise Iraq and the region as a whole”, the independent International Crisis Group said last week. “Washington’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign could wind up placing as much stress – and inflicting as much harm – on its nominal ally Iraq as it does on Iran.”
Unsuccessful attempts by Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Iraq’s prime minister, to rein in pro-Iran militias belonging to the Popular Mobilisation Forces – as demanded by the US – have underlined Iraq’s fragile state. Leaders of the militias, which led the fight to expel Islamic State (Isis) from northern Iraq earlier this summer, refuse to accept Baghdad’s authority while their political allies are demanding the withdrawal of 5,000 remaining US troops.
Speaking last week, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN envoy to Iraq, said US-Iran rivalry threatened to deal a “huge blow” to efforts to rebuild the country following the defeat of Isis. Her warning came amid reports that Isis jihadists are making a comeback in northern and western Iraq and Syria – notwithstanding Trump’s claim to have eliminated the group, and perhaps in part because the US has, on his orders, reduced its military presence there.
If Isis’s undercover resurgence is taking place in the shadow of Trump’s Iran fixation, so too is the disaster in Yemen, where an inept Saudi-led campaign to defeat Iran-backed Houthi rebels has triggered a humanitarian emergency. The US has backed Riyadh in the teeth of an international outcry. Yet with the Saudis and the UAE now at odds, and with the Houthis unbowed, this chaotic offshoot of Trump’s proxy war with Iran is further exacerbating regional instability.
Of all the blunders Trump has made pursuing his Iran obsession, his failure to intervene to help stop Syria’s civil war is surely the most puzzling. It has led to a situation where, as of today, civilians in Idlib city are trapped by murderous fire in a dreadful echo of previous sieges. It seems he does not care about that. But US inaction has also enabled the Assad regime’s ally, Iran, to establish a permanent military presence on Israel’s doorstep.
If Trump is such a great and trusted friend of Israel, why has he tolerated this threatening development? And why is he essentially leaving Israel to cope with it on its own? These are questions that Israelis should consider when Netanyahu – aka “Mr Maximum Pressure” and cheerleader of the Donald J Trump fan club – comes asking for their vote.
