Friend and foe: Netanyahu, Iran complicate Trump’s exit from Middle East conflicts
With midterms looming, war costs and $4 petrol add to pressure on US president
Dubai: One is Washington’s closest regional ally, the other its principal adversary. Yet Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran are presenting Donald Trump with much the same problem: Neither appears willing to give him the Middle East exit he wants.
Trump is signalling that he would like to lower the temperature with Iran, describing his latest strategy as “low-keying it” and suggesting that economic pressure rather than another major military escalation could eventually force Tehran into a deal.
But almost simultaneously, Netanyahu delivered a reminder that Trump cannot necessarily dictate events even to America’s closest partners.
The Israeli prime minister on Sunday publicly rejected Trump’s 15-point Gaza peace plan, declaring: “I want to be clear here — Israel is ruling out the 15-point document.”
The twin challenges underline a growing problem for Trump as the November midterm elections approach: After months of conflict, he appears increasingly eager to declare victories and move on, but the principal players in the region are operating according to their own political and strategic clocks.
“Reality is slapping him in the face,” Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told The New York Times.
‘It’s like a chess game’
Trump laid out his less confrontational approach towards Iran in an interview with Axios on Sunday.
“We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” Trump said. “It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game.”
He acknowledged on Monday that Tehran remained capable of disrupting commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
“Now, can they make trouble? Yeah, they can make trouble,” Trump told reporters. “But they’re broke.”
Why the midterms matter?
Control of Congress at stake: All 435 House seats are up on November 3, while Republicans are defending a narrow majority. Losing the House would sharply constrain Trump’s domestic agenda for the final two years of his term.
Warning signs for Republicans: A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found Democrats leading Republicans 42% to 37% among registered voters in a hypothetical congressional vote. Independents favoured Democrats by 12 percentage points.
Iran war becoming a liability: Only 35% of Americans support the war, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Half expect the Middle East to become more chaotic, against just 17% who foresee greater stability.
Petrol brings the war home: Disruption around Hormuz has pushed up energy costs, making a distant conflict an everyday pocketbook issue. Democrats have now edged ahead of Republicans on handling the economy — a particularly worrying shift for Trump.
Why Trump needs progress soon: The longer the Iran conflict and high fuel prices persist, the harder it becomes for Republicans to separate November’s congressional races from Trump’s handling of the war. That gives the president a powerful incentive to show voters that the Middle East crises are moving towards resolution.
Yet Iran appears to believe that time may be working in its favour.
Despite the economic damage it has suffered, Tehran retains enormous leverage through the Strait of Hormuz, while the political and economic costs of the conflict are increasingly being felt inside the United States.
The average US petrol price remains above $4 a gallon, according to The New York Times, more than $1 higher than when the United States and Israel began bombing Iran on February 28.
“I don’t think the president has very good options,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist and vice president at the Brookings Institution, told the Times.
“The pressure points for the Iranians are, while real, more endurable and bearable than those that are impacting the US economy and the strategic calculus of the administration.”
Why Netanyahu is resisting Trump now
Netanyahu has his own election coming first: Israel votes in October, before the US midterms in November. Netanyahu needs to convince Israeli voters — particularly his right-wing base — that he will not compromise Israel’s security because Washington wants a diplomatic victory. AP notes that his position appeals to his far-right allies as elections approach.
He wants Hamas disarmed before Israel withdraws: This is the substantive dispute. Trump’s plan envisages a phased process involving Hamas disarmament and Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu says Israeli troops “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed”, including all weaponry.
Standing up to Trump may actually help Netanyahu: That’s the irony. Trump’s political difficulties don’t necessarily give Netanyahu an incentive to help him. Netanyahu can instead demonstrate to Israeli voters that even a friendly US president cannot dictate Israel’s security policy. Recent reporting specifically highlights his insistence that he can stand up to Trump.
Trump and Netanyahu now need different things: Trump needs de-escalation: progress in Gaza, an Iran exit, lower energy pressure and a foreign-policy success before November.
Netanyahu opens another front
If Iran represents the adversary Trump has struggled to bend, Netanyahu presents a more awkward challenge: An ally increasingly willing to publicly resist him.
Trump had hailed the Gaza agreement announced on July 30 as a “historic breakthrough” and an “amazing development” that “everybody said could never be achieved.”
Netanyahu’s rejection barely two weeks later exposed the limits of Washington’s ability to turn the proposal into reality. Israel insists Hamas must be fully disarmed before Israeli forces withdraw, putting it at odds with the phased approach envisaged by the US-backed plan.
The politics matter, too.
Netanyahu faces an election in October and has political incentives to demonstrate that Israeli security decisions will not be dictated from Washington.
Trump needs Netanyahu’s help to show that the Middle East is calming down. Netanyahu may need to defy Trump to show Israeli voters that he is not backing down.
Katulis told the Times that Trump had “misread the regional power dynamics” in both Iran and Israel.
Iran keeps the pressure on
Nor does Trump’s talk of “low-keying it” mean the confrontation with Tehran has actually become low-key.
The US naval blockade remains in place, as does the huge American military deployment to the region, including two aircraft carrier groups.
Trump has also claimed that the US Navy now has “100%” control of the Strait of Hormuz and has cleared the strategic waterway of mines. Yet commercial traffic remains sharply reduced, underscoring the gap between Washington’s assertion of control and a return to normal shipping.
“These tools are not low-key,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Times. “Iran is likely not going to take them lying down.”
Tehran has meanwhile tied the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to sweeping demands, including the lifting of sanctions and the US blockade as well as war reparations.
Trump responded on Monday by making his own demand for Iranian compensation, saying it should cover those killed and wounded in Iran’s “many conflicts” and protesters killed by the regime.
The result is a striking contradiction.
Trump wants economic pressure to produce an Iranian deal and diplomacy to deliver peace in Gaza. But Iran sees little reason to surrender its strongest leverage quickly, while Netanyahu has openly rejected a central element of Trump’s Gaza strategy.
For a president looking for a way to downgrade America’s Middle East entanglements before voters go to the polls, the obstacle is no longer simply defeating or deterring an adversary.
It is persuading both America’s enemies and its allies to follow his timetable.
