The latest threat of a new Middle East conflagration seems to have been averted in the final minutes of the eleventh hour.
After launching strikes on northern Israel that broke a six-week-long ceasefire, Iran announced that it was halting what it had said would be a week-long operation. Within the hour, Israel had announced that it would be halting its retaliatory strikes on Iran, at Donald Trump’s request.
It would be premature in the extreme, however, to believe that the danger has passed. Iran’s strikes on northern Israel, and Israel’s response, which included targeting Tehran, represented not just a resumption of the conflict that began with the US-Israel attack on Iran some 100 days ago, but a risk that the war would spread beyond those countries, including the Gulf states, already affected.
With the Iran-backed Houthis of Yemen renewing their threat to target ships linked to Israel traversing the Red Sea and Iran continuing to block the Strait of Hormuz, the spectre was raised of all north-south traffic in the whole region being brought to a halt. All too predictably, oil prices rose. Of the many perilous points in the conflict over the past five months, this was the most perilous to date.
Tehran had justified breaking the ceasefire by citing Israel’s continuing strikes on its proxy, Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon, as far as southern Beirut, and the expanding area of southern Lebanon under Israeli occupation. Several rounds of talks between Israel and Lebanon brokered by the United States in Washington had failed to produce any lasting end to hostilities. Iran’s direct intervention signalled its impatience and fear of looking weak.
Nor was it only Tehran that risked looking weak. There was the growing impression that the United States was reaching the limits of its power and influence.
In a typical Trump move, the US president had let it be known that he had called on Israel not to respond to Iran’s strikes on its territory, only to see his appeals almost immediately disregarded. With the parallel statements from Iran and Israel, Mr Trump would appear to have some clout left; how much, though, remains in question.
The difficulty is that diplomacy, such as it is, reflects what used to be described in the European Union as variable geometry. The US remains in talks with Tehran for a settlement aimed at lifting Iran’s blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and, perhaps in a separate process, bringing an end to its nuclear programme.
This bilateral conflict is the one that is Mr Trump’s top priority, and he needs a resolution fast, largely because of domestic considerations: complaints about the price of petrol, the imminent celebrations for the 250th anniversary of US independence, and the mid-term congressional elections, which are currently at the stage of primaries.
For Mr Trump to declare victory over Iran and order his fleet to sail away, however, has been complicated by the fact that this is not just a US-Iran conflict. It was launched as a joint enterprise with Israel, and Israel – as its spokesperson declared to the BBC – sees its objectives in the war as far from being met. There has been no regime change in Iran, there has been no end to Iran’s nuclear programme, and Iran’s missile capability, as shown by the latest attacks, has not been destroyed.
There has always been a question, too, about how far any US-Iran agreement will be purely bilateral and how far it could include, or bind, Israel and Hezbollah. The US-Iran ceasefire appeared to leave this unclear, with separate talks between Israel and Lebanon then held in Washington as an apparent compromise. Even then, the agreement reached – for a ceasefire, and for Lebanon to take over military positions in southern Lebanon from Hezbollah – failed to take hold.
Mr Trump, meanwhile, has been trying to square his desire for an agreement with Iran with Israel’s desire to see the end of Iran’s Islamic regime and Iran’s insistence that Israel halt its attacks on Hezbollah – something it has refused to do, citing the security of northern Israel. A furious phone call with Israel’s prime minister last week and several public appeals later, Mr Trump appears to have broken that stalemate, although on what terms is not known.
The most optimistic version of what comes next is that Mr Trump – in another characteristic of his playbook – draws an opportunity from the crisis, and aims for an all-embracing new ceasefire as a prelude to an agreement that includes Iran and its proxies and Israel. But it is hard – and probably ill-advised – to be hopeful. Ever since its reckless beginning on 28 February, this conflict has tended to demonstrate that, however bad things become, they really can still get worse.
The one positive to be drawn from the twists and turns of the past 24 hours might be that Iran gives every appearance of wanting an agreement with the United States as much as Donald Trump wants one with Iran. The wild card, regrettably, remains Israel.