Sidelined by Trump’s truce with Iran, Israel pummels Lebanon – then agrees to talks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent the best part of his lengthy political career clamouring for war on Iran, courting – in vain – successive US presidents until he found a malleable client in Donald Trump.

The war would be swift and rewarding, Netanyahu assured, bringing about regime change in Iran and an end to its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes – along with lasting glory for the US president.

Instead, five and a half weeks of intensive strikes have produced none of the above, leaving the Israeli leader sidelined as Washington and Tehran prepare for talks in Islamabad after agreeing to a fragile truce.

While the US and Iran have made equally bombastic claims of victory, any such talk is likely to ring hollow with an Israeli public that has weathered weeks of Iranian counterattacks.

Netanyahu’s opponents at home have been unsparing in their criticism, stressing that Israel has been sidestepped and its war goals left hanging.

“There has never been a political disaster like this in our entire history. Israel was not even close to the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security,” Israel’s main opposition leader, Yair Lapid, wrote on X.

‘Worse off than before the war’

Analysts’ assessments have been equally scathing, dismissing attempts to frame the killing of senior Iranian leaders as the advent of a new regime.

“It is somewhere between funny and tragic to hear Washington and Israel claim that the regime has been changed,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.

“Some people have changed, but it’s the same old regime – perhaps even worse,” he added, noting that the Islamic republic will feel emboldened after resisting the combined onslaught of the world’s top superpower and the Middle East’s most formidable army.

Read more'Trump abandoned us': ceasefire sparks anger, fear, division among Iranians

“The regime is still firmly in power. Its missile capabilities are damaged but still intact. It still holds roughly 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent,” Danny Citrinowicz, a senior Iran researcher at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, wrote in a post on X.

“At the very least, one has to hope that the negotiations in Islamabad will produce a different outcome on the nuclear issue,” he added. “Otherwise, we risk emerging from this war worse off than when it began.”

Strong armies, weak leadership

The US-Israeli failure to translate undeniable battlefield wins into a more favourable outcome reflects the lack of strategic thinking behind a war whose stated goals appear to have shifted with each passing day.

As Citrinowicz wrote, “tactical successes and operational achievements are almost meaningless if they fail to deliver a coherent strategic outcome”.

Mekelberg said the strategic failings also reflected a tendency to disregard diplomacy and use force alone.

“We’re talking about two countries with very strong and capable armies but also very weak leadership,” he said. “These are leaders who are not very thoughtful and do not understand the world of diplomacy, for different reasons.”

In the case of the Israeli PM – who faces a long-running corruption trial and has refused to resign over his failure to prevent the October 7, 2023 attacks – the main reason is his own political survival.

“Netanyahu needs an enemy and an open front to hold on to power,” Mekelberg explained. “But he won’t attack Iran again without Trump, which is why he looked to Lebanon as one place where he could continue.”

A U-turn on Lebanon

Contradicting the terms set out by mediator Pakistan, Israel has insisted the ceasefire agreed by Washington and Tehran does not cover Lebanon, where its forces have been fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah for the second time in less than two years.

On Wednesday, hours after Trump’s threats to destroy Iran’s “whole civilisation” had given way to a tentative ceasefire, Israel launched its largest strikes on Lebanon since the start of the war.

The attacks, which reached well beyond Hezbollah’s traditional bastions, killed at least 303 people and wounded more than 1,150, according to health officials, bringing chaos and carnage to central Beirut – and threatening to torpedo the fledgling truce with Hezbollah’s backer Iran.

While scuttling the ceasefire could well have been Netanyahu’s desired outcome, the Israeli prime minister was forced to relent the next day under pressure from Washington. In a surprise move, he instructed ministers to enter into direct negotiations with Lebanon’s government, focusing on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peace. 

“In light of Lebanon’s repeated requests to open direct negotiations with Israel, I instructed the cabinet yesterday to start direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

Hezbollah lawmaker ​Ali Fayyad said ​Thursday that the group rejected direct negotiations with ​Israel ‌and ⁠that the Lebanese government ‌should demand a ceasefire as ⁠a precondition before any further steps are ​taken.

Israel's apparent U-turn followed a phone call with the White House, and came just hours after Netanyahu said his country would “continue to hit Hezbollah wherever necessary”. It was not immediately clear whether Israel would agree to cease its attacks on Hezbollah targets prior to the talks, which a source familiar with the plans said could begin next week.

“Israel has a good reason to claim that Hezbollah has to be dismantled as a military force. But the question, as always, is how it goes about it,” said Mekelberg. “The situation in Lebanon is not going to be resolved by force only.”

‘Forever war’

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has likened the devastation exacted on swathes of southern Lebanon to the scorched-earth policy used against Hamas in the Gaza Strip that saw entire cities depopulated.

Analysts say the creation of “buffer zones” in Gaza, Syria and now Lebanon reflects a strategic shift after the October 7 attacks, one that puts Israel in a semi-permanent state of war.

“Israel's leaders have concluded that they are in a forever war against adversaries who have to be intimidated and even dispersed,” Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in an interview with Reuters.

Read moreMideast war puts Lebanon's patients and hospitals at risk

Instead of addressing Israel’s genuine security concerns, such thinking only compounds them, argued Mekelberg, lamenting Israel’s failure to “translate tactical achievements into diplomatic engagement”.

He expressed scepticism that this mindset could change after October elections, noting that Netanyahu’s critics do not offer an alternative to Israel “living by the sword”.

“The criticism coming from the opposition does not offer a different vision for Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon,” he said. “What they’re saying is that we entered a war and didn’t finish it.”

Backlash in Washington?

Netanyahu’s U-turn on Thursday followed mounting international condemnation of the carnage in Beirut, and as close ally Germany warned that the “severity” of Israel’s attacks in Lebanon threatened to jeopardise talks between Washington and Tehran.

While Israel has grown largely “immune” to international opprobrium, Mekelberg said the fallout from the Iran war in America was a very different matter.

“Trump was elected on a promise to end wars and reduce the cost of living – and now look at what happens,” he said, adding that the Iran war “could lead to a rethink in Washington and a look for scapegoats, including perhaps the relationship with Israel”.

Amos Harel, the military affairs correspondent for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said US media accounts of Israel’s role in persuading Trump to pursue regime change in Iran could deal a “severe blow to Israel’s standing in Washington”.

He also suggested that Netanyahu had reason to worry about his personal relationship with the US president.

“Trump does not like to lose, and he certainly does not like to admit defeat,” Harel wrote. “If the Iran campaign comes to be seen in the United States as a failure, he will look for someone to blame.”