The Forever Spoiler: Netanyahu Has Been Blowing Up Diplomacy With Iran for Decades |
Special Investigations
Press Freedom Defense Fund
The Forever Spoiler: Netanyahu Has Been Blowing Up Diplomacy With Iran for Decades
Israel’s vicious attack on Lebanon emerged as the biggest threat to the Iran ceasefire. That might be intentional.
The ceasefire announced Tuesday night by President Donald Trump and confirmed by Iranian officials is on life support. If Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gets his way, it may soon be dead.
Over the first 36 hours of the supposed ceasefire, hundreds have been killed and thousands injured in Israeli strikes on Lebanon. The attacks extended beyond Israeli’s traditional targets in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s outskirts into the central parts of the capital — and may mark the heaviest bombardment of the country since Israel’s 1982 invasion.
Trump suggested the ceasefire remains intact because Israel’s attacks are “a separate skirmish,” but the official announcement of the agreement described “an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon.” The language was put forward by Pakistan’s prime minister, who had brokered the deal and, according to the New York Times, the U.S. had seen the text before it was publicly released.
The words “including Lebanon,” however, lasted no longer than it took for Netanyahu to talk to Trump immediately before the ceasefire announcement. Trump confirmed Thursday that he told Netanyahu to “low-key it,” appearing to give Israel a green light to immediately violate the ceasefire and put it at risk of collapse.
In response, Iran says it will not open the Strait of Hormuz so long as Israel is violating the ceasefire. And planned talks in Islamabad for the U.S. and Iran to hammer out a longer-term agreement during the two-week ceasefire window have been thrown into doubt.
Netanyahu once said, “America is a thing you can move very easily.”
Netanyahu once said, “America is a thing you can move very easily.”
For his part, Netanyahu sought to dispel any notion that the Iran war was ending, emphasizing that the ceasefire is temporary and “a way station on the way to achieving all of our goals.”
When it comes exerting Israeli influence on the U.S., Netanyahu once infamously said, “America is a thing you can move very easily.” Indeed, according to reports, it was Netanyahu who convinced Trump to launch this war in the first place.
Now, potentially upending U.S. efforts to disentangle itself from conflict with Iran, the Israeli prime minister finds himself on familiar footing: playing the role of spoiler against any form of U.S.–Iran détente.
Decades of Détente-Busting
America’s supposed junior partner has worked ceaselessly to prevent any off-ramp from confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. In 1995, when Iran and the........