By Robert Inlakesh

In the short term, a propaganda victory was scored by the Israelis, but it isn’t likely to fundamentally reshape the battlefield.

The United States has managed to use bad-faith negotiating tactics in order to play a trick on Iran, permitting their Israeli allies to focus their air force on neighbouring Lebanon, in a scheme designed to deliver a blow to Tehran. It will now likely eliminate the possibility of an off-ramp in the near future.

When news broke, this Tuesday, that Washington had agreed to Tehran’s 10-point plan to end the regional war, it caused shock waves across the world. Yet, for those with a recollection of the US’s track record, the deal appeared way too good to be true.

Iran’s 10 demands, all of which they were informed the US had agreed to, would have delivered the Islamic Republic an unprecedented victory over the United States. Not only would Tehran have prevented the American administration from achieving any of its various stated goals, including an attempt at regime change, but it would have been on the way to economic revival and attaining the status of ruler of the Persian Gulf.

But as is usually the case, when it looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Only hours after US President Donald Trump released his remarks on Truth Social, announcing a 2-week ceasefire, the Israeli Prime Minister’s office declared that Lebanon is not considered a part of the cessation of hostilities. 

The Pakistani Premier, Shehbaz Sharif, had openly announced that Lebanon was to be included in the ceasefire agreement, something that the Iranian leadership had also demanded as a prerequisite to agreeing to the 2-week ceasefire. Despite the US later claiming that it had never agreed to including Lebanon in the ceasefire, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry clarified publicly that both sides had indeed agreed to this.

Regardless, Israel soon began by launching a series of airstrikes on southern Lebanon, as well as the northern Bekaa Valley region, before committing horrifying atrocities in the Lebanese Capital of Beirut. Over a thousand civilian casualties were recorded across Lebanon, including the targeting of an ambulance in the southern city of Soor (Tyre).

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu would go on to announce that “the war is not over”, while White House spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt declared of Iran’s 10-point plan, that the American president had “thrown it in garbage”.

A Costly Trick

While the pressures on Tehran to accept the two-week cessation of hostilities were immense, it still represents a very costly mistake. The mistake was trusting the US, after it had engaged in bad faith negotiations with the intention of deception and to provide cover for offensive action, twice in the past 12-months alone.

Agreeing to the temporary ceasefire, in order to allow for negotiations, had to have come due to the interpretation that Washington is driving its own foreign policy. The reality is that the decisions are being made on behalf of the United States, by the Israelis. 

How can we tell this? It is very simple: If the 10-point plan was being genuinely considered, this would have been a move designed to serve American interests, given the failure of the war’s ability to achieve any strategic goals, but would have thrown the Israelis under the bus completely. Israeli military analyst Avi Ashkenazi argued openly in an op-ed published by Maariv that concluded the following:

“41 days of fighting and 5,000 destroyed buildings ended in a crushing Iranian victory. Despite Khamenei’s elimination, the regime survived, the nuclear weapons remained, and Hormuz became Tehran’s ATM. Israel and the US emerge from the campaign with an agreement that is all strategic surrender.”

If the US were to have accepted the 10-point plan, it would be required to withdraw from the region entirely, while lifting sanctions, enabling Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, and a variety of other demands. For the Israelis, as described in Ashkenazi’s article, this is a strategic defeat.

Therefore, there are three ways we can interpret this:

1) The US was willing to negotiate in good faith, after it had run out of viable military options and therefore had considered allowing for Israel to be dealt a strategic defeat. After which, Tel Aviv decided to act against Lebanon in desperation and lobby the Trump administration, as a means of collapsing the ceasefire.

2) The US was negotiating in bad faith, seeking only to set up further offensive moves like a major ground operation. However, a two-week cessation of hostilities was unacceptable politically to the Israeli government and thus they sabotaged the ceasefire.

3) Israel and the United States worked hand in hand to concoct a deceptive move against the Iranian State. The goals of which would have been to confuse Tehran, send mixed messages, while pushing an agenda to divide the fronts in the regional confrontation, all as further military actions are prepared to be launched as surprise attacks. 

Such a scheme would mean that Israel played along with the US two-week announcement, so that it could concentrate all of its airpower on Lebanon and deliver an enormous blow to the civilian population. This means that the Lebanese population would begin feeling as if Hezbollah dragged them into a war for Iran, but that Tehran suddenly stopped their fire without finding them any guarantees, creating further political pressure on Hezbollah internally and enabling even more discrimination against the country’s Shia population.

The idea that the US was willing to abandon Israeli interests for its own runs contrary to everything we have seen so far from the Trump administration. If Washington were in control of its own policymaking, then the war on Iran would have been turned down as an idea, like it was by every previous administration. Also, if Israel then jumped in to sabotage the ceasefire agreement, why then would Donald Trump not force them to comply, if he suddenly began operating so independently that he accepted ceasefire terms that would have been incredibly damaging to Israeli strategic interests?

It appears as if what has happened is that Iran was duped into accepting a short-term ceasefire in order to open up negotiations, under the pressure of its allies. Even though Tehran is undoubtedly skeptical, the decision to accept a two-week ceasefire ended up allowing for Israel to kill at least 300 Lebanese civilians and injure around 1,200 in less than 24 hours alone. Why exactly it chose to accept this, after it has been publicly declaring its outright rejection of any temporary ceasefire for weeks, recently announcing that all communication channels with the US had been severed, is unclear.

What is clear is that there is no chance for a meaningful ceasefire. Hypothetically speaking, if Iran were to accept the US’s proposal, meaning that they give up their enriched uranium stockpile, abandons Lebanon, and agree to a number of other demands laid out by Washington, then it would be the end of its Axis of Resistance alliance. It would also almost certainly ensure that another war of aggression or coup attempts, would only be around the corner.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has now even been emboldened to the point that it felt comfortable enough to bomb Iran’s Lavan oil refinery, after the ceasefire was imposed. Two Israeli drones were shot down over Iranian airspace within the first day of the temporary ceasefire, as the US also violated its sovereignty. In other words, such a ceasefire would be a strategic catastrophe for the Islamic Republic that has greatly emboldened its adversaries. Therefore, there is simply no way to accept such a predicament. Under such circumstances, the US still would have failed to achieve its key goals, but the Israelis would have scored a long-term victory.

 Iran, for its part, had stressed since day one that it will not abandon Lebanon, that it will demand all of its points be delivered upon, meaning that there is really no agreement and no basis for talks. Even if talks were to materialize, they are meaningless unless Tehran were suddenly willing to surrender in exchange for short-term financial gain.

All of this is to say that a return to the war is inevitable. How this could backfire is that this experience may end up disabling a repeat of such a scenario, especially if the ceasefire officially ends with a major offensive move from Israel, the US or both. Offramps are being destroyed due to the deceptive use of negotiations as a means of deception, which makes it the third time the US Trump administration has done this in less than a year now. In the short term, a propaganda victory was scored by the Israelis, but it isn’t likely to fundamentally reshape the battlefield.

The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.