The main fighting between the United States and Iran has come to a halt. In line with the logic of negotiations, the occasional controlled skirmish continued to occur, reflecting both sides' shared determination to avoid a return to war, each for its own reasons.
The signing ceremony, conducted remotely between Paris and Tehran at the presidential level, marks only the first step on what is expected to be a long and arduous journey. The agreement itself did little more than identify the broad issues at stake, leaving their resolution to negotiations that are expected to be difficult. According to observers of the US-Iran confrontation, they are likely to prove even more challenging than the negotiations held during the Obama era, which produced the agreement later scrapped by Trump.
The most significant factor weighing negatively on the negotiating process is Israel's re-entry into a track from which it had effectively been excluded. It has returned through the Lebanese and Gazan arenas, which Israel regards as ideal platforms from which to shape the day after the signing.
In Lebanon, Israel is complicating the Trump administration's efforts to advance its policy objectives by refusing to bring military operations there to a definitive end or to withdraw without the disarmament of Hezbollah- a goal jointly shared and openly agreed upon by Washington and Tel Aviv. For Iran, which fought relentlessly to link Hezbollah's future to the broader Iranian settlement, Israel's refusal to do so means Tehran has no intention of burning the Hezbollah card. Having invested heavily in it to strengthen its position in negotiations with the United States, Iran still considers that card useful and intends to keep it in play until negotiations produce the comprehensive closure of all outstanding files, as Tehran hopes they ultimately will.
Gaza, however, occupies a far more important place in Israel's calculations than Lebanon. Although security concerns remain the most frequently cited justification for Israel's war there, Israeli strategic thinking views Gaza as an inseparable part of the existential conflict it believes it is still fighting on multiple fronts. Indeed, Gaza stands at the center of those conflicts.
Nor can any discussion of Gaza be separated from what Israel is doing in the West Bank. Despite their geographical separation, the two territories have effectively been merged into a single conflict. Israel threatens to occupy Gaza in its entirety after having established near-total control over its geography and demography through military force and siege. At the same time, it continues to signal the possible annexation of the West Bank. If formal and public annexation remains restrained by concerns over international- even American- reactions, Israel is nevertheless deepening its direct and indirect control there while intensifying economic pressure. The result would be the gradual elimination of the Palestinian Authority's recognized political role by stripping it of the limited tools it still possesses to govern its land and people, thereby disqualifying it from participating in any future political settlement, whatever form that settlement may take.
Lebanon and Palestine have thus become the two hostages that provide Israel with a gateway into the US-Iran negotiating track and with leverage that it is rapidly expanding on the ground. Israel is taking advantage of a world preoccupied with resolving the Iranian question and eliminating its direct impact on energy security, energy prices, and vital trade routes. As global attention remains fixed on that issue, Israel continues to tighten its grip on these two hostages, having little else left with which to influence the Iranian equation.
The dilemma created by this hostage dynamic, and by Israel's investment in it, lies in the absence of an international framework grounded in either the text or the spirit of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803. The first lines of that resolution were written in Gaza. It served as the foundation for the World Peace Council chaired by Trump, to which Israel was effectively compelled to submit. Yet Israel's persistent push for war against Iran ultimately altered the landscape, making it seem as though the winds of that conflict had swept away all promises of a lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
Now that the agreement has been signed and negotiations are underway, the United States- still the dominant force in the theaters of war, though far less so in the architecture of peace, is expected to move beyond celebrating what it has achieved with Iran. It must instead adopt a more realistic assessment and a more precise understanding of what the Middle East genuinely requires.
The world's nations are virtually unanimous in recognizing the necessity of stability in the region through the extinguishing of its wars. They are equally united in viewing the United States as indispensable to that effort. The striking irony is that the one actor standing apart from this rare international consensus is America's closest ally, which continues to treat the Middle East's most explosive issues as little more than hostages to be exploited for greater leverage and expanded influence.
