Peace in Middle East needs a phenomenal shift in Israel's approach

The US has stepped back from threats to destroy Iran and instead supported a two-week ceasefire reportedly proposed by Pakistan, on the condition that the Strait of Hormuz remains open. Pakistan has urged Iran to keep the waterway open, while President Donald Trump has indicated he is considering a reported 10-point Iranian peace plan as the basis for further negotiations.

Yet any move towards peace is unlikely to last unless Israel genuinely supports it. So far, Trump's handling of the conflict appears to have been shaped as much by Israeli pressure as by his stated desire for peace and the safe passage of commercial shipping through the Strait.

The US-Israel campaign has already had devastating consequences. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with senior leaders and commanders, is reported among the casualties, severely weakening the country's military and nuclear command structures. The opening strikes also reportedly killed 168 civilians, including 100 schoolchildren. Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict.

Iran has responded with drone and missile strikes on financial centres, oil depots, and American interests across the region. Its closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted global oil and gas supplies, placing fresh pressure on the world economy. Tehran has also reactivated proxy forces in Lebanon and Iraq. The escalation has reportedly created friction within the Trump administration, as the rising costs of war have put the US and its allies on the defensive.

While Trump's approach has shifted repeatedly as the costs of war mounted in both military and financial terms, Israel has shown far greater determination to continue striking Iran and Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Although Trump initially threw American weight behind Israel, his oscillation between hawkish and dovish positions has raised doubts about whether Washington has the leverage to bring Israel to the negotiating table.

Following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel moved decisively to weaken what it saw as regional threats: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Shiite militias in Iraq, all of which have long drawn support from Iran. For Israel, Iran's nuclear ambitions and regional reach posed an existential threat. For the US, the threat was narrower, centred on American interests and its presence in the Middle East.

The latest US National Security Strategy places the Western Hemisphere first and China second as its strategic priorities, rather than the Middle East. Trump has also consistently expressed his aversion to prolonged military entanglements in the region. His earlier success with a rapid operation in Venezuela, and Israel's encouragement to apply a similar model to Iran, may have helped shape the decision to enter the conflict without extensive debate at home.

By contrast, Israel has shown little respect for ceasefires previously agreed in Lebanon and Gaza, continuing intermittent strikes that suggest both deep strategic anxiety and a preference for an open-ended conflict. If the trajectory of the war is any guide, Israel appears more willing than the US to bear the human and material costs of confronting what it sees as an imminent Iranian threat.

Some analysts argue that the decision to launch war with Iran was shaped during Benjamin Netanyahu's visits to the White House in early 2026. According to these reports, Netanyahu convinced Trump that regime change in Tehran was achievable through the removal of key figures. The US, which has had an adversarial relationship with Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the embassy hostage crisis, long treated Israel as a regional counterweight to Iranian influence.

Washington also cultivated security relationships with Gulf states to preserve its regional position and contain Tehran. Over time, however, Israel increasingly appears to have drawn the US into its own territorial ambitions and regional score-settling. Until June 2025, Washington had avoided direct attacks on Iran itself, focusing instead on Iranian proxies and Revolutionary Guard commanders operating elsewhere in the region.

The assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, in Iraq on January 3, 2020, was a notable example. Iran's forward-defence strategy had largely shielded its mainland from direct attack. But once Israel intensified its regional campaign after the Hamas attacks, the US was persuaded to complement that strategy.

Israel's resolve and Trump's oscillation

Israel's influence in Washington may now be stronger than Washington's influence in Tel Aviv, if the conduct of the war is any guide. It is plausible that Israel persuaded Trump of the immediacy of the Iranian nuclear threat.

The resignation of Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, reportedly in opposition to the war, sharpened this perception. His reported remark that "it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby" adds another dimension to the debate.

Scholars such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have long argued that the Israeli lobby plays a significant role in shaping American foreign policy. They famously linked that influence to the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003, and to Washington's prolonged military involvement across the Middle East, often at the expense of a more balanced position on Israel and Palestine.

Jewish American advocacy organisations have built a substantial network of influence around US foreign policy. AIPAC, founded in 1954, remains one of the most powerful lobbying groups, promoting strong US-Israel ties and advocating unconditional military and political support for Israel. Some estimates suggest pro-Israel groups spend millions of dollars annually not only to secure war support but also to ensure continued US diplomatic cover, including repeated vetoes at the UN Security Council.

It is striking that both Joe Biden and Trump strongly backed Israel's campaign in Gaza, with the US reportedly providing $22 billion in military aid between 2024 and 2025 alone. The current war may also reflect the political common ground between Netanyahu and Trump, including their shared right-wing politics and legal pressures at home. Both may have seen the conflict as a way of shifting public attention towards what they presented as a more immediate danger.

Trump's public statements throughout the conflict have repeatedly shifted, highlighting the divergence between US and Israeli objectives. At times he has declared the war effectively won; at others he has insisted that military operations must continue until Iran's conventional and nuclear capabilities are destroyed.

He has threatened attacks on Iran's power and energy infrastructure unless the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, only to pivot abruptly to social media announcements of pauses in US strikes and the start of bilateral peace talks. Yet these pauses have often been short-lived, particularly as Israel has continued operations and shown little tangible interest in ending the war. Iran, in turn, has escalated the conflict further.

This pattern suggests that Israeli influence may be a major factor in the Trump administration's erratic approach. Israel has also reportedly targeted senior Iranian officials in ways that appear designed to complicate ceasefire efforts.

Many of those killed belonged to an older generation of leaders shaped by the hard lessons of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Their experience made them more pragmatic about the cumulative costs of prolonged conflict. Their replacement by younger, more hard-line figures risks intensifying the logic of attrition regardless of the humanitarian cost.

The reported killing of Ali Larijani, for example, may undermine the prospects of a durable ceasefire, particularly as he has been replaced by a presumably harder-line former IRGC commander. Israel has meanwhile continued striking Lebanon, opening another theatre of war even as Trump periodically flirts with the idea of a pause. Israel justifies these attacks by citing Iranian coordination with Hezbollah, though the scale of its own offensives tells its own story.