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

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.