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The writer is author of ‘Black Wave’ and an FT contributing editor
Peace has broken out in the Middle East — at least the one that Donald Trump inhabits in his mind. For the first time in 3,000 years, all is well in the region. In Trump’s world, “there’s nothing tenuous” about the Gaza ceasefire and everyone wants to come on board the peace train because “tremendous things” are happening. Israel and Saudi Arabia will soon be friends and Iran has capitulated. Like a self-help guru, the US president is trying to manifest a different Middle East with affirmations, hoping to speak it into existence.
The reality on the ground is less blissful. There are rising tensions, and a managed, rolling war with near-daily Israeli strikes and dozens killed in both Gaza and Lebanon. This barely makes international headlines, but since the Lebanon ceasefire a year ago, Israel has struck south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley more than 500 times, killing over 300 people who Israel says were Hizbollah operatives. The UN confirmed at least 103 of those killed were civilians. More than 80,000 Lebanese have yet to return to their homes in the south while an estimated 30,000 residents of northern Israel are still displaced. Hizbollah has confirmed only one attack against Israel since the ceasefire but has refused to disarm, and Israel has accused the group of rebuilding its military capacity.
The Lebanese government is on a collision course with either Washington, which is demanding that it forcibly disarm the militant group and negotiate with Israel, or with Hizbollah itself, which has shut down the idea of talks and threatened civil war if it’s forced to give up its weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened wider military action against Lebanon. Amid the deafening sound of Israeli drones flying over Beirut, the talk of the town is about when, not if, such an operation will happen and how big it will be.
Israel is replicating the rolling war approach in Gaza. Since the October 10 ceasefire that Trump essentially imposed on Netanyahu, at least 236 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes. Admittedly, it’s better than all-out war, and the release of Israeli hostages after two years in captivity is cause for celebration. Displaced Palestinians have been able to go back home in Gaza, mostly to piles of rubble, and some aid is flowing in. But reconstruction, let alone peace, is far off and the peacekeeping force that Trump announced as part of his 20-point plan for Gaza remains a nebulous project.
Most countries Trump said would participate, such as Qatar or Pakistan, have not committed yet; only Indonesia has. The next flashpoint could be Iraq. Secretary of defence Pete Hegseth warned Baghdad to rein in Shia militias amid reports that Iran was reinforcing them.
The only bright spot may be the visit to Washington of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on November 18, his first since 2018. Soon after that, the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi made MBS a pariah for a few years, but the centrality of the kingdom to managing oil prices and advancing regional peace brought him back to the fold by 2022. MBS seems set to sign a security pact with the US.
But here, too, the dissonance between what Trump thinks he is achieving and the reality is great. He insists that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords. But Riyadh has made clear it will not establish ties with Israel without concrete progress towards a Palestinian state. In private, Saudi officials sometimes admit they don’t necessarily care much about the issue, which creates a false impression in Washington that Saudi Arabia may forgo this condition.
But MBS is not playing hard to get. He is acutely aware of the backlash he would provoke if he sidesteps the Palestinian cause and has cited the not-unreasonable threat of assassination. In 1977, after Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, made his surprise visit to Jerusalem, Middle East scholar Malcolm Kerr presciently warned that “separate deals in the Arab-Israeli conflict are always likely to come unstuck”.
Since then, Iran has embedded itself in that conflict, from Lebanon to Iraq and Gaza. Tehran’s proxies may be diminished but they and their patrons are not interested in playing the role of the defeated party. What makes the current moment more dangerous is that the US doesn’t have a coherent Iran strategy, aside from declaring victory after 12 days of war this summer and claiming that Iran’s nuclear sites have been “obliterated”, which experts dispute.
The danger is that both Washington and Israel think they can achieve a grand Middle East peace by putting together all the small pieces — except the central Palestinian one — and silencing the rejectionists with more war.
