I spoke by phone to Ahmadian on Thursday evening as the United States and Israel carried out some of the war’s most intense aerial bombing yet. Ahmadian — who teaches at the University of Tehran and, before that, served as an analyst at the Center for Strategic Studies in Tehran — sounded remarkably calm, all things considered.

“Mostly, I hear sounds,” he tells me. (We spoke in Persian; all translations are mine.) “I watch the news and speak to friends, [and] there’s talk of hits. I saw two to three places near me that were hit. But you have to remember, Tehran is incredibly vast, and in order to cover the span of the place [with bombs], you have to work really hard.” Still, “they’re hitting everything: clinics and such in addition to military, paramilitary, and police targets.”

Even so, he insists, the operation isn’t remotely close to its original aim of allowing the Iranian people to “seize control of your destiny” as President Trump put it in his initial statement announcing the war. In other words: regime change.

“This Islamic system is deeply institutionalized, and with parallel institutions,” Ahmadian tells me. “From the day they assassinated Mr. Khamenei until now, I haven’t felt any vacuum. Each governmental unit fulfilled its respective function. The military does its work, the civil servants do their work. If anything, overall control has increased because it’s wartime conditions.”

That message is echoed by analysts in the West’s realist or foreign-policy-restraint camp: that despite its unpopularity among important segments of Iranian society — the urban and the educated — the regime represents a systemic, as opposed to personal, state. It also benefits from Iran’s status as a coherent, ancient polity, notwithstanding the ethnic and sectarian fault lines that crisscross it.

“This is a sharply polarized society,” Ahmadian grants. “Just last month, there were protests that eventually were violently confronted. And members of the security forces were also killed. People aren’t satisfied economically at all. But to translate that into the idea that ‘these people want to overthrow the regime’ — sure, some people have this opinion, but they are a minority.”

“The majority of the country,” he adds, “is in the middle. They’re not necessarily supporters [of the regime], or they have serious grievances. But they absolutely aren’t prepared to accept foreign invasion.”

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Since the invasion, some have taken to the streets or their balconies to voice celebration, scenes highlighted in Western media and on social networks. But there have also been pro-regime and nationalist demonstrations whose sheer size is a reminder that the Islamic Republic has a social base, conservatively estimated at about 15% of the population. That base includes people who genuinely believe in the regime’s project for religious reasons, and who additionally enjoy a kind of regency, with access to perks not available to seculars (like my family). They aren’t close to giving up.

Fantasies of a huge majority that could serve as the West’s foot soldiers, Ahmadian insists, were just that. “I saw a BBC report that showed celebrations in three locations in response to the bombing. But of course, there are many, many others who’ve had the opposite reaction. It’s propagandistic to show only the activities of a minority. And the bigger problem is that if you keep engaging in propaganda, after a while it traps you inside it. You come to really believe it. Or you keep digging in because you feel your credibility depends upon it being true.”

Unmentioned by Ahmadian, of course, is that the Islamic Republic was similarly ensnared in some of its own propaganda, not least assertions about the strength of the so-called Axis of Resistance that proved illusory after Israel set about dismantling it in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks.

Still, it was possible to overestimate Tehran’s relative weakness — and that’s just what happened as a result of missteps by Iran during last summer’s 12-Day War.

“Accepting the ceasefire then,” Ahmadian says, “nurtured the notion that Iran is weak. But that wasn’t so. Both sides were firing. Even at the last minute, Iran fired a dozen missiles that did extensive damage in Beersheba…. It was a caricature of Iran, to imagine that an attack would cause its rapid collapse. It was the Israelis [who] promoted this account.”

But nations, especially nations at war, don’t remain static. Since the humiliations of the 12-Day War, Iran has strived to counter the impression of weakness operationally. “Before the [new] war, the commanders and Mr. Khamenei himself warned that ‘if you attack Iran, we will hit regional targets.’ They described everything that has transpired.” Since then, “Iran concluded that if the other side is going to attack every six months, we will impose such a high cost that they can’t keep coming back — even if it means we also bear a serious cost.”

In a word: deterrence — “part punishment, part credible threat against future action,” as Ahmadian defines it.

Dragged around by Israeli initiative, Ahmadian argues, the Americans didn’t consider the obvious steps Iran was bound to take. “One huge problem with American decision-making is that it really takes place in a bubble,” he says. “That is, the Americans imagine they’re the only ones who think. They forget that there is another actor who is equally capable of initiative, foresight, and planning.”

Then, too, he thinks Washington has insufficiently thought through its ultimate objective. “Rubio said we had an imminent threat [from Israel], and we knew that if Iran was attacked, we, too, would get attacked, so we decided to go for it first. Then there’s JD Vance, who says this was intended to stop the nuclear program, but that’s nonsense, because Iran has had no chance to restart its nuclear program. And Mr. Trump himself said this was to ‘obliterate’ Iran’s nuclear program and navy (never mind that Iran has no real navy to speak of, except some speed boats and such). And at the beginning, Trump said the goal was regime change. Now Hegseth says the goal is to degrade Iran’s capabilities so it doesn’t threaten the region.”

This collection of justifications and objectives, Ahmadian says, amount to a “circus.” He thinks what really happened was that the Israelis managed to persuade the Trump administration that Iran is weak — a little push and the regime would fall — and the moment was golden. But since the rapid collapse hasn’t come to pass, the Americans are straining to come up with new aims and justifications for a costly step.

Another such justification is that the operation was a bold Trumpian move in 4-D chess, intended to block China from an important source of oil and gas. “This notion that the Americans are trying to beat China is another after-the-fact justification. China getting hurt? Right now, America’s regional allies are taking a beating. What was supposed to have been a source of security” — the presence of US bases — “has turned into a source of menace. The cost on America is much higher than any borne by China over the course of a three- or four-week war. Because China buys energy from everyone, and its Mideast energy sources aren’t going to dry up permanently.”

In the event, he says, “both sides are now firing. Iran had the experience of the last war. We thought through certain preparations and are now using them, and I doubt Iran’s plan is for the war to end soon. “We want to deplete Israel’s defensive weapons: David’s Sling and the THAAD batteries. I’ve heard from informed people that Israel has about 10 days’ worth of defensive capability. Iran’s biggest missile attacks haven’t even started; they will only start after about 10 days.”

But haven’t the US military and the Israel Defense Forces struck many of Iran’s missile launchers and the underground “missile cities” that supply them? “Again,” Ahmadian replies, “informed people here say that the US and Israel have hit a lot of decoys: paintings, fake launchers.” Then, too, he says, it’s telling that the Iranians are going out of their way to telegraph a no-ceasefire approach. It suggests that they don’t feel the level of weakness ascribed to them by more sanguine Western analysts.

What about the prospects of ethnic separatists getting involved, perhaps with covert ground support from the CIA, the Mossad, or even Army special operators? “This Kurdish question is obviously a serious national-security issue for Iran,” Ahmadian counters, “so of course we have all sorts of contingency plans of which violence is only the last resort.”

Tehran, he says, boasts strong relations with most of the Kurdish parties inside Iraq, “and we also have the Baghdad government and the [Shiite] popular mobilization forces. These are conditions on the ground that Iran has created. So if you enter Iran, you run into problems in Iraq, too.”

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Could it be, though, that by targeting so many actors across the region, not all of which are overtly hostile toward the Islamic Republic, Tehran is turning itself into a 21st-century Napoleon, raising the enmity of a regional or even global coalition?

Ahmadian disagrees. If anything, he contends, it’s America that has forced its regional allies to rethink their dependence upon Washington. “I have lots of friends in these countries,” he says. “They understand that this isn’t their war — that it’s America and Israel. Yes, they’re unhappy with Iran’s attacks, but they don’t view Tehran as the ultimate reason for this turmoil.”

The Arabs, he goes on, “complain that civilian infrastructure is being hit, but we insist these are legitimate targets because they are being used by America in its attacks on Iran. If they didn’t agree for their countries to be used as platforms for assaulting the Islamic Republic, then that shows they need to reassess their relationship with Washington. And if they did consent, well, then that answers their objection as to why they’re under attack.”

“Be that as it may, the fact that the Arabs keep saying this isn’t our war shows these countries know that they shouldn’t enter this war, and that they have a sharper understanding of the Iranian regime — that it’s not a regime that you can easily change.”

Meanwhile, the American and Israeli bombs keep dropping, to ends that Washington itself struggles to articulate, much less persuade American majorities to accept. And while the Trumpians now speak of a long war, while refusing to rule out a ground operation, the Iranian security establishment appears serene for now.

“If we get to 10 days,” Ahmadian says, “my belief is that Iran will launch really crushing attacks and that will raise costs…. The notion that [the Americans and Israelis] want to extend the war, the implication is that regional security and the global economy are put on pause. What I’ve heard is that life in Persian Gulf states is disabled. And so it is in Israel. And so it is in Iran.” Therefore, “I think this talk of an extended war is wartime posturing.” In other words, the Americans — beholden to the stock market and prices at the pump — won’t endure much more.

Maybe that’s true. Or maybe it’s a Persian bluff. In the end, only one man knows Donald Trump’s mind, and that’s Donald Trump. Iranian strategy — once a black box whose decoding employed a whole industry of analysts — is by contrast a model of clarity.

For Israel, Iran’s possession of a deliverable nuclear weapon posed an intolerable, existential threat. There can be no doubt that Iran was close to achieving this aim, enriching uranium far beyond the level needed for nuclear power generation, and doing so in secretive, hardened locations. It had a delivery system, with ballistic missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Only the question of a bomb mechanism remained and this could have been resolved with a bomb too large to fit on a missile, but deliverable by other means.

Following the war, all three parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons program have been severely degraded. Most of the senior scientists working on a bomb mechanism are dead. The enrichment facilities are at the very least severely damaged. Most of Iran’s long-range missiles and missile launchers have either been used or destroyed. Moreover, by weakening Iran, Israel has reduced the threat from Tehran’s proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. While Israel’s military leadership wished to wage the war without foreign assistance, the political leadership sought direct American intervention. This was achieved, thus demonstrating and strengthening Israel’s strategic alliance with Washington. All of this was accomplished with the loss of fewer than 30 Israeli lives.

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What Israel failed to achieve was regime change in Iran. For 40 years the Ayatollahs have based their regime’s legitimacy on calls to destroy Israel and drive the United States from the Middle East. They remain in power and committed to a vision they believe to be divinely inspired.

What, then, did Iran gain from the ceasefire? The country is ruled by an ageing, ideologically rigid theocrat who is currently hiding in a bunker. He governs an ethnically and religiously diverse nation. Iran’s Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and Arabs together make up nearly half of the population, and they have long resented Persian dominance. Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, Baha’is, and Zoroastrians have been systematically persecuted by the Islamic revolutionary government. This multicultural patchwork could easily unravel without widespread fear of the Ayatollah’s secret police.

Ayatollah Khamenei may very well believe the encouraging propaganda broadcast on state television, but the Iranian economy is failing and his government increasingly unpopular. His regional allies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, have been greatly weakened while his international allies, Russia and China, have provided little tangible support. At 86 he faces a looming succession struggle, but many of his most trusted potential heirs have been eliminated. For such a weak leader to survive such a massive military blow must be considered a success. His agreement to a ceasefire, however brief, allows the regime to survive and the revolution to rebuild.

Many other regional players have also been affected by the war. For one thing, the interests of the conservative Gulf Arab monarchies were conflicted. On the one hand, they welcomed any action that weakened Iran. Iran has long posed an ideological and security threat to them. The 1979 Iranian Revolution supercharged Islamic militancy in the region forcing Saudi Arabia to adopt far more socially conservative policies. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman takes his role as Custodian of Mecca very seriously, yet the Ayatollahs have explicitly challenged his right to this status and tried to disrupt the Hajj more than once. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE recently went to war against Iranian proxies in Yemen. Iran has territorial disputes with several of the Gulf states and, of course, Iran’s nuclear ambitions are as much a threat to its Arab neighbors as to Israel.

On the other hand, the Gulf Arabs did not wish to be drawn into the Iran-Israel conflict. Salman, in particular, is in the midst of a very ambitious program to reshape Saudi Arabia socially and economically. He needs regional stability to attract foreign investment and oil revenues to finance economic development. But all the Gulf Arabs are highly vulnerable to Iranian missile attacks. Their oil fields, oil-loading terminals and above all life-sustaining seawater desalination plants are all easy targets. For them, then, a ceasefire is the ideal outcome: Iran has been weakened, but they have not been seriously attacked.

Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and even Iraq have long felt the boot of Persian imperialism delivered by the likes of Hezbollah and Iraq’s Hasht al Shabi or popular militias. These Shia forces have killed thousands of Sunni Arabs and, like Hamas and the Houthis, will no longer be receiving generous support from Tehran. For the first time in decades, Syria and Lebanon have the opportunity to set their own course without taking instructions from Tehran.

But there’s another group with interests at stake: oil producers and consumers. The war saw price increases for some shipping and insurance rates as well as for jet fuel from Gulf refineries, which have become very important for Europe since it imposed sanctions on Russia. However, it could have been much worse: there was no loss of supply and no crude oil price spike. Attacks on oil facilities were limited to Israel’s refinery at Haifa and Iran’s North Pars gas field. The Straits of Hormuz remained open. Had it been needed, the Saudis maintained enough spare capacity to compensate for the total loss of Iranian oil exports.

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Nevertheless, both oil producers and consumers have drawn lessons from the conflict. The apparent vulnerability of Gulf oil has increased demand for alternative energy supplies in China, the United States and Europe. Europe, with very little oil of its own, will seek to accelerate its transition away from hydrocarbons, while the United States, already the world’s largest oil producer, will seek to increase domestic production even more.

China, for its part, is heavily dependent on flows of oil from the Persian Gulf. It remains one of the few nations still buying oil from Iran, is currently Iran’s largest customer and buys Iranian oil at a deep discount. However, the People’s Republic buys even more oil from Saudi Arabia and made its displeasure with Tehran clear when Iran attacked Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq in 2019. And Beijing will have cautioned Tehran against similar attacks or closing the Straits of Hormuz during the recent conflict. While China was no doubt mollified to see American military assets diverted from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans, this will only have emphasized fears that in times of crisis, the US Navy could interdict all oil flows from the Middle East to China —  a profound strategic liability.

The United States, meanwhile, has come off well from the ceasefire. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been set back with no loss of American life. There has been no oil shock, no increase in inflation, and no stock market crash. Most Americans supported the President’s action and allies have seen that Donald Trump is not the next Neville Chamberlain. With the threat from Iran diminished, the United States may finally be able to make its much-anticipated pivot towards Asia.

Nevertheless, while the American strike on Iran was impressive —  involving the world’s largest conventional bomb — it remains uncertain whether “one and done” will be enough to change Iran’s behavior. Will the Ayatollahs agree to forego uranium enrichment and curtail their ballistic missile program? Will they allow inspectors to visit the damaged sites and accept direct negotiations with the United States? Through prolonged negotiations, Europe and the United States have tried to bring Iran back into the community of nations. Now, the United States has carried out a very limited military operation. If Iran’s regime will not change its behavior, some argue that the next step should be regime change. But that would create a whole new raft of risks for regional instability. While foreign powers can support domestic efforts, far better the regime change is carried out by the Iranian people themselves.

Investing as the head of the Witkoff Group, he has been updating classic Manhattan office buildings like the Woolworth tower and creating luxury condominium high-rises like 111 Murray Street. Even today, his son Alex is rescuing One High Line — the pair of angular Bjarke Ingels-designed waterfront towers in West Chelsea — from an ignominious fate as the misbegotten condo development of a collapsed investing group.

Along the way, Witkoff has built a reputation for a high risk tolerance that suits Trump as the two of them seek to settle the ultimate real-estate dispute: namely, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The prize is unquestionably attractive. Yet given the stakes and the sensitivity of the region, Gotham-style real-estate wrangling could also prove disastrous.

Witkoff’s journey to the world of high diplomacy began, of course, in his friendship with fellow developer Trump. Indeed, so close are the two men that Witkoff was on the golf course at Mar-a-Lago last year when a second failed assassination attempt was made on Trump. According to a New York real-estate source, who declined to be identified because he didn’t want to get involved in Trumpian affairs, Witkoff’s grandson was named Donald after his grandfather’s friend, the president. And Trump attended Alex’s bar mitzvah reception, the person said.

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Trump rewarded Witkoff’s personal loyalty by naming the latter his envoy to the Middle East. When it comes to the bedeviling region, Trump has from the beginning thought outside the box. Witkoff’s position is roughly the same as that of Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law, also a major figure in New York real estate — in the first term. Despite just about no previous experience as a mediator, Jared, son of real-estate mogul Charles Kushner, produced the Abraham Accords that opened diplomatic relations between the Jewish state and four Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

Kushner sees the Middle East as a real-estate opportunity — albeit, one in which the main hazards aren’t so much New York regulators withholding construction permits as Islamist groups and states that periodically go boom. Kushner parlayed his position in the first Trump administration into the leadership of Miami-based Affinity Partners, an investment firm which he founded and which has been raising investment capital largely from Middle Eastern companies — $3.1 billion as of October, to be exact, according to a Wall Street Journal story.

Witkoff brings a similar mentality to the region. Although Witkoff, like Kushner, lacks previous diplomatic experience, he does have an international cast of friends and contacts, in the Middle East and around the world. A longtime associate in New York’s real-estate industry calls him an “excellent negotiator”.

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Despite nominally serving as the president’s ears and mouth in the Middle East, Witkoff was also dispatched to Moscow to negotiate the release of Marc Fogel, a teacher who had been held in prison for three years on marijuana charges. Witkoff is also part of the negotiating team seeking to end the Russia-Ukraine war, over and against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s objections and others who warn that the Trumpians are ignoring Kyiv. Witkoff is unperturbed by such talk. In a news conference shortly after Fogel’s release, he described his role this way: “He [Trump] asks, and we say yes.”

Witkoff, in his light brown overcoat and perfectly starched collar, has become a fixture of television news as he represents the Trump administration globally. It’s a long way from the days in the early Nineties, when he used to personally collect rent, while carrying a gun, from his tenants in The Bronx, and where he got his start in the business.

Born in 1957 in The Bronx, he graduated from Hofstra Law School on Long Island in 1983. Afterwards, he landed a job with the real-estate law firm Dreyer & Traub, where one of his clients was none other than … Donald Trump. He then formed a partnership with the late Laurence Gluck that was known as Stellar Management (the “Ste” in Stellar stood for Steve, and the “Lar” part stood for Larry).

Although their business and political paths have long overlapped and even converged, Witkoff’s approach to real estate differs from Trump’s. While Trump built his brand around showy towers, resorts, and golf courses, Witkoff followed a more tried-and-true path through commercial and residential real estate, keeping a low profile and letting his bank accounts do the talking.

Even so, Witkoff would gain a measure of notoriety that few real-estate investors achieve. He moved fast in the business, blowing his way past the stodgy families headed by scions three or four generations removed from the enterprising paterfamilias. He was a scrappy hustler determined to build on his early successes. It helped that this was the Nineties, when commercial real estate had been beaten down by the savings-and-loan scandal, which led to the bankruptcy of several small banks that had a large number of failing new properties on their books. Those who bought low were richly rewarded. Witkoff was one of them.

He was fortunate, too, to have in his corner a financier named Andrew Stone of Credit Suisse First Boston. Stone — who viewed himself as the “Star Trek lender”, boldly lending where others on Wall Street wouldn’t — made bets on up-and-coming real-estate entrepreneurs who showed the ability to spot properties with the potential to bring in enough money to achieve well over their debt service. Besides Witkoff, Stone backed Trump, the developer Harry Macklowe, hotelier Ian Schrager, and the post-Soviet fertilizer king-turned-development mogul Tamir Sapir, among others.

What set Stone apart from most financiers in his position was his willingness to underwrite as much as 97% of a commercial real-estate purchase. That can be deadly if the property doesn’t lease up — if it fails to find enough tenants willing to pay a premium for the quality and location. But if it does lease up, the owner can amass untold riches. Hence, Witkoff’s reputation for high-risk, high-reward deals.

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Besides the famed Woolworth Building, designed by celebrated architect Cass Gilbert, Witkoff’s portfolio at one time included the Daily News Building on East 42nd Street, which the tabloid long ago abandoned, and 33 Maiden Lane downtown.

“He can be tough when he needs to be tough, and he can be charming when he needs to be charming,” said Jonathan Mechanic, chairman of the real-estate department at the law firm Fried Frank and a key figure in New York commercial real estate. “Although I’m not sure I would have seen this coming 20 years ago. I have no doubt that he can feel comfortable talking to anybody at any time.”

Mechanic recalled joining Witkoff at a meeting with Goldman Sachs on the financing of the Daily News building. Witkoff “had been up in The Bronx, and he had his gun attached to his ankle. When he leaned forward, and the gun could be seen”. Aware of the impression he’d made, Witkoff vowed to “come a little lighter afoot” next time.

Whether this combination of gun-toting gumption and charm can bring peace to the Middle East’s warring factions is a different question. As it is, America’s Arab allies have been left unnerved by Trump’s brainstorm for removing Gaza’s population to develop the territory into a sort of Middle East riviera. At stake is nothing less than the expansion of the Abraham Accords to include what once was unthinkable: formal relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

High risk, high reward, indeed.

“We’re going to develop it, we’re going to create thousands and thousands of jobs,” he gushed while discussing Gaza’s potential to become the Middle East’s “Riviera”. This followed comments he made immediately after his inauguration about its “phenomenal location on the sea — best weather”.

The Palestinians who live in Gaza would, he continued, be taken in by Egypt and Jordan. Both countries, he was certain, would “open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done and people can live in harmony and peace”.

Benjamin Netanyahu, standing next to him, was clearly taken by surprise, though clearly also not entirely unpleasantly. These words were, he said, “worth paying attention to”. Trump, he added, “sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism… I think it’s something that could change history”.

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In contrast, allies and adversaries across the world mainly reacted with the same horror that was written across White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ face as Trump outlined his vision. Hamas called the plan “racist” and vowed to prevent its implementation, while the Palestinian Authority described it — not incorrectly — as a severe breach of international law.

Jordan and Egypt were similarly outraged. Both receive huge amounts of US aid (third and fourth largest recipients respectively in 2023), which means that Washington does have considerable leverage. But when you consider what is being asked, and of whom, then even those colossal sums are likely to be inadequate.

Let’s start with Jordan. When it became an independent state, in 1946, it did so as a largely Palestinian one — led by a British-installed Hashemite monarchy. Today, one in five Jordanians is of Palestinian descent, while more than two million Palestinian refugees already live there. For Amman to absorb more would threaten its very viability as a Hashemite state.

There’s also a deeper anxiety here. Back in 1970, during the Black September conflict, Jordanian forces and Palestinian groups clashed after a failed assassination attempt on King Hussein and the hijacking of four planes by a Palestinian terror group. A massacre ensued, and only ended with the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan. The Hashemite monarchy internalized a lesson: give the Palestinians any room in the country and they will try to take control. Import a million or so now, and the result might not be so favorable. King Abdullah may not want to go against Washington, but if it’s a choice between that or the end of his monarchy then there is no choice.

Egypt is, arguably, even more vulnerable if there were a Palestinian influx. The idea that President el-Sisi, who overthrew the Brotherhood in a coup, will now import its offshoot, Hamas, is hardly serious. Nor can he afford to be seen as complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Polling by the Washington Institute a year ago found that 97% of Egyptians agreed Arab states should “immediately sever all diplomatic, political, economic, and any other contacts with Israel, in protest against its military action in Gaza”. El-Sisi has maintained relations with Israel. But imagine his people’s reaction if he helped Jerusalem empty Gaza.

An angry population is a destabilizing one. And Egypt is already an economic basket case, suffering from inflation, a nosediving currency and substantial debt. If it collapses, the region and the world will suffer the consequences. And if there is one state in the world that has a particular interest in Egypt holding together, it is Israel. To have 16 million desperate Egyptians on its border would probably be a threat greater than any it has yet faced.

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The anger at Trump’s Riviera has reverberated beyond Palestine’s immediate neighbors. Normalization with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been a longstanding goal of both the Trump and Netanyahu administrations, but after Trump’s words Riyadh was unequivocal that there would be no diplomatic relations with Israel without a Palestinian state. I know from multiple sources that the Saudis don’t actually care about the Palestinians; and that their crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is desperate for normalization with Jerusalem. But Trump’s real estate plan has left Riyadh with no alternative but to publicly support a two-state solution (which was not necessary for the signing of the Saudi-supported Abraham Accords). Since this is out of the question for Netanyahu, Trump has inadvertently pushed normalization further out of reach.

That the “plan” would be a gross violation of international law is probably irrelevant to Trump. But if he were to succeed in turning Gaza into a riviera, what does he think the millions of displaced Gazans would do? They would consider it a second Nakba. Gaza city would become a seafront paradise where residents sipped Negronis under rocket fire from Egypt and took cold plunges as Hamas terrorists emerged bellowing from tunnels across the border. US troops would be stuck there for decades. Surely a less-than-ideal scenario for a man who has repeatedly stated his desire to end US involvement in foreign wars.

Netanyahu understands all this. He is a sociopath with a messiah complex; he genuinely believes his destiny is to save Western civilization from the scourge of radical Islam. He is also the man who, before October 7, brought Israel to the brink of civil unrest. But he is also incredibly smart and probably the most able state leader in the world right now. His assessment that Trump’s proposal was “worth paying attention to” was pointedly mealy-mouthed — in contrast to his fascistic former coalition partner Itamar Ben-Gvir’s enthusiastic assessment that Trump’s plan represents “the only solution”.

But if this idea is dangerous, impetuous and unlikely to see the light of day, the impulse behind it (even though borne from instinct rather than design) — to think about a seemingly unsolvable problem in a new light, however crazed, is perhaps worthwhile. As policy, Trump’s Gaza plan is a disaster; as a thought experiment, it’s absurd. But such an unthinkable suggestion might actually kickstart the sort of unorthodox, disruptive thinking that has eluded more measured, knowledgeable and sharper minds for almost 60 years — and which has helped to keep peace so tortuously at bay for so long.

Back then, war was obscured from public view. But now the entire world can watch the fighting, the killing and the destruction in color, up close and in real time — though we are mainly shown dead women and children, rarely the fighters. And as a result, wars are interrupted, by ceasefires, demanded by distant Presidents and Popes and applauded by the world’s watchers as they wait for the antagonists to renounce their fight. But rather than renounce their fight, they pause to recover their strength for the next round of fighting.

We’ve seen this over and again, since the obliteration of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: especially in the Middle East. Hamas is only the latest enemy of Israel to be constrained by a ceasefire, only to rearm and proclaim its intention of fighting again. And thus is the cycle of violence perpetuated for another generation.

Since the arrival of the UN Security Council on 24 October 1945, ceasefires, truces and armistices have interrupted wars across Africa and Asia before they could bring peace. Consider Korea, 72 years ago, when the war between North and the South was interrupted by an armistice signed by now long-dead generals. Since then, there have been deadly incidents now and then, but not one day of peace negotiations.

For Israel, the first of many UN-imposed ceasefires arrived on 11 June, 1948. Both the Foreign Office and the State Department had totally opposed Israel’s May 15 declaration of independence, but were sure that the Arab armies, with their artillery, armored vehicles and warplanes would soon solve their problem: by defeating the Jews who at first only had rifles. When, to their great surprise, the Jews began advancing, the UK and US quickly agreed to impose a UN truce. It did not last, and nor did a second truce, and the fighting only ended on March 10 a year later.

War would return with the start of the Sinai campaign on 29 October, 1956 that ended on 7 November, 1956, when Israel’s advance was suddenly halted by a US-Soviet agreement at the UN Security Council to impose one more ceasefire. Then came the Six-Day War, in 1967, which did not last for seven because of another ceasefire imposed by the UN Security Council.

Once again, that would not end the fighting. In October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched what became known as the Yom Kippur War, against an Israeli enemy totally unprepared for their assault. No Security Council ceasefire arrived to stop them, even if things soon changed once Israel counterattacked. On each occasion — in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 — Israel had much more combat strength than diplomatic leverage: the only thing that really matters on the world stage.

What of Israel’s most recent conflict? Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 was followed by Israel’s counteroffensive. The ceasefire calls duly arrived — from the UN General Assembly, assorted EU voices, and (of course) the Pope.

A ceasefire so early in the fighting would have left Hamas victorious. But unlike previous occasions in Israeli history, the US President remained silent, allowing Israel to keep fighting, month after month, for a full year and beyond.

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Who will win a post-heroic war?

By Edward Luttwak

Yayha Al-Sinwar’s October massacre was made without any provisions to protect Gazan civilians from Israel’s counterattack, and came complete with planned and filmed atrocities to provoke a massive IDF response. From Sinwar’s perspective, the more Israel bombed Gaza the better. Because global public opinion would be aroused to support the Palestinians, he assumed politicians around the world would once again impose a ceasefire: long before Israel could seriously degrade Hamas’s infrastructure.

This time, though, the ceasefire did not come. Despite constant attacks from his domestic critics, Netanyahu mustered his very slim parliamentary majority to persevere in a war that continued to widen. First Hezbollah, with its 150,000 rockets and missiles, entered the fray. They were soon joined by the Houthis in Yemen, and by Iranian agents in the West Bank, and finally by Iran itself, which in two air attacks, bombarded Israel with some 320 ballistic missiles, each the size of a tanker truck, along with cruise missiles and drones.

Under continued criticism, not least from retired Israeli generals accusing him for waging a slow war of attrition while Israel was under worldwide attack (both literal and rhetorical) for killing “innocent civilians” — a term never used for Germans and Japanese burned in or out of their homes — the Israeli prime minister could offer no answer nor excuse. All Netanyahu could do was echo Churchill and keep buggering on.

This perseverance, this refusal to accept a ceasefire until Donald Trump imposed one just before his inauguration, finally paid off. Over 18 months of fighting, Israel wrecked Hezbollah and incapacitated Iran, ultimately causing the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. That, in turn, cut Iran’s supply lines to both Hezbollah and Hamas, making it impossible to rearm them for another round.

No longer able to charge Netanyahu with pursuing a pointless war — he had undeniably won a major victory against Israel’s enemies in Lebanon and Syria — his critics have instead criticized his refusal to stop the war to recover the hostages.

Hamas, for its part, is claiming to have won a very great victory. And while Israel will no longer need to worry about renewed Iranian funding for Hamas, pointless now that Nasrallah is dead and Assad in exile, the arrival of a ceasefire has prevented the final destruction of the group as a threat to the Jewish State. Wars, after all, are tragic indeed, but only their interruption by well-meaning outsiders also makes them futile.

More importantly, the agreement has made a huge difference to people’s lives, above all to Gazans. Those still living — at least 48,000 have been killed, even as The Lancet suggests that figure could be much higher — have been stalked daily by death, seen their homeland reduced to 42 million tons of rubble, and been deprived of life’s most basic necessities. That fear has been lifted, and hundreds of trucks laden with humanitarian aid have begun to enter the Strip. As for the family and friends of the hostages snatched by Hamas on October 7, they have waited in agony for the return of their loved ones, even as some know that all they can expect is their loved one’s corpse. Of the 33 hostages who are to be freed by the end of Phase 1 of the agreement, only seven have come home so far. The joy of the families, and of Israelis more generally, has been palpable. If everything goes according to plan, the remaining 61 hostages will be freed in Phase 2 of the agreement.

There’s more. Under the terms of Phase 1, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will redeploy to a narrow buffer-zone within Gaza’s border, before withdrawing completely by the end of Phase 2. Hamas is happy about this provision, but so are Gazans generally — it decreases the odds of the war’s resumption. Phase 3 calls for a detailed plan to rebuild Gaza, with satellite imagery showing 60% of buildings damaged or destroyed. Reconstruction, it goes without saying, is crucial if Gazans are to anything resembling normal lives.

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The No-State Solution

By Rajan Menon

Now that we’ve got the “in fairness” bit out of the way, let’s turn to the ways that the agreement could collapse, even before the 42 days of Phase 1 elapse, but more likely at the end of Phase 2 — an additional 42-day period when Hamas is required to release the remaining 65 hostages.

Could Hamas violate the deal? Of course. Recall that immediately after the ceasefire began, thousands of Hamas fighters and police appeared on the streets. Having endured punishing blows from one of the world’s most powerful armies and survived, and apparently recruiting enough fighters to replace those killed, Hamas has claimed victory. Such hubris could ultimately convince its leaders that Israel can be humiliated even further, via a renewed bout of fighting. Or, by reneging on its promise to release the hostages, Hamas may try to wring more concessions from Israel. It could, for instance, demand the freeing of even more Palestinian prisoners. That includes Marwan Barghouti of Fatah, the most famous (and popular) of all Palestinian prisoners. Since 2002, he’s been locked in an Israeli prison, serving five life sentences for murder. If Hamas ever demanded his release, or made additional demands, Israel would almost certainly say no — and the war would resume.

Yet, it’s hard to see why Hamas would wreck the agreement. The January 15 deal gives it just about everything it has long sought (and received, in a May 2024 accord, which Israel rejected). One important gain here is the IDF’s redeployment away from Gaza’s major population centers, as a prelude to a complete withdrawal. Another is Israel’s release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, based on an overwhelmingly favorable hostage-for-prisoner ratio, and that’s before you recall the comprehensive plan for rebuilding Gaza.

Why would Hamas abandon these gains — especially when there’s not much more it can realistically squeeze from Israel, and when reigniting the war would inflict far more pain on Hamas than the IDF? The point here is not that Hamas is fastidious about honoring the terms of deals it signs, merely that, like other states and groups jousting in the pitiless arena of international politics, it’s a self-interested actor.

Israel, on the other hand, does have reasons — again based on self-interest — to breach the terms of the peace. Netanyahu vowed that he would continue the war until Hamas was destroyed: not just diminished but totally wiped out. He has failed to achieve that goal, something the IDF has itself acknowledged. Worse, Hamas has replenished its ranks and rebuilt much of the labyrinthine tunnel network, the very same infrastructure that made freeing the hostages so challenging for Israeli troops.

Netanyahu, in short, has unfinished business, and has openly stated he reserves the right to restart the war. No less striking, the prime minister is under pressure from his own coalition. One of his hardline cabinet members, Itamar Ben-Gvir, national security minister and head of the Otzma Yehudit party, resigned in protest after Netanyahu agreed to sign the ceasefire deal. Ben-Gvir urged Bezalel Smotrich, another hardliner, to follow suit. Netanyahu persuaded Smotrich to stay by promising (among other things) that the ceasefire wouldn’t mean a permanent end to the war. Smotrich, for his part, has publicly highlighted this assurance.

For good measure, the finance minister added that there would be “a gradual takeover of the entire Gaza Strip” to ensure that “humanitarian aid will not reach Gaza as it has until now.” To summarize, then, Netanyahu has consistently sought to ensure that he has the support of the far-Right religious parties. But if he delivers on his deal with Smotrich, defenestrates the ceasefire, and restricts aid flows once more, the whole arrangement will collapse.

And what of Donald Trump? He paraded the ceasefire, which he clearly wanted signed before Inauguration Day, as something he alone made happen. Wouldn’t its implosion make his boast seem hollow, and make his coveted Nobel Peace Prize even less likely? None of this is likely to be as big a problem as it might seem. Trump makes lots of promises — remember his vow to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of being sworn in? — and takes credit for all manner of things. But his base expects this, so he won’t pay any political price if the Gaza war restarts. If the bloodshed resumes, he’ll blame Hamas, or Netanyahu, or perhaps even Biden.

The American domestic context matters here too. Trump has long relied on the support of groups and individuals, both Jewish and Evangelical, unconditionally supportive of Israel. The President, who always fancies himself a maverick, could break faith with these supporters. Yet nothing he has done with respect to Israel suggests he’s so inclined. During his first presidential term, after all, he moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Accepting Israel’s claim that the unified city is its eternal capital, that’s something only five other countries have done.

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Israel has no plan for Gaza

By Rajan Menon

Trump also recognized the Golan Heights — Syrian sovereign territory that Israel occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967 — as legally part of Israel. In 2023, meanwhile, he declared that Israel has “no better friend or ally” than him. No sooner did his current term start than he lifted the sanctions Joe Biden had imposed on far-Right settlers building illegal settlements in the West Bank. Soon after that, he nixed Biden’s ban on supplying 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Plus, Trump has apparently assured Netanyahu that Israel would enjoy his full backing to restart the fight if Hamas violates the deal. In fact, the prime minister has already accused the militants of doing just that, and responded by temporarily blocking displaced Gazans from returning to the territory’s north.

None of this means that Israel, confident of US backing, is sure to breach the ceasefire. Nor is it necessarily planning to, especially since the hostages won’t all be released until the end of Phase 2. Though he’ll have more flexibility thereafter, Netanyahu may yet decide to stick with the agreement. For one thing, he may be deterred by the surprisingly high casualty rates among the IDF, with nearly 900 battle deaths in Gaza alongside 38 suicides. For another, Netanyahu may be unsure whether Hamas can truly be destroyed. Still, of the two parties that have signed the deal, Israel has stronger motives to breach it than Hamas — something to bear in mind if violence really does return.

If, moreover, the agreement proceeds to its anticipated second phase, the IDF will leave the Gaza-Egypt frontier, abandoning the Strip’s invaluable smuggling routes to Hamas, at the same time that hundreds of Hamas terrorists will be freed from Israeli jails. In return, Israel will receive an unknown number of living hostages. Thirty-three of the roughly 100 remaining hostages are set to be freed in the deal’s first phase, including women, the elderly, and very young children, but Hamas hasn’t told Israel which of the captives are still alive.

There was no military need for a ceasefire. The frontlines in Gaza are stable. Though it has lost roughly 400 soldiers in Gaza, Israel has made casualties of perhaps half of Hamas’s army, estimated at 30,000 to 40,000 strong, and was under no battlefield pressure to withdraw.

The specifics of the deal are only where the problems begin for Israel. By the end of phase one, 50 days into the ceasefire, the IDF will have abandoned every critical point inside heavily populated areas of the Strip without having recovered the bodies of the remaining dead hostages, a matter which is reserved for phase three. If, during the negotiations planned between the deal’s phases, Israel cannot convince Hamas to cede control of the Strip, it will have to re-invade Gaza, likely at great diplomatic and reputational cost. It must otherwise accept the stinging reality that the war will have ended with Hamas’s terrorists, rapists and kidnappers gazing into Israel from more or less the same positions they occupied on 6 October 2023.

The return of Donald Trump adds to the agreement’s downsides. The President-elect apparently deputized Steve Witkoff, his incoming Middle East peace envoy, to cajole Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting the Biden Administration’s ceasefire framework. By creating the illusion of a foreign policy win, Witkoff has validated a key Biden policy and undermined a popular US ally for what might be inevitably petty reasons. After all, in early 2021, Netanyahu drew Trump’s ire for stating that Biden had won the 2020 election.

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Yahya Sinwar was a monstrous ideologue

By Armin Rosen

The ceasefire heralds short-term domestic problems for Netanyahu, with the seven-seat Religious Zionist party threatening to leave the government if fighting doesn’t resume after phase one, an eventuality which would leave the Prime Minister with a slim one-seat majority in the Knesset. Other divisions loom too. Overall, some 800 security personnel have been killed since October 7, meaning there is now a considerable number of Israelis who see decisive victory as the only acceptable return for the sacrifice of hundreds of young men. There have already been small protests against the ceasefire, including near West Bank settlements that have contributed a disproportionate number of war dead.

But accepting this deal is hardly an act of insanity. Aside from freeing the hostages from a living hell, the goal of this agreement, as with many of Netanyahu’s decisions over the past year, has been to create the freedom of action needed to keep fighting. Since October 7, Netanyahu has correctly gambled that a long war would ultimately advantage Israel, a socially cohesive modern state with a strong military and a robust belief in its own survival. The costs of a long war have proven more than bearable. Over a year of fighting, the Israeli economy surpassed $10 billion in foreign technological investment and set records for defense exports. Births increased by 10%, a sign that the society is far from demoralized. Relations with countries like Ireland and South Africa have foundered, but these aren’t exactly major powers. As for the International Criminal Court indictments of Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant: they now seem likelier to hurt the ICC than Israel. Italy, France and Poland have all said they won’t comply with the court’s arrest warrants, while sanctioning the court is one of the top legislative priorities of the incoming Republican-led Congress.

Netanyahu perhaps anticipated that an extended conflict, punctuated by timely concessions, might create its own unpredictable logic, leaving opportunities for the IDF to seize when the time was right.

If that really was Netanyahu’s intention, it seems to have worked. Israel didn’t invade Gaza until late October 2023, waiting until senior US advisers arrived to help plan the operation. The next month, a ceasefire agreement freed roughly half the Hamas hostages and bought Netanyahu enough credit with both Biden and liberal critics at home to keep the war going deep into the following year. By mid-2024, Netanyahu’s constant threats to invade the Gazan border city of Rafah had the effect of creating leverage over the US, which opposed the move. The US spent months bargaining with the Prime Minister in the hope of delaying him — and while waiting to invade Rafah, the IDF built up the Netzarim Corridor and escalated its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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The art of Trump's Israel deal

By Armin Rosen

When Israel did finally take Gaza’s border with Egypt, in the spring of 2024, it secured a strategic asset for future negotiations and completed the total encirclement of Hamas forces, creating opportunities to fight other, more threatening enemies. Israel teased a ground operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon for much of the summer, seizing the strategic initiative and creating another long and inevitably fruitful series of negotiations with Israel’s allies in Washington. When an invasion finally came, Hezbollah lost almost all its senior commanders, most of its elite Radwan force, and many of its missiles, alongside a plethora of subterranean fortresses and almost as many fighters as died during 13 years of civil war in Syria. Nor was Syria itself immune to this approach. The fall of the Assad regime, and Israel’s subsequent destruction of the country’s air defenses and most of its conventional military capacity, was a downstream consequence of Netanyahu’s success at keeping the fighting going.

In other words, Netanyahu has gained much by biding his time, even as he proved that both Israelis and their army can sustain a once-unimaginable blend of high-tempo operations across seven different fronts. That, indeed, is ultimately why the ceasefire might help his country: buying time both domestically and in Washington, it gives the premier space to plan and execute his next move.

In the first place, the ceasefire agreement helps resolve discontent among Israelis. Many blame Netanyahu for the suffering of the hostages, out of a misguided but understandable belief that he could have responsibly agreed to a prisoner swap much earlier. At the same time, the social strain caused by the repeated mobilization of IDF reserve units has stoked an increasingly bitter debate over the forced conscription of ultra-orthodox Israelis, largely exempt from military service. Six weeks of ceasefire will mark the first time in 14 months that Israel hasn’t been waging any large-scale ground operations, giving both army and society a much-needed rest.

The deal also fosters good will with the Trump Administration, whose Middle East policies are increasingly difficult to peg. Witkoff is a real estate developer and unknown diplomatic quantity whose company sold the Park Lane Hotel to the Qatar Investment Authority for some $623 million in 2023. Pro-Trump ideologue Tucker Carlson is no fan of the Jewish State, and for the first time in decades an influential current of grassroots Right-wingers are skeptical of the US alliance with Israel. Then there’s Elon Musk. The billionaire reportedly intervened to free Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist imprisoned in Iran. Certainly, the world’s richest man, ever unpredictable, could shake up the global order if he advises Trump to reach his own nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. As for Trump himself, the ceasefire came about in a way that suggests he prioritizes his own deal-making prowess above supporting Israel. That’s hardly ideal, but a pause does give Netanyahu crucial time to assess the confusing new terrain in Washington.

To understand why this matters, we must again return to Iran. Given that a near-nuclear Iran has been hurling ballistic missiles at his country for over a year, it seems possible that Netanyahu sees placating the Americans as an unpleasant yet necessary step on the way towards a strike on Iran’s nuclear program.

Hamas’s reaction to the ceasefire agreement, with its leaders celebrating amid devastation, raises fundamental questions about the meaning of victory. Are wars still won by the usual measures of blood and territory, or is victory now more notional and slippery, a condition existing in the mind above all? Given the sheer scale of destruction over the past year, it seems crass for either side to claim victory. And as one Israeli official told me in early 2024: “You have won when no one has to ask whether you have won or not.” At this point, the event that would do most to turn Israel into an unambiguous winner is the destruction of Iran’s key assets, and the further devastation of the regime that theorized, planned, armed, and financed the slaughter on October 7 and everything that’s come after it.

Though Tehran’s proxies and allies have been whipped on the battlefield, this is a temporary accomplishment as long as the regime can continue to arm and finance them, and Israel’s gains are especially reversible so long as Iran’s nuclear infrastructure remains intact. It is possible that Netanyahu just signed away all of Israel’s achievements in Gaza. Or it could also be that, in freeing the hostages, mollifying his internal critics, and keeping Trump on his side, he’s lengthening the war enough to gain the support, the capacity, and the strategic initiative to finally pull off something truly history-changing.

This is important: and not merely for the militia itself, or the 1.4 million civilians displaced by violence. For 35 years, Lebanese and foreigners alike have battled to build a genuine Lebanese state. Every time, they’ve failed, stymied by Hezbollah and its allies. This time, though, Hezbollah may have little to say in the matter, even as its own future depends on strengthening the civilian political order. Not that Lebanon’s hapless politicians should necessarily be making plans just yet. For while Hezbollah is surely weakened, there are still forces eager to hamstring Lebanese democracy — both among the country’s bickering sects, and in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Lebanese politicians were quick to grasp the ceasefire’s implications. Just hours after the deal was inked, Prime Minister Najib Mikati vowed to “assert the state’s authority over every inch of the homeland”, adding that the Lebanese army must be “at the forefront” of any such move. To be sure, Mikati isn’t the first Lebanese premier to make a dash for sovereignty. Fouad Siniora faced a full-scale rebellion by Hezbollah after moving to dismantle its influence in 2008. Three years earlier, the group assassinated Rafiq Hariri for trying something similar.

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The end of Lebanon's French connection

By Michal Kranz

Almost two decades on from Hariri’s killing, however, Hezbollah is far weaker. The fact it’s been forced to accept America’s ceasefire terms speaks volumes, especially when the deal includes provisions that had once seemed impossible. That notably includes the long-awaited implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, passed at the end of the 2006 war with Israel, and which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces north of the Litani River. In fact, Wednesday’s deal is even more far-reaching, with Hezbollah also obliged to retreat from a mountaintop that overlooks northern Israel. The area’s strategic value has been known for centuries: crusaders built a castle on the peak back in the 12th century, and its ruins attract tourists to this day.

In Hezbollah’s place, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) will be deployed to the country’s south instead. They’ll be in charge of security, and preventing any violations of the ceasefire. Among other things, that could include attempts by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons into the country. As part of the agreement, meanwhile, the US, France and other countries will raise funds to train the LAF, helping it fulfil its new mandate. There are reasons to be sceptical of such an arrangement: it failed spectacularly in 2006. This time, though, the ceasefire includes the creation of a new committee, led by the US and France, to monitor the situation in southern Lebanon and ensure the ceasefire holds.

Nor is this merely a theoretical plan. So far, in fact, things mostly seem to be proceeding smoothly — in terms of the LAF’s deployment anyway. Columns of Lebanese military vehicles have started trundling south, while LAF troops have already entered several towns, much to the relief of exhausted locals. It hasn’t all been easy: Israel has already claimed that Hezbollah is ignoring the ceasefire in several places, leading to limited but deadly clashes with the group at several spots along the border. Hezbollah, in turn, has accused Israel of firing in the direction of civilians returning to their homes. Yet at the same time, Hezbollah missile launchers have been spotted moving northward, and the group has said it’s cooperating with the LAF as it assumes control in the south.

What does all this mean in practice? At the very least, Hezbollah’s monopoly on violence in the south has decisively ended: a monumental shift in itself. For a generation, the group had branded itself as the only organisation in Lebanon capable of acting as its “resistance” to Israel, using this title to justify its extensive arsenal and its domination of south Beirut, southern Lebanon, and much of the Beqaa Valley. Though Hezbollah supporters have claimed that their northward withdrawal changes nothing, the fact is that the organisation’s image is now tarnished. How, to put it differently, can Hezbollah act as the “resistance” to Israel now that it’s retreated almost 30 kilometres from its enemy’s border? The humiliating demise of Hassan Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders is hardly good optics either.

As for Lebanon itself, Hezbollah’s moment of weakness is an opportunity. For the first time in decades, the Lebanese government and its military might just have enough political capital among Lebanon’s war-weary public to assert themselves, finally dragging their country back from the prospect of total state failure.

Especially if they can secure genuine backing from the West, Lebanese leaders may be able to use their present momentum to create the foundations for a fully functioning state. Yesterday, one day after the start of the ceasefire, the country’s feeble government announced that it had agreed to finally hold presidential elections in January: a goal that had eluded it for more than two years.

Naturally, Hezbollah and its allies will continue to hold sway. But with the stick of Israeli guns, and the carrot of American diplomatic and financial support, the government that emerges from the ceasefire will be forced to claw back at least some power from Hezbollah — and will, by default, be more pro-Western than before. Lebanon’s infamous corruption and sectarian infighting will doubtlessly persist. Yet with an increasingly tangible partner, Lebanon’s international friends may finally see an opening to forge a path forward toward not only a new security reality in the country, but also a new economic one as well.

It’s a good sign, surely, that Lebanon’s embattled civilian politicians have received tentative support from an unlikely source: Hezbollah itself. Already, the militia’s relatively passive public statements reflect a willingness to work with the suits — a sign, perhaps, that they know their legitimacy is bruised. Though Hezbollah’s MPs were quick to claim that the “resistance” would continue, meanwhile, they’ve also stated that they would help “people to return [home] and to rebuild”. No less striking, Hezbollah’s new Secretary General has claimed his organisation would work within the framework of the Taif Accords. Ending the Lebanese Civil War, in 1990, they called for the dismantling of the country’s militias. Hezbollah, it hardly needs saying, has ignored that particular clause for decades.

All the same, it would be wrong to bet the house on a new Lebanon. The government in Beirut does have a great opportunity to assert its strength: but that’s partly because it has got so much space to fill. As it stands, the Lebanese state is little more than an abandoned husk, occupied by a myriad of sectarian political parties. To put it differently, then, the post-war order offers ample opportunities to several other partisan groups — certainly not Hezbollah, but no more democratic for it.

Hezbollah’s Shi’a allies in the Amal Movement, and who have challenged the group’s position in the past, may well view this moment as an opportunity to present themselves as a less risky and volatile party for Lebanese Shi’a. Among Christians, parties that once tacitly backed Hezbollah have already moved away. And if that creates the potential for a more unified anti-Iranian bloc, Sunni parties like the Saudi-backed Future Movement may well re-emerge too.

As I wrote last month, then, this maelstrom will doubtless lead to renewed chaos over the years ahead, especially if Mikati and his deputies fail to exert power over their country’s borders, or else fail to restrain a resurgent Hezbollah.

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And certainly, just such a scenario is possible. The militia, after all, is far more than a domestic Lebanese outfit, with its masters in Tehran remaining crucial. Hezbollah’s troubles have severely damaged Iran’s position in the region, and not simply in terms of men or materiel. For one thing, the ceasefire deal has shattered a central tenet of the regime’s grand strategy: that the fight against Israel in Gaza was inextricably linked to the battle for Lebanon. Though Iran reportedly pressured the militia to accept the ceasefire deal, meanwhile, it also promised to resupply its proxy. But given Israel has implicitly reserved the right to renew attacks against Hezbollah if it violates the ceasefire, something it would inevitably do with US backing, practical support is now much harder to provide. Especially with rival sectarian groups circling, in short, Iran now faces a much less hospitable Lebanese landscape.

Combined with the pressure the ceasefire puts on another Iranian ally — Hezbollah has long supported the Assad dictatorship in Syria — Tehran’s freedom of movement suddenly looks rather constrained. The point, though, is that Iran’s leaders are nothing if not long-term thinkers: there’s no reason to believe that the sphere of influence they’ve meticulously built over decades will suddenly collapse. While, in short, the Islamic Republic’s singular focus on Hezbollah as its strategic lynchpin has proved costly, the country still has moves to play. Just like after the 2006 war, when Beirut tried to use the moment to wrest some control back from Hezbollah, the stage is therefore set for another confrontation. On one side sits the militia and Iran. On the other waits the Lebanese state and its friends. Who’ll emerge triumphant remains to be seen.

The first is the war on social media: in this war, a combination of genuine and impressive Ukrainian tactical successes and inspiring but self-evidently dubious propaganda stories meld into a narrative of a shambolic Russian army falling apart after failing to seize Kyiv on the first day of war and sinking into a quagmire it cannot win. Boosted by social media influencers, some online veterans of earlier narrative wars, this is clearly the dominant framework, a heroic David and Goliath story emotionally resonant to external well-wishers.

And then there’s the second war, the one on the ground. Every day, new maps are released by professional and amateur military analysts which make grim reading for Ukraine’s supporters. In the south and in the east, a great pincer is slowly grinding forward to surround the bulk of Ukraine’s troops deployed along the line of contact against separatist (that is, pro-Russian Ukrainian) forces. If these Ukrainian troops do not withdraw soon, and form a new defensive line further to the northwest, they will be encircled, starved of supplies and rendered ineffective. In smaller pockets, like the defenders of Mariupol, they will simply be destroyed by artillery. 

In the northeast, Russian troops have bypassed the near-besieged city of Kharkiv, nearly encircled the strategic city of Chernihiv, and are moving in force on Kyiv’s eastern suburbs. Around a week ago, the first reconnaissance units were seen outside the satellite town of Brovary. Now they have been reinforced with armoured battalion tactical groups (BTGs) and artillery units, which have begun shelling the area around Kyiv’s Boryspil international airport, presumably to soften it up before continuing to tighten their noose around the city.

Both the optimistic and pessimistic interpretations — viewed from a Ukrainian standpoint — are correct, just as both reveal only partial truths. The brave and dogged Ukrainian resistance has definitely caused the Russians greater losses than they were expecting, at a scale unimaginable to far smaller Western European armies, and has surely slowed their advance. The Russians have pursued often mystifying courses of action, barely using their overwhelming air force, and indeed deploying assets they are known to possess like guided munitions and armed drones at a scale far below that seen in the distinctly less existential Syria conflict. 

If the evidence of destroyed and abandoned tanks shown online is any guide, they have preferred to use their older armour rather than their first-line T-90 tanks as the bedrock of their attacking force, perhaps because they are reserving their most modern equipment for a potential military escalation with Nato. On a human level, Russian troops have displayed poor tactical awareness, allowing their convoys to be ambushed by highly-motivated Ukrainian regular and irregular forces, and poor morale, surrendering en masse or simply abandoning their vehicles to capture and destruction and themselves to international derision. 

And yet, every evening the map updates are published, and the Russians are still moving forward and pressing dangerously closer to their objectives. It is undeniable that they are taking heavy punishment, and may not be able to sustain this tempo of movement or of losses for many weeks longer; but, then, it seems possible that this phase of the war will be over by then. We should also remember that a Ukrainian-dominated media campaign does not provide a clear sense of the condition of the Ukrainian army after two weeks of war: it too has been taking heavy losses, and its losses are significantly harder to replace. So while it is of course foolish to pronounce with any great certainty about the outcome of a war that is still less than two weeks old, there are perhaps tentative reasons to think that a negotiated settlement may be closer than it looks from outside.

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Test article

By Aris Roussinos

If the interpretation is correct that Putin expected his Russian troops to be welcomed by Ukrainian civilians, or at least tacitly acquiesced to, then he has been dramatically shown otherwise. The scale of Ukrainian resistance has been revelatory, perhaps to Ukrainians as much as to Putin, uniting even previously opposed factions in what is little short of a Ukrainian war of independence. A new legend, one of the type essential in the formation and consolidation of any new nation state, has been born, and has won the Ukrainians the admiration of much of the world. Ukrainian regular troops and newly-enlisted Territorial Defence units have fought doggedly and courageously to blunt the Russian advance. Similarly, Ukrainian civilians (perhaps sensing that the Russian military police occupying them will not clamp down too hard on them at this stage), have begun a growing campaign of public protests against Russian occupation. 

Watching all this, Putin must surely sense that even if a narrow military victory is visibly in grasp, the result will only be a political defeat. Ukraine will not happily re-enter the Russian World of his dreams in these circumstances. Even previously sympathetic or ambivalent Russian-speakers in cities like Kharkiv have been lost to Putin by their horrific experience of bombardment.

Instead, the invasion has deepened the common sense of Ukrainian nationhood, as well as deepening its emotional and political enmeshment with the rest of Europe. It is difficult to imagine that, even if they should seize the capital and decapitate the government, the Russians will find occupation an easy or bloodless task. Indeed, the opposite may be true: it is likely the case that the Russians will need to employ the moral and political capital Zelensky has acquired over the course of the conflict in selling a deal to his domestic audience. 

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Europe must prepare for war

By Aris Roussinos

If we assume that it is preferable for both sides to avoid the destruction of Kyiv, and the death of thousands on each side during its storming that an assault would entail, then the moment Kyiv is encircled would be a logical moment of pause lending itself to a ceasefire (another such circumstance might be the encircling of tens of thousands of Ukraine’s best troops in the East, but the isolation of Kyiv will likely happen sooner). The Russians and Ukrainians are already negotiating, and Zelensky has at the time of writing begun to hint that the status of the Crimea and Donbas are up for negotiation, and that Nato membership seems unachievable for now: all Russian political goals and not far from the terms Russia initially demanded to stave off an invasion. It would be a difficult domestic sell for Zelensky, after so many tactical victories against overwhelming odds and after forging such a fever pitch of unity against the invader, to sign away what would amount almost to a surrender, but the no-fly zone discourse perhaps points at one way he might.

The Nato summit last week at which the Western alliance emphasised that there would be no no-fly zone created, for risk of escalating into a greater European war, was a very public nudge to the Ukrainians to negotiate in earnest. There simply will be no Nato deus ex machina to dismantle Russia’s superiority in the air or on the ground. Equally, Zelensky’s increasing tendency to lambast the West for not providing enough military support (despite Nato doing everything but engage in open war against Russia on Ukraine’s behalf) can perhaps be setting up the conditions under which he can regretfully sign away control of Crimea and the Donbas and blame it on faithless external patrons. Both regions were probably already gone for good, in any case. It would be a stab-in-the-back myth of sorts, perhaps with unintended consequences down the line, but immediately preferable to a continuance of the war into a second, bloodier phase; these, though, are decisions for Ukrainians to make.

For the Nato alliance, there are two opposing paths to choose between. One strategy would be to force Putin to deal with a long Ukrainian insurgency which would bleed Russia, distracting it to a point where it would pose less of a threat to Nato’s eastern flank. To this end, flooding the country with portable anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft missiles would, as well as being support for the Ukrainian cause, weaken Russia just as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weakened America — most probably more so. Yet against this viewpoint, we can also see that prolonging the war in Ukraine over years or decades would, like the war in Syria, be devastating for the country, for its historic cities and for its people. Two million refugees have already fled for Europe in the war’s first fortnight, and though they are more welcome in Central Europe than Middle Eastern refugees, millions more would be a significant challenge to their hosting nations. 

A prolonged insurgency, organised around a rump Ukrainian state in the country’s nationalist western heartland, might not win support for long from neighbouring European states. The prospect of a European Syria or Afghanistan in Galicia and Transcarpathia, where well-armed militia groups who are already a concern would challenge the authority of a weakened, and perhaps exiled Ukrainian administration, from where untraced weapons would likely leak back into the European Union, and along whose borders Nato would daily run the risk of small military incidents with Russia escalating out of control, is not an appealing one to European leaders.

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A Putin puppet government will fail

By Vladislav Davidzon

For Ukraine, Russia and the Nato alliance, the next week or so may present a slim opportunity for a ceasefire and de-escalation, introduced by a sudden tilt of the scales in Russia’s favour, such as the encirclement of Kyiv. All sides involved have a clearer appreciation of the facts on the ground than any of us trying to parse the outcome of the war from glimpses of clashes, losses and troop movements on social media’s restricted window. Nato was right to provide Ukraine with the munitions that have made the Russian advance so costly — and which should give Putin pause before ordering the assault on Kyiv. These munitions have enabled the Ukrainians to negotiate from a position of relative strength: yet once Kyiv is besieged, the Ukrainian position will weaken with each passing day.

Nato’s insistence there will be no no-fly zone also puts the already low prospect of a Ukrainian military victory far beyond reach. The alliance has gone almost as far as it can go in supporting Ukraine, and everyone involved knows it. Negotiating a painful peace deal may seem all stick and no carrot for the Ukrainians, who have fought hard and well. The EU should hold firm in insisting on some closer and more generous form of relationship, including membership candidacy status, with postwar Ukraine. 

The situation for Russia, though better than it may seem online, is worse for Putin than he would wish. Economically and diplomatically isolated, Russia is now rapidly approaching a narrow military victory on the ground, beyond which a bloody and costly war of occupation appears to stretch into the future. If Putin entered the war with more expansive dreams, he must surely realise they are now beyond his reach.

A golden bridge away from war may now be forming, very soon and for a very short period of time. If those involved do not take it, it is very likely they will all soon wish they had.