There was no other solution than the return to the famous negotiation table in the war which saw Israel compete and Iran in recent days. We have hammered it repeatedly because it is both the order of evidence and common sense. Donald Trump, announcing last night a total ceasefire between such Aviv and Tehran, wants to believe that finally, everything that was done by one and the others last week paid, for the good of humanity and overall security. You have to believe in an agreement that puts an end to the missiles that fell on Iran, Israel and more recently on Qatar and Iraq.
Because there is at one point an ultimate point that no one wants to cross: the fatal gear and the famous “third world war”, which has become an Arlesian who must remain so. In a conflict like the one we have experienced, everyone seeks to defend themselves, and above all to be feared to be respected. Israel wanted to annihilate Iranian nuclear installations, which he claims to have done with the help of the United States. Including act. True or false, what matters is the certainty that he has and so much the better, because basically it suits everyone that we stop there, that is to say that we stop before the risk collapse of the Iranian regime.
Iran took expensive in a week, undermined by a “preventive” war waged without respite By Tel Aviv, the weakening surely and permanently. Surely so that it no longer represents a substantial threat to the Hebrew state and the region. Sustainably, because four to five years of respite between the belligerents represents an eternity on the scale of the Middle East. This is what we must be satisfied: silence the weapons for a while, and reach a ceasefire as fragile as it is. But return to a constructive dialogue, including to bend the mullah regime.
In hybrid conflicts that have been tearing the Middle East for thirty years, weapons have not brought a lasting solution
In hybrid conflicts that have been tearing the Middle East for thirty years, weapons have hardly bring a lasting solution. On the contrary, military interventions have often aggravated tensions, fed cycles of violence, and generated considerable suffering for civilian populations. Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and recently Gaza testify to the failure of armed solutions.
Although many TV experts spend their time serving military soup as the only response and solution to a political threat, we see how much that there remains triumphant multilateralism: dialogue. In fact, weapons can impose a temporary balance of power, which pleases the military strategically speaking, but they do not solve the deep causes of conflicts. While the missiles were raining on Tel Aviv and Tehran, the diplomacies were agitated within the undermanship.
Donald Trump, who has just announced a total ceasefire, has used the two springs he had: the heavy weapon allowing the destruction of buried Iranian nuclear sites (and whose American success he qualifies like the Israelis), and the weapon of speech to discuss with the enemy. We had reached such a dangerous paroxysm for the whole planet, politically as economically, that it was urgent to reach an agreement and the end of the fighting. The closure of the Strait of Ormuz would have disabled the entire planet, including the Chinese ally of Tehran. Qatar, once again, played the role of transmission belt. By still targeting the American base of Al Udeid yesterday on Qatari soil, the Iranian regime wanted to show that he could still take revenge on the American attack at a lower cost, of course. Aim for an installation EMirats or Saudi Arabia would have had much more harmful consequences.
At the same time, Doha firmly condemned the attack of which he had just been the object with the Americans, but continued in the name of regional security its action: Qatar is “friend”, strategically speaking, with Iran, since it shares the largest gas field in the world, but its alliance has been strengthened since the 2017 blockade and the total isolation of Doha caused by Riyadh. It was therefore easy for him, by his tradition of mediation in the region, to make the link with the United States, and indirectly Israel with whom he has been discussing for months and months on the fate of Israeli hostages in Palestinian territory but also on a total ceasefire.
Israel could not go further without putting the Israelis in danger, who lived difficult nights, like never on their own soil. The mullahs wanted to save themselves, which will not necessarily satisfy the Iranians, who suffered even more repression during the war. And Donald Trump in all of this? By providing competition in Tel Aviv for a “victory” flash against Iran, and a rapid attack on war objectives set by Netanyahu that was the destruction of nuclear sites, the American president emerges from us his transactionalism card to cease the fight: Israel surely did not aspire to a new war that could get bogged down, no more than Iran. Even less Donald Trump, who manages in 48 hours to help the Hebrew state, finish the Iranian threat for a while, maintain the weakened regime without causing chaos, and continue to reassure his electorate Maga, which would have made him pay dearly in the next mid-term elections, a total and lasting involvement of America on the spot.
*Sébastien Boussois is DOfficer in political science, Arab and geopolitical world researcher, teacher in international relations at IHECS (Brussels), associated with CNAM Paris (Defense Security Team), at the Institute for Applied Geopolitics Studies (IEGA Paris), the Nordic Center for Conflict Transformation (NCCT Stockholm) and at the Geostrategic Observatory in Geneva (Switzerland).
