*** 6/18/26 - Economist - Donald Trump gambles that Iran wants money more than power + The end of the war in Iran threatens “glorious failure” for Israel + War has strengthened the Islamic Republic. Peace could split it
Buzz Sawyer
"Yet there are many reasons to think this gamble will fail. Iran’s hardline leaders have no reason to
"All this is also likely to hurt Mr Netanyahu’s prospects of re-election in October. It will be hard to sell himself
That said, the main opposition leaders were just as gung-ho when war began. Their criticism is that
Donald Trump gambles that Iran
wants money more than power
The peace deal is all carrot and no stick
HAVING FAILED to defeat Iran with bombs, can President Donald Trump salvage something with bribes? After weeks of haggling over how to end the war, he and his Iranian counterpart have signed a short peace memo. It amounts to the promise of lots and lots of money for Iran, so long as it can satisfy Mr Trump that it has abandoned any plans for a nuclear weapon. That is a huge and unlikely gamble and it leaves the countries of the Middle East with some hard thinking.
The memo ditches many of Mr Trump’s war aims. There will be no regime change; no succour for Iran’s oppressed people; no limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles or its support of proxies. Instead the deal focuses on two things. One is reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where the foolishness of Mr Trump’s war and the humiliation of his climbdown are laid bare. Before the fighting, vessels had free passage; after the 60 days in this deal, they may well have to pay a fee.
The other focus is the nuclear programme. The regime has given up almost nothing. Its promise not to get a bomb is old. It will down-blend its stocks of enriched uranium and discuss the rest of its programme, but the issues are complex and Iran is masterful at stringing things along. And then there are the bribes. Iran can immediately export oil and derivatives. Depending on the talks’ progress, America will unfreeze assets worth tens of billions of dollars, lift sanctions and help create a fund of at least $300bn for reconstruction and development. Mr Trump is tired of war. If, as planned, American troops depart within 30 days, his ability to use force will be limited.
The regime thus has an unprecedented opportunity to trade nukes for cash and investment. Unlike previous presidents, Mr Trump doesn’t care about democracy. Having weaponised the strait, Iran may now see less value in nuclear bombs. The regime is unpopular at home: it could use the money.
Yet there are many reasons to think this gamble will fail. Iran’s hardline leaders have no reason to trust America. They will expect Israel to sabotage the deal. The regional influence they crave comes from being the foe of the Great Satan. The nuclear programme offers prestige and, potentially, protection. Inspectors will struggle to stop them cheating. Iran’s leaders will be tempted to have their yellow cake and eat it.
Israel argued for this war, but it has turned out a bitter disappointment. It fought shoulder to shoulder with the Americans only for Mr Trump to cut it out of the negotiations and undermine its campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon. That could cost its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, re-election in October. The war was a strategic failure, because Iran remains a threat. Mr Netanyahu tested how far America was prepared to go, and it was not far enough for Israel to prevail. Any successor will need to devise a new security doctrine.
The Gulf countries need to restore their reputations as havens of prosperity in a violent neighbourhood. Prepare for some wishful thinking, but the fact is that Iranian drones and missiles will continue to pose a threat. Pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz will help. But the Gulf also needs to overhaul its security. Nobody can be sure how willingly America will fight in the future. Some states will look for ways to deter Iran—the United Arab Emirates could seek even closer ties with Israel. Others may attempt to accommodate it. Still others may steer between the two.
Mr Trump should never have begun this war. Once again, he is basing his way out of it on the idea that people will do anything for money. However, the first rule of diplomacy is not to imagine that your opponent thinks as you do. ■
for Israel
Donald Trump’s deal with Iran leaves America’s ally without any strategic gains
ON FEBRUARY 28TH hundreds of American and Israeli warplanes took off simultaneously to launch the opening salvo of their war on Iran. For 40 days the two allies’ military partnership was intense and close. But with the agreement by Donald Trump and Iran’s leaders meant to bring their war to an end, the nature of that partnership has shifted. Israel has been shut out of the negotiations with Iran. And the agreement signed between America and Iran on June 17th deals with few, if any, of Israel’s concerns.
The outcome for Israel is, as one of the country’s diplomats in Jerusalem describes it, “a glorious failure”. It is also a personal blow to Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. He has invested enormous political capital in convincing America’s president that a war with Iran could fundamentally change the situation in the Middle East for the better, perhaps even topple the Islamic Republic’s regime.
Despite Mr Netanyahu’s claims, and the serious damage inflicted on Iran, the regime is still standing. Indeed, hardliners have been empowered. The deal does not immediately tackle Iran’s nuclear programme, Israel’s greatest concern. Iran retains the capability to fire ballistic missiles at Israel, the rest of the Middle East and beyond. The agreement with America does not refer to Iran’s missile programme.
Nor does it address one of Israel’s other great worries: Iran’s network of regional proxies. The most powerful of these, Hizbullah, the Shia militia in Lebanon, gains new protection from Israeli attacks in the deal. Israel tried to scupper the truce hours before it was announced when it attacked a target in Beirut, after Hizbullah had launched more drones. But instead of derailing negotiations, as Mr Netanyahu clearly desired, the attack only encouraged Mr Trump to seal the deal.
Israel’s defence minister insisted that troops would remain in the “security zones” that it has captured in southern Lebanon, but the accord between America and Iran stipulates that America’s allies, namely Israel, end the war in Lebanon.
Israel can no longer rely on its ally’s backing over this. The American president gave a series of interviews in which he said he was “so pissed off” with his erstwhile partner for having “no fucking judgment” in launching the strike on Beirut and described him as “a very difficult guy”.
An Israeli official previously stationed in Washington said that “a large part of the problem is that we no longer have the same kind of relationship with America in which officials spoke openly to each other at all levels. Now it has all been subsumed by the connection between Netanyahu and Trump and their personal dramas.”
More fundamentally, Israel’s and America’s goals in Iran have become less aligned. A few in Israel’s defence and intelligence establishment warned their generals of this discrepancy in the first days of the war. But their bosses were swept away by the success of early air strikes and backed Mr Netanyahu through the war. Then Mr Trump called time. He was more interested in dealing with the same regime that Israel wanted to bring down. Since then, Israel has been left out in the cold.
Confronting Iran has been Mr Netanyahu’s idée fixe for years. He has led Israel twice into wars with that intention. Although these campaigns caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear and missiles programmes, that could prove temporary. Israel has damaged its crucial ties with America and its relations with Arab countries that saw it as an ally against Iran.
All this is also likely to hurt Mr Netanyahu’s prospects of re-election in October. It will be hard to sell himself as the guarantor of Israel’s security when he appears to have achieved so little over Iran. Nor can he afford to be seen at loggerheads with Mr Trump. He has made much of his relationship with the president, who has been very popular in Israel.
That said, the main opposition leaders were just as gung-ho when war began. Their criticism is that Mr Netanyahu failed to get results, not that he launched it. “We desperately need a new Iran policy,” says a military planner. For now, Israel has no prospect of one. ■
For now, the hardliners are in the ascendant
It proved to be the regime, not the people, that triumphed. The Iranians in whose name Binyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump launched their war, repressed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc), scarcely seem to matter. The authorities still hang people in twos—like the serpents on the shoulders of Zahak, the tyrant of Persian myth, who demanded two human brains daily to sate them. Memories of the massacres after the protests of January have dulled any appetite to rise up. Mr Trump, meanwhile, is cursed for bringing penury, not liberation.
War steadied a wobbling regime, but the peace will bring challenges. Gone is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who arbitrated among rival factions. Gone too, for now, are the foreign attackers that helped keep the elite united. In its place comes Mr Trump’s offer: a deal that could bring the Islamic Republic its biggest windfall in decades. For an impoverished country, the prospect is tantalising—and is dividing pragmatists from purists.
The leading pragmatist is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, a former irgc commander and ally of Iran’s oligarchs. Alongside Masoud Pezeshkian, the president, and Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, he has championed the deal as “a great stride to final victory”. Mr Ghalibaf, together with J.D. Vance, America’s vice-president, signed it remotely on June 14th before Mr Trump and Mr Pezeshkian put their names to it.
Mr Ghalibaf’s political evolution has been striking. As an irgc commander, he boasted of clubbing protesters from his motorbike in 1999. Yet since first running for president in 2005 he has courted the middle classes, seeking support from a public that has never trusted him. He now hopes to inherit the mantle of Hassan Rouhani and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former presidents who sought to open Iran to the West, says an Iranian analyst.
Allies of Mr Ghalibaf argue that economic realities leave little alternative. Another war, they warn, could see Iran’s oil infrastructure destroyed. State finances have been crippled by collapsing oil-export revenues. Mr Pezeshkian’s government has exceeded expectations in maintaining electricity and water supplies, but summer blackouts are expected. Many security people now operate from their cars for lack of functioning police stations. Any further weakening of central authority could trigger unrest.
Mr Ghalibaf’s allies also suggest he has bigger aims. With Khamenei’s death, the generals have taken the lead, sidelining the long-dominant clerics. Even before the war, mandatory veils for women were enforced ever less. In affluent parts of Tehran, shorts and tank-tops are common. Comparisons with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, who defanged the religious police and relaxed conservative social norms, abound.
Some speak optimistically of a political opening. Reformers have proposed breaking up the vast bonyads, the clerics’ tax-exempt foundations—a latter-day dissolution of the monasteries. Veteran dissidents abroad say they have had personal invitations to return. After the war last June, the regime ignored calls to harness the wartime spirit of unity with efforts to reconcile and reform. Mass protests followed. This time, insists one dissident invited home, the lesson may have been learnt.
They may be disappointed. For now, at least, the hardliners dominate, euphoric from what they hail as their victory against America and Israel. Their zealous base came out at the start of the war with loudspeakers, rallying recruits and guarding against the return of the protesters, and have stayed ever since.
To them, Mr Ghalibaf’s bargain with the man they hold responsible for killing their rahbar—their political and spiritual leader—is treachery. At rallies they denounce him by name and mock him as naive for still trusting Mr Trump. The deal, they warn, is another Trumpian trick. This time, says one, the president wants Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and replenish depleted global oil reserves. Once markets are resupplied, they fear, Mr Trump will strike again. Why settle now, they ask, when America is over a barrel?
Which faction prevails will probably depend on figures now largely hidden from view. Under velayat-e faqih, the Islamic Republic’s rule of the jurist, the supreme leader was designed to be the representative of the Hidden Imam whom Shias believe entered occultation in the ninth century. Mojtaba Khamenei, the late leader’s son and successor, is hidden too. One hundred days after assuming power, not even a photo has emerged as proof of life. Ahmad Vahidi, the irgc chief, and several senior generals remain underground.
For now, Mr Ghalibaf and his dealmakers appear to enjoy their backing. Mr Ghalibaf secured re-election as speaker last month with more than 80% of mps’ votes. Saeed Jalili, standard-bearer of the hardliners, has reportedly been removed from the Supreme National Security Council, the republic’s wartime decision-making body. A permanent ceasefire would allow the leadership to emerge from hiding and consolidate control. “You can play with nine men in extra time,” says one analyst, “but not match after match.” If America offers serious financial relief, it may prove difficult to resist. After Iran accepted a settlement to end the war with Iraq in the 1980s, it had to buy off a revolutionary base angered by what they saw as a sell-out. The same calculation may hold once again. ■