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“The 12 day war” has a certain ring to it. By giving the conflict between Iran, Israel and the US that title, Donald Trump is doing two things. First, the US president is trying to draw a definitive line under the fighting. Second, he is suggesting that the past 12 days of warfare will be a reordering moment for the Middle East — similar to the six-day war of 1967, in which Israel defeated Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
Will either of these claims stand the test of time? Within hours of Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire, Israel had accused Iran of violating it — and vowed a forceful response. Trump, in turn, responded with a profanity-laced instruction to both parties to pull back.
It could be that this is just a case of two fighters exchanging a last flurry of blows after the bell — and that the worst fighting is genuinely over. Alternatively, Trump’s proclamation of “PEACE” may turn out to be wishful thinking — underlining once again that the US is not in control of events in the region.
Although the ceasefire is clearly fragile, it is a plausible signal that the conflict is now winding down. Even so, that is more likely to mark a pause in hostilities between Israel and Iran — rather than the definitive new start that Trump is searching for.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is clearly badly battered. But it is still intact for now. Rather than changing the Iranian leadership’s worldview, the conflict will have confirmed its underlying assumptions — that Israel and the US are very dangerous enemies.
As a result, the Iranian leadership will now look for ways to rebuild their military strength and domestic legitimacy. Vali Nasr, author of Iran’s Grand Strategy argues that the regime is “not in a mindset to say we can’t deal with the Israel threat, let’s just make peace with it.”
Rebuilding Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme — and its network of regional proxies — will be very difficult; but perhaps not impossible. And Iran now also has every incentive to look for new ways of striking back at Israel.
In Nasr’s view, the regime’s “greatest vulnerability right now is the population”. Efforts to rebuild a domestic support base are likely to concentrate on appeals to nationalism in the face of an external threat.
Without regime change in Iran — or a definitive shift in mentality — Israel’s apparent triumph in the 12-day war will be far from guaranteed. The Israelis have demonstrated extraordinary military and intelligence capabilities. But they have also shown that, in the last resort, they are still dependent on the US to come in and finish the job.
Since the Islamic Republic is not definitively defeated, Israel and the US need to find alternative ways of securing the peace in the region.
But, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack of October 7 2023, peacemaking has gone out of fashion in Israel. The Netanyahu government and most of its plausible successors seem instead committed to a national security strategy based on regional hegemony. That has been established for now. But, for a country of ten million people, in a region of several hundred million, it will always remain a tenuous achievement.
Trump is clearly determined to go down in history as a peacemaker — and recently reiterated his view that he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The people around the president have long wanted to build upon the Abraham Accords, signed in Washington during Trump’s first term, which saw Israel normalise relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
But normalising relations between Israel and Iran — two countries that have just fought a war and that remain bitter enemies — will be incomparably harder. The Trump team is also short on diplomatic firepower. Neither Marco Rubio or Steve Witkoff — the US secretary of state and special envoy — look like modern Henry Kissingers.
Trump’s evocation of the memory of the six-day war of 1967 is double-edged. Six years later in 1973, Israel was once again at war with Egypt and Syria.
