Trying to hammer out a sustainable peace plan between the US, Israel, Lebanon and Iran is already an impossibly hard task, despite the fact that it is needed to bring the world back from the brink.
But Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to add a caveat that a slew of Muslim-majority countries must also sign the Abraham Accords (diplomatic agreements with Israel) as a “mandatory” condition for a peace deal with Iran is dangerous and unnecessary, particularly as the countries in question have had this war forced upon them. They include Pakistan, the peace broker, which has already categorically rejected the suggestion, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which host US bases and so have come under Iranian missile fire.
It is no exaggeration to say that the lives of millions of people, the future of the global economy, and the security of the region as well as that of the wider world depend on a peace deal being struck with Iran.
We have all experienced the financial impact of this senseless conflict, which has stretched across 13 countries, killed more than 6,000 people, and – with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – caused the biggest disruption to global energy supplies in history.
While we are all already dealing with a surge in the cost of living and volatile markets, the true impact has yet to be felt, according to the International Energy Agency, which said that the full repercussions won’t kick in until the end of the year.
Just last week, Yvette Cooper, echoing warnings from the United Nations, said that the world is “sleepwalking into a global food crisis”. Tens of millions of people are going to go hungry if the Strait of Hormuz continues to be blocked by Iran (and in part by the US) and fertiliser does not get to farmers.
We do not yet know the butterfly effect of this conflict. And we do not want to.
So what is going on?
The war in Iran is not popular in the US. Last week, a poll by The New York Times/Siena showed that two-thirds of voters believe Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran was the wrong one.
This has had a significant impact on Trump’s approval rating, a key historical predictor of how a president’s party will fare in an election. It sank to a second-term low of 37 per cent, according to the same poll, just a few months ahead of critical midterm elections.
Trump, who campaigned as the “President of Peace”, regularly boasts that he has resolved “eight wars”, and has made no secret of his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize, needs a win in that department.
Managing to secure a deal with Iran, which he will sell as a win no matter the cost, alongside more Abraham Accords sign-ons, would no doubt be a spectacular way to get his reputation back on track with his support base.
The problem is that it is impossible, and will see further delays and possibly conflict on the horizon.
On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that during discussions about a truce, he had told the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain that, “at a minimum”, these countries must sign on to the Abraham Accords first. “It should be mandatory,” he added.
The UAE and Bahrain, which have never formally been at war with Israel, already did that six years ago, recognising Israel and agreeing lucrative deals on diplomacy, tourism, security, arms and trade – amounting to billions of dollars, according to Israeli statistics.
Former US president Joe Biden had hoped to get Saudi Arabia to follow suit by the end of 2023.
Any hope was immediately upended by Hamas’s bloody attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, and Israel’s subsequent unprecedented bombardment of Gaza, which killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly 2 million people.
Israel’s attacks on Gaza were so grave, UN experts have said they amounted to a genocide (something Israel denies) and warned that Israel has escalated its “campaign of ethnic cleansing and annexation” in the occupied West Bank (again, something Israel has denied).
Riyadh and others have repeatedly made recognition of Israel conditional on the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme-right government has made it abundantly clear that there will be no Palestinian state. Senior members of his cabinet, including national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, are instead making the de facto annexation of the West Bank into a de jure one.
The war on Gaza and the assault on the occupied West Bank have already pushed the existing Abraham Accords to the point of collapse: countries like the UAE have faced significant pressure to pull out of them.
By tying a messy deal involving Iran, Israel, the US and Lebanon to the expansion of the already-flailing Abraham Accords across another half-dozen countries, Trump is adding a layer of dangerous (not to mention impossible) complexity that could end all hope of resolving the current conflict – and possibly even spark new ones.
The Iran truce is complicated enough on its own. Visions for the future – including who will control the Strait of Hormuz, and what will become of Iran’s nuclear programme and its leadership – are existentially opposed.
We have already seen the negotiations almost completely upended by Israel’s continued assault on Lebanon and its war with Lebanon’s militant group, Hezbollah. That was nominally addressed by a barely existent truce, which is not really holding. Right now, there are concerns about a permanent expansion of Israel’s borders into Lebanese sovereign territory, alongside fears of civil conflict within a fractured Lebanon.
There were further fears of escalation on Tuesday after heated exchanges between the US and Iran, which accused Washington of violating the existing ceasefire with strikes in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province.
Throwing in sudden impossible curveballs means more war on the horizon. And everything is at stake.
