Israel unlikely to end war on Iran soon
While President Trump has urged Iran to return to the negotiating table soon or face more punishing military assault from Israel, Israel is unlikely to agree to a ceasefire anytime soon, some former U.S. diplomats and military officials said today.
“They’d like to talk, but they should have done that before,” Trump told journalists at the G7 summit in Canada today, regarding the Iranians, before leaving the summit early to return to Washington to convene his national security council.
“It’s painful for both parties, but I’d say Iran is not winning this war,” he continued. “And they should talk, and they should talk immediately before it’s too late.”
A former western government official said he thinks that the U.S. administration wants the Iranians to signal that they’ll take the U.S. proposal conveyed by envoy Steve Witkoff a couple weeks ago, and if so, “it’s over.” The source seemed to see all the US military moves, etc. as a form of coercive diplomacy.
French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that Trump left the G7 summit summit early to consider a ceasefire proposal. “There is indeed an offer to meet and exchange,” Macron said. “An offer was made especially to get a ceasefire and to then kickstart broader discussions.”
‘If the United States can achieve a ceasefire, that's a very good thing,’ Macron said, the BBC reported.
But Israel may prefer that it doesn’t work, at least not yet.
Mission Creep
Former Central Command commander Frank McKenzie saw mission creep emerging in Israel’s war aims in Iran, as a result of the “astonishing” early success of its military operation.
“I do believe that regime change is on the table in Tel Aviv, and I think that represents a thing that we should be very familiar with in the United States: mission creep,” McKenzie, a retired Marine Corps general, said on a zoom panel hosted by the Middle East Institute today (June 16). “Where you have astonishing initial success, so your goals tend to expand.”
“So I think perhaps that when they (the Israelis) went into this, they were looking at a more narrowly targeted campaign,” he said. “But the [Iranian] inability to defend themselves, and the success the Israelis have had, opens new vistas…So there’s a tremendous amount of energy behind commanders to push forward.”
“So I think the broadest possible thing that could be said is regime change is on the table, either as a forcing mechanism to bring the Iranians to negotiate, or as end in itself,” he said.
Regime change in Iran is not an “explicit” military goal of the Israeli campaign, but is something that Israel implicitly would like to see happen, former Israeli general Giora Eiland said today.
Regime change “is not one of the formal, explicit goals, and it is not something that we are fighting for,” Eiland, a former IDF and Israeli National Security Council chief, said on a zoom panel hosted by the American Middle East Press Association (AMEPA) today.
“It is an implicit hope that it will happen sooner or later,” Eiland continued. “But this, by itself, is not the goal of the operation. The goal of the operation is purely a military one: to push back the Iranian nuclear project—not to destroy it. We cannot destroy it. But to push it back,… and bring them two, three years back…And to remove the threat of the ballistic missiles to a very low level that we can live with.”
“These are the only real military goals, and as soon as they are achieved, I believe that Israel will look for some process to end this war,” Eiland said.
“But I don’t think this war will end just because we managed to achieve what we want,” he continued, saying then there is likely to be some sort of American Iranian negotiation on the terms to end the war.
The Israeli Defense Forces have eliminated approximately 30% of Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles, IDF spokesperson Capt. Masa Michelson said on the AMEPA Zoom panel today.
Israel target list goes beyond nuclear and military targets
“The bottom line is, this is Israel’s world, and we’re just watching it right now,” former State Department Persian language spokesman Alan Eyre said on the MEI zoom panel, regarding what Israel has been targeting in Iran. “We’re just watching to see what their plans are. It’s clear, it’s more than nuclear…[and] military infrastructure. So we’re going to see what their targeting is.”
Israel is unlikely to face sufficient domestic or international pressure to wind the war down soon, Eyre assessed.
“Even though Iran has tried to retaliate, it seems obvious…that they’re not going to be able to do the amount of damage in Israel that’s going to cause domestic pressure to get Israel to wind down before Israel wants to wind down,” he said.
“And on the international front,…I don’t think there’s going to be a sufficient, effective pressure on Israel from any part…of the international community to stop before they want to stop,” he continued.
“It has freedom of operations in Iran right now, or least over Tehran and some of the major cities,” Eyre said. “So basically, they’re going to keep bombing until they feel they’ve achieved some type of goal that they’ve got.”
“I think they’re…quite eager to the draw the US into the fight,” Eyre continued.
While there are some signals from Iran that it may be willing to return to negotiations, “that’s not enough for Israel,” Eyre said. “I don’t think that’s going to be effective again.”
“We all know Iran is lobbying other Gulf countries to put pressure on the US…but I don’t see them effectively getting the US to get Israel to slow down,” he said.
“So you’ve got IRGC elements…on the hard-line side saying we’re in this for the long haul, and you’ve got other more moderate elements in Iran saying we want to end this as quickly as possible, even if we have to take a strategic step backwards,” Eyre said.
Iran’s foreign minister today urged President Trump to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “pave the way for a return to diplomacy.”
“If President Trump is genuine about diplomacy and interested in stopping this war, next steps are consequential,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on Twitter. “Israel must halt its aggression, and absent a total cessation of military aggression against us, our responses will continue.”
“It takes one phone call from Washington to muzzle…Netanyahu,” Aragchi’s tweet continued. “That may pave the way for a return to diplomacy.”
“Conversely,” the Iranian diplomat warned, “getting the U.S. mired in the Mother of Forever Wars will destroy any prospect for a negotiated solution, with dangerous, unpredictable…consequences for regional security and the global economy.”
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