It could also signal the beginning of the end for two of the most destabilising forces in Middle Eastern politics: the enduring influence of America’s neoconservative war hawks and Washington’s “special relationship” with Israel.
The road toward that happy ending became clear when the United States acknowledged a self-evident, yet usually overlooked fact: Iran has the right to defend itself.
For decades, it has been unspoken, but de facto, US policy that only Israel has an absolute right of self-defence and that other countries in the region have a qualified right if Washington deems them worthy and cooperative.
Certainly, entities with an adversarial relationship with Israel had no such right.
That was evident in decades of American policy that sanctioned Iran for developing the very missiles it has used in the wake of the surprise attacks by the US and Israel against it.
Even more, it is clear from the oft-repeated terms of the American version of a two-state solution, which always included the condition that a Palestinian state would be demilitarised.
Thus, even in the fantasy where a Palestinian state was permitted to emerge, it would be permanently at the mercy of Israel.
Suddenly, in the wake of the humiliating defeat Israel and the US suffered at the hands of Tehran, and following the years of genocide in Gaza and repeated invasions of Lebanon and Syria, the White House is speaking in dramatically different terms than we’ve ever heard before.
Where Iran’s ballistic missile program once made it the target of not just American but United Nations sanctions, US President Donald Trump now says of such missiles:
If other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for (Iran) not to have some. If Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and they all have some, I would say that in relative proportion, I think it’s okay.
In case Trump’s message was unclear, his Vice-President JD Vance explained it further. “Israel doesn’t give up the right of self-defence if Hezbollah fires rockets or drones at Israel,” he said. “You can’t tell the country, whether Israel or Iran, they’re not allowed to have any self-defense.”
Vance took it a step further, affirming that Iran has every bit as much a right to defend itself as Israel does.
Such a statement coming from an American vice-president was heretofore unthinkable.
Beaten Back From Adventurism
Vance is in his element. He was an isolationist who was brought into the Trump camp after being a prominent critic to help cement Trump’s campaign image as the candidate who wouldn’t get involved in unnecessary overseas wars.
But it was the same old neoconservative voices, led by people like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee in government, and think tanks like the Vandenberg Coalition, the Heritage Foundation, and the Orwellian-named Foundation for the Defense of Democracies outside of government, that won Trump’s ear in the run-up to the war on Iran.
Those voices have once again been shown to lack both an understanding of the world around them and the basics of strategic thinking.
That ignorance led to the debacle in Iraq more than twenty years ago, but this one, though less destructive, has more thoroughly demonstrated the futility of neoconservative thinking.
In contrast to Iraq, which succeeded in deposing Saddam Hussein before it degenerated into the quagmire that virtually everyone with expertise in the Middle East at the time predicted it would, Iran began with failure and ended in disaster for American planners.
From bombing a school full of little girls to the replacement of all of the United States’ and Israel’s initial war goals with getting the Strait of Hormuz reopened, the Iran war was a fiasco.
It would have been laughable if so much damage had not been done and so much blood spilt in Iran, Lebanon, and the Gulf.
The price was too high, but the war may yet produce something quite valuable: an American reluctance, at long last, to rely on its military might to achieve its goals.
No American president in living memory epitomised the bullying image of the imperial ruler like Trump.
His empty bravado and repeated apocalyptic threats made the former real estate tycoon a perfect foil for neoconservative lobbying.
More than that, it made Trump an ideal target for an Israeli campaign designed to convince him to undertake an attack on Iran, something no president before him was willing to do.
Trump’s predecessors, even including himself in his first term when he had qualified military strategists advising him, could not be convinced to start a war against Iran, knowing it would lead to retaliation against Gulf Arab states and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Now that those things have come to pass, Trump is left in the ironic position of having more space to reorient American policy in the Middle East than any president who preceded him.
The balance is delicate. Both Republicans and Democrats are complaining about losing the war and what Iran is going to get as a result.
Yet as much as those leaders decry the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that Trump agreed with Iran, they, like the president, are not prepared to return to a war that has already caused a global economic crisis and was poised to do even more damage if it had continued.
That opens the possibility of a significant shift in American policy towards the region. It also consigns neoconservative ideology to the weight of its own record. After so many costly misjudgements, its advocates will struggle to reclaim the influence they once wielded over American foreign policy.
Or so we must fervently hope.
The Irony of Versailles
More than a few commentators noted the irony of Trump having signed the MOU at Versailles.
Yet, whereas the 1919 treaty that bears that name humiliated Germany and helped lay the groundwork for the rise of the Nazis, the MOU Trump signed holds very different potential.
While the terms are certainly difficult for Americans to swallow, they will not cause great harm to the country that is responsible for starting this war in the Persian Gulf.
But if the terms are eventually fulfilled (and it will be a long and difficult road to get there), the MOU will allow Iran to recover economically.
A healing Iran can then be brought into a more stable relationship with its Arab neighbours.
That process is already underway. Saudi Arabia is reportedly arranging the first in a series of talks between the Gulf Arab states and Iran, aimed at reviving the regional rapprochement that Beijing helped broker between Riyadh and Tehran in 2023. The protests in Iran first disrupted that process and were later derailed by the American-Israeli attack.
Such diplomacy could reshape the face of the Persian Gulf, especially given that the United States is under significant pressure to reduce its presence in the region.
The damage Iran inflicted on at least twenty American bases across the Gulf underscored the growing vulnerability of the US military posture in the region. That reality is reflected in the MOU, which provides for negotiations over the partial redeployment of American forces from the region during the next two months.
Coupled with the realisation among Gulf states that American installations make them targets rather than protect them, the United States will have every reason to significantly reduce its presence in the region.
A Reset With Israel
Israel’s dwindling support in the United States is indisputable. The decline is widespread and bipartisan. It is no longer confined to the progressive left and the isolationist and Antisemitic right.
Israel’s petulant response to this reality is not helping its case. Americans want this war to end and have little sympathy for Israel’s desire to occupy southern Lebanon.
That occupation is the major obstacle to Washington and Tehran reaching an agreement.
Polls indicate that Americans want the US to push Israel to leave Lebanon. But that is only one symptom of the increasing distance between Americans and Israel.
Until now, that negative view of Israel has not been reflected in American actions. It is not yet clear that Trump is prepared to act against Israel, but his words are still unprecedented.
When Vance affirmed that Iran’s right to self-defence was of equal merit as Israel’s, it set a new precedent in American discourse.
This precedent means little if it is not translated into policy, however, and whether that will happen remains unpredictable. But there are some very interesting signs.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, known to be very close to Saudi Arabia, has changed his tone in recent days, declaring he would settle for nothing less than a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
The change from the more conciliatory tone towards Israel that Saudi Arabia had adopted at Washington’s urging suggests Riyadh is now seeking to increase pressure on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, seeing that as a prerequisite for securing a lasting end to hostilities with Iran.
This will be felt in Washington, as the Trump Administration has backed itself into a corner where it must finally end decades of pointless wrangling with Iran.
Although Iran is far from innocent, ignorance, hysteria, and Islamophobia have long distorted American perceptions of the country.
Yet those attitudes alone do not explain Washington’s most damaging policies.
Far more consequential have been its special relationship with Israel and the outsized influence of neoconservatives on US foreign policy.
Finally, there is a genuine opportunity to change that sad reality.
Photograph courtesy of the White House. Published under a Creative Commons license.
