August 13, 2026

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De-escalation Initiatives in the Middle East Falter

(AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

The Middle East region demonstrates the limitations of coercive diplomacy to accomplish strategic objectives. Non-state and state actors that might otherwise be considered, under classic definitions, to be militarily “defeated,” or at least severely weakened, are able to frustrate their domestic and international adversaries seeking to achieve war termination agreements on acceptable terms. Iran and its regional allies have shown that their political and military infrastructures are able to not only resist capitulation but also to achieve significant strategic gains. The U.S. and its regional allies, often constrained by domestic opinion and electoral politics, have been repeatedly frustrated in their efforts to convert battlefield successes into enduring strategic achievements.

On three key regional battlefields that have erupted since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel — Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza — U.S. President Donald Trump and his aides have struggled to secure U.S. and allied interests and restore the relative calm that prevailed in the region prior to the incursion. In Lebanon and Gaza, U.S. war termination diplomacy has been beholden, to a large extent, by the interests and calculations of its main regional ally, Israel. Israeli officials assert that unlike their U.S. counterparts, they are not protected by 6,000 miles of distance from the region’s rogue actors. Israel has historically placed little, if any, faith in collective security pacts, bilateral diplomatic agreements, or international peacekeeping bodies. The October 7 attack produced a consensus within Israeli leadership circles that only hard power and control of border and nearby territory can guarantee the security of Israelis. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, when faced with a choice, Israeli leaders value establishing security over economic stability and growth.

Israel’s kinetic-centric post-October 7 approach is aggravating friction with Trump and his team, who are seeking to advertise policy successes in the region as the pivotal November midterm congressional elections approach. Since April, and despite the ongoing conflict with Iran, U.S. officials have been mediating the first direct Israel-Lebanon government-to-government talks since 1983 in hopes of empowering a fully sovereign government in Beirut that exercises a monopoly of armed force on its territory. The mechanism for empowering Beirut — and sidelining Hezbollah and Iran — is outlined in a June Israel-Lebanon-U.S. “Trilateral Framework,” providing for Israel to gradually withdraw from south Lebanon and hand over territory taken from Hezbollah to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Seeking to preserve their influence in Lebanon, both Iran and Hezbollah opposed the accord. Hezbollah has said it would not disarm until Israel withdrew from all territory it holds in Lebanon.

Israel, reluctant to yield its buffer zone against attacks on northern Israel, has also put up roadblocks to the process, frustrating Washington. Israeli forces have continued attacking Hezbollah positions they consider threats and demolishing homes that might shelter Hezbollah fighters. Israel’s insistence that withdrawal from south Lebanon is contingent on Hezbollah disarmament caused last week’s Israel-Lebanon talks in Rome to end early. Sources close to Lebanese government leaders report Beirut is pressing the Trump team to secure concrete concessions from Israel — including specific additional areas in south Lebanon from which the IDF will withdraw. However, official Lebanese sources told Qatar News Agency that Beirut would not boycott the next round of talks set for September 1, saying: “There is no freeze on the negotiations, and no one has officially spoken about this matter.” However, experts maintain Lebanese leaders are under mounting pressure domestically to begin demonstrating that their diplomacy will produce an Israeli evacuation of south Lebanon and an end to Israeli destruction of Lebanese villages.

Israel is similarly frustrating a U.S.-brokered effort on another key post-October 7 front, the Gaza Strip. Last week Trump announced that the “Board of Peace” — the multilateral organization formed by his October 2025 “20 Point Peace Plan” for Gaza — had obtained a pledge by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza to disarm. Trump presented the Hamas pledge as a key U.S. diplomatic success that would help stabilize the region over the long term. The Trump team assessed the Gaza breakthrough would contrast favorably with the diplomatic and military impasse in the war with Iran, which has sharply restricted commercial traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway for most of the past five months. Hamas’ acceptance of disarmament, if implemented, would presumably resolve what has proved the main hurdle to stabilizing and ultimately rebuilding the destroyed enclave, in which the overwhelming majority of the population has been displaced from its homes.

As it has done in Lebanon, Israel has refused to place its faith in diplomacy and reciprocal concessions with its adversary, choosing instead to rely on hard power and control over territory. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Trump’s Hamas disarmament plan, telling a cabinet meeting the IDF “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens.” Board of Peace officials responded by saying the U.S.-backed peace plan for the territory remained the only way forward, asserting the Hamas disarmament pledge would pave the way for an International Stabilization Force to deploy in the enclave. The plan would also permit the technocratic governing body appointed to replace Hamas to move into Gaza from Cairo. Hamas used the Israeli rejection to justify its insistence it would not disarm until Israel withdraws. Press reports indicated Netanyahu sought to mitigate any further strains in his relations with Trump by informally pledging to limit its attacks on Hamas fighters across the “yellow line” from the 70 percent of Gaza territory it controls.

The main roadblocks hindering the U.S. effort to end the war against Iran come not from a regional partner but directly from the adversary, the regime in Tehran. The Trump team, apparently frustrated that Netanyahu forecast a quick and decisive victory, has marginalized Israel in decision-making on the war. However, Israeli leaders say they are ready and willing to strike Iran again should Trump decide to escalate.

After more than a month of U.S. strikes, escalation threats, mediated engagement with Iran, and forecasts of an imminent diplomatic breakthrough, the U.S. has failed to achieve an agreement with Iran for a full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. An accord on the Strait would pave the way for talks, under a June Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), on limitations to Iran’s nuclear program, relief from U.S. sanctions, and internationally funded reconstruction funds to repair damage in Iran caused by the U.S. and Israeli air campaign. However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command and other hardliners refuse to relinquish their main strategic gain from the war to date, and last week issued demands that the U.S. front-load its economic concessions before Iran would open the Strait to all traffic. The Supreme National Security Committee (SNSC), Iran’s highest security body, stated the Strait would not reopen until the U.S. lifted its blockade of Iranian ports, released all Iranian frozen assets, paid reparations, withdrew its forces from the “proximity” of Iran, and ended Israel’s intervention against Hezbollah and other Iranian allies.

The new demands not only reflect the regime’s perception that it has strategic leverage over the U.S. in the conflict, but also illustrate that extreme IRGC hardliners have prevailed over more moderate, elected civilian leaders such as President Masoud Pezeshkian and Majles (parliament) Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader, who still has not made any public appearances since his March accession and is believed severely injured or even deceased, appointed the hardline IRGC Major General Mohsen Rezaei as the Secretary-General of the SNSC. Rezaei, the IRGC’s Commander during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, opposed the June MOU as offering too many concessions to the U.S. He is an ally of the similarly hardline current IRGC Commander, Ahmad Vahidi, whose appointment in that post was affirmed last week. In addition, hardline cleric Hossein Taeb was appointed head of the Basij, the volunteer militia unit, under IRGC command, that is the regime’s first line of defense against major protests.

The Iranian decisions and statements suggest an opening of the Strait and a return to the MOU is not imminent. For now, Trump has responded that the U.S. will focus on economic pressure on Iran rather than military escalation. However, regional mediators continue to talk with Iranian and U.S. officials in hopes of moderating Iran’s position. Iran and Oman reportedly are continuing to try to reach an agreement for shared management of the Strait under a formula potentially acceptable to Washington. Pakistani and Qatari officials are mediating between the U.S. and Iran as well. On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told Bloomberg News in Islamabad that the U.S. and Iran are close to “some sort of an arrangement … Things are shaping up again in favor of a peace arrangement or a deal.”