The boom of explosions echoing across Doha as night set in the Qatari capital initially suggested that the Middle East’s worst-case scenario was becoming a reality: the conflict between Israel and Iran had spilled over borders and threatened to engulf the region.
But as the dust settled on Monday it became clear Iran’s missile barrage at the US’s Al Udeid military base was telegraphed, with missiles intercepted and no casualties reported — a calibrated response that paved the way for Donald Trump to hours later announce a ceasefire ending the Israeli-Iranian war.
Yet the region is far from at peace. The truce — thrashed out in a couple of hours with terms not made public — is inherently fragile. Israel has vowed to respond “forcefully” to any violation; the Islamic regime said it was fully prepared “with their fingers on the trigger” to retaliate against any new attacks.
“The current moment has an air of real instability,” said Michael Wahid Hanna at Crisis Group. “We’re in a much better place than where things might have headed if we got into a kind of full-blown escalatory spiral, but a lot of questions remain.”
Without a clearly defined follow-on agreement, Israel — ever more emboldened and determined to cow its enemies in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack — and Iran could be entering a period of sporadic assaults, he warned.
Israel carries out almost daily air strikes in Lebanon, despite agreeing to a ceasefire with the Iranian-backed militant movement Hizbollah in November, but the Islamic regime is a more formidable prospect.
While a weakened Hizbollah has quietly taken the hits, Tehran would be far more likely to respond to any future Israeli aggression and has shown its missile arsenal to be far more destructive.
Iran can also be expected to immediately begin the process of rebuilding its battered military capacity. And despite the damage inflicted on its nuclear sites by Israeli and US bombs, it is suspected to still retain its 400kg stockpile of uranium enriched close to weapons-grade levels.
Huge questions now hang over how Trump and Netanyahu will seek to deal with the lingering threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme.
Before Israel launched its war, the Trump administration was engaged in indirect talks to resolve the crisis. But that process was upended by Netanyahu’s decision — with Trump’s tacit support — to launch strikes on the Islamic republic.
A preliminary report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, leaked to US media, said the US strikes set back the programme by less than six months. With Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium unaccounted for — and with the republic retaining the knowledge and technology it has built up in recent years — the danger of the regime deciding to weaponise to restore its deterrent still lingers.
Any signs it was would risk drawing more Israeli fire, with Netanyahu on Tuesday warning Israel was prepared to repeat its assault if the Islamic republic tries to revive its nuclear programme.
“If someone in Iran thinks they can rebuild the nuclear programme, we will act in the same way,” he said. “I repeat: Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.”
Much will depend on Trump, the unpredictable, self-declared most pro-Israel US president in history.
He has so far refused to step up pressure on Israel to end its devastating 20-month war in Gaza — even as Netanyahu breached the January ceasefire Trump’s envoys helped broker — or rein in settlers in the occupied West Bank.
But Trump has also displayed a propensity to act against Netanyahu’s interests when it serves his own objectives.
He ended a US military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen while they continued to fire at Israel, and met the new Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa, a man denounced by Israel as a dangerous jihadist, lifting sanctions on the Arab state.
When Israel and Iran violated Tuesday’s ceasefire hours after it came into force, Trump was quick to call out both parties in an expletive-laden tirade.
If he still pursues a nuclear deal with Iran, Trump will face the main stumbling block that dogged previous efforts: Washington’s demand that Tehran stop enriching uranium domestically, a red line for the regime.
If Trump makes concessions, would that be sufficient to prevent any further Israeli strikes? If Iran refuses to capitulate, will that once more raise the spectre of military strikes?
“Israel remains dependent on US acquiescence and support, both military and diplomatic, and that gets to the core of it, which is: what does Donald Trump want?” said Hanna. “Trump does have an opportunity to bend Israel in a way that is different from prior administrations, but in general he hasn’t necessarily shown an inclination for that.”
An early test could come soon, after Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani — who helped Trump broker the Israel-Iran ceasefire — said on Tuesday that Doha hoped to resume talks for a Gaza ceasefire in the next two days.
Arab and western leaders have for decades said that resolving the protracted Palestinian-Israel conflict is key to neutering extremist forces and addressing one of the core underlying causes of instability across the region.
But Netanyahu has repeatedly rebuffed western pressure to make any concessions to the Palestinians, let alone take steps towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Instead, with backing from successive US administrations, Israel has dramatically raised its risk appetite and gone on the offensive in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack. The Israeli prime minister on Tuesday pledged to destroy the militant group and free the hostages still held in Gaza.
Netanyahu boasts of changing the balance of power in the Middle East, and Israel’s military superiority clear to all following a string of spectacular battlefield achievements.
“For many Israelis, the assumption is that this is as good as it gets — ‘there’s no next step to conclude a durable peace, it is Israel’s fate is to struggle in a hostile neighbourhood,’” said Jon Alterman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“There’s a whole school of thought that ‘land for peace’, a durable peace is an illusion, that Israel will always have to be armed to the teeth.” But, he added, “Does Trump now feel Netanyahu owes him?”
Uzi Arad, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, said much of Israel’s recent success on the battlefield was due to its enemies underestimating its military capabilities and its higher risk threshold.
But that carries its own dangers, he warned, of Israel underestimating its enemies, as it did before Hamas’s attack triggered the wave of hostilities. Israel similarly missed the warnings about the surprise 1973 attack from its Arab neighbours after stunning victories in the 1967 Six-Day war.
“Some already are practising hubris — I can already detect it,” Arad, also a Mossad veteran, said. “We all have weaknesses, and this is a complicated country.”
Additional reporting by James Shotter in Jerusalem
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