OSLO—You’d be forgiven if the past week of statements and strikes by and between Iran, the United States, Israel, and Hezbollah have given you a sense of whiplash. The capricious behavior and comments by all parties do not inspire confidence. But in its own way, the past week has been clarifying. The possibility of a full-scale war is diminishing, as is the likelihood that US President Donald Trump will simply wash his hands of the situation and walk away.
Either outcome remains a possibility, of course, but the most likely outcome is increasingly that of an initial Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) coming to fruition that invokes a permanent ceasefire. The key datapoint here isn’t anyone’s statement or tweet. It’s that despite the Strait of Hormuz continuing to be ostensibly closed and missile and drone strikes being launched across targets in Iran, the Gulf, Israel, and Lebanon, negotiations between Washington and Tehran have continued behind the scenes, to include now asking for additional mediation assistance from Doha, as well.
The Trump administration is right to not simply accept the terms that Iran is seeking to put on the table. A bad deal remains worse than no deal. But it’s important to note the distinction: What’s being discussed now isn’t a deal. It’s an MOU. It’s a rough outline and high-level explanation of the concepts a deal is supposed to be about. A sixty-day window is slated to follow the MOU for talks on Iran’s nuclear program. That’s unlikely to be enough both because of the technical aspects of the program and because page one in the Iranian playbook is to drag out negotiations and play for time. Tehran almost certainly is assessing that Trump, even if he does not get a deal within the sixty-day window, will not return to war—and that assessment is probably right.
But Trump will need all the leverage he can get in that period, and he should plan to undertake two actions. First, the United States should leave US military assets in the region to make clear that if Iran’s nuclear program is not dealt with diplomatically, then there are additional military options that will be considered. Second, the Trump administration should meaningfully coordinate with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to have a unified policy toward Iran, something the president didn’t do before the war—and something that has compounded skepticism of US leadership in the Middle East and Europe.
What Europe and the Middle East are saying
I’ve spent the past ten days engaged in meetings across European capitals, from Paris and Brussels to Oslo, meeting with senior officials from those countries, as well as a number of Middle East officials, who are in the region for the same forums. Here are three consistent messages that officials from both regions have shared.
First, many European and Gulf officials harbor a strong resentment toward Washington, and the Trump administration in particular, that they were not consulted before the war in any meaningful manner. Add to this now the additional frustration the emerging MOU is only between the United States and Iran. It is not, or not simply, a feeling of being left out that is at play here. European and Gulf countries’ preferences and requirements are not being given sufficient consideration. (Israel, for what it’s worth, has very similar and intense concerns about the emerging deal.) For example, discussions about potential US sanctions relief toward Iran—or a Gulf investment plan that would bolster the Iranian economy—as part of a deal run counter to the general view among European leaders that sanctions should be kept in place as meaningful leverage against Tehran.
Second, there is a more ambient and accumulating sense among many European and Middle East capitals that the United States is fundamentally not a reliable partner anymore. As a result, countries in these regions are actively planning and taking steps to diversify military hardware suppliers and build new supply-chain routes that don’t include the United States. In one way this is a positive. For years multiple US administrations have sought for both European and Middle Eastern allies to increase burden sharing on issues and challenges across regions. Now they may finally be doing so.
But why they’re doing it matters, not just that they’re doing it. If they were undertaking these shifts due to strategic joint planning and engagement with Washington, it would far better provide an opportunity for US leaders to shape how they went about it. But because it’s being undertaken due to a lack of confidence in the United States, it will be harder for Washington to guide the pathway. It also increases the possibility of European and Middle Eastern countries turning more to US adversaries, such as China, and US officials having less recourse to influence such decisions. It’s important to note that less doesn’t mean zero. Even as US allies are talking about diversifying, they’re also planning to double down on US capabilities and security umbrellas. But they’re increasingly convinced that Washington no longer can, or is willing to, provide both capabilities and safety at the levels both regions demand.
Third, there is not just growing but solidified sentiment in both regions that Iran is no longer the sole destabilizing threat in the Middle East. Today, that title is shared with Israel. In other words, the view by most countries in the Levant, Gulf (excluding the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain), and Egypt is that their eyes are wide open to the threat Iran poses. This is best exemplified by their raw anger over Iran’s strikes during this war, the overwhelming majority of which have targeted Gulf countries rather than Israel. But at the same time, Israel, to mitigate perceived threats, has become unrestrained in undertaking military action as its option of first resort. As a result, these Middle Eastern officials view Israel as a comparable threat to stability and security in the region broadly, the foundation of which most view to be the lack of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Such an assessment in Europe and the Middle East almost certainly misunderstands Tehran’s ideological motivations. Even if a State of Palestine were established tomorrow, it would do little to halt the threat Iran poses to the region, including to Israel. Iran, it’s worth noting, has never accepted or endorsed the formulation of a two-state solution. But the perception that the lack of a Palestinian state is driving most, if not all, of the regional crises is widespread, even if inaccurate.
What Trump can do next
The corollary to this issue is undoubtedly a misperception by many of these countries about how much influence the United States has over Israel, and Washington’s ability to constrain Jerusalem from taking action, especially against nearby threats in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. But there was, with almost everyone I spoke to, a sense of desperation as well. Whatever Washington’s shortcomings in being able to restrain Israel, it still has far more influence than anyone else, and these officials are desperate for Trump to use it. He should.
No matter how the midterm elections go in the United States, Trump still has two more years in his second term. Previous presidents have used their final two years in office to turn to foreign policy; many observers expect Trump to do the opposite, to turn away from the Middle East and foreign affairs more broadly after signing an MOU with Iran. He should instead prove these observers and Tehran wrong by investing his and his team’s efforts more heavily in reaching a satisfactory deal that addresses not only Iran’s nuclear program but its ballistic missile program and its support for Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and other proxy groups.
Moreover, Trump should directly reengage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His first-term Peace to Prosperity plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was widely ridiculed by European and Arab counties when announced, even as it was broadly accepted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, almost no one across the Israeli ideological spectrum is interested in any discussions on a Palestinian state.
But six-and-a-half years after the plan’s initial publication, the situation is far worse, the desperation far greater. It is not likely that any plan—two-state or otherwise—has a chance of solving the conflict until both Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are no longer in their positions. But Trump’s goal in re-engaging should not be to solve the crisis; it should be to freeze it. Trump should seek to halt future annexation and stop settler terrorism in the West Bank, double down on the Board of Peace’s work in Gaza, and provide support to Israel’s security—without which the United States, too, will begin to lose leverage with Jerusalem.