Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current trip to Washington will likely provide the answer to one of the most-asked questions since Operation Rising Lion: how will Israel’s success in Iran impact the situation in Gaza?
The very fact that there is now intensified discussion about a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home already shows that one event has influenced the other. That momentum was not felt to the same degree before June 13 and Israel’s attack on Iran.
But, unlike what many may have assumed, the change in heart has not come from Hamas. It has come from Netanyahu.
Until recently, Netanyahu was adamant about continuing the war, mainly due to an aversion to allowing Hamas any semblance of victory -- something they will claim by remaining in any capacity in Gaza after the war.
Yet following Israel’s stunning military success in Iran, the crippling of Hezbollah, and the destruction of much of Hamas’s infrastructure, it is hard to argue, credibly, that Hamas “won” the war it launched on October 7.
The result? Iran is left with little energy, scarce water, a basket-case economy, a proxy network that has largely gone up in smoke, and a nuclear program that has now been set back years.
This new lay of the land—not any newfound flexibility from Hamas—is what may now bring the war in Gaza to a close. And it may give Netanyahu the political space to show flexibility on terms he previously ruled out. For the first time in decades, Israel is not staring down an immediate existential threat. That changes the calculus.
For Netanyahu, Iran has always been the king on the board, and the neutralization of its nuclear program -- an existential threat to Israel -- has been his lifelong mission. But to get that achievement, he needed US involvement in the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. Doing that, obviously, did not come without cost or calculation.
Much has been written about the role of Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in persuading the Trump administration to approve the strike despite the objections of the isolationist wing of the GOP. Some have called it Israel’s most significant diplomatic achievement in decades. It is equally plausible, if not more so, that Gaza was a major piece in this puzzle.
Following the US strikes, Trump made it clear that he wanted the war in Gaza to end. On Sunday, in the runup to Monday evening’s meeting with Netanyahu in the White House, he also said that the US is “working on a lot of things” with Israel, including “probably a permanent deal with Iran.” The US and Iran are expected to restart talks in the coming days, and Trump has made clear that under any deal, Iran will not be able to enrich uranium -- a condition reinforced by the US strike.
This may all be part of a broader strategic bargain: that if the US took out Iran’s nuclear facilities, Netanyahu would agree to wind down the war in Gaza.
It’s the Churchill chessboard, modernized. Just as Churchill accepted American terms on decolonization to gain an ally against Hitler, Netanyahu may have already agreed to forgo “absolute victory” in Gaza to secure the far greater strategic win of neutralizing Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Which brings us back to the chess analogy. The “queen,” in this case, is the continuation of the war in Gaza and the maximalist objective of toppling Hamas completely. The “king” is neutralizing Iran. Just as Churchill gave up imperial glory to get the US into World War II, the coming days will show whether Netanyahu was willing to tamp down his conditions regarding a Gaza ceasefire in exchange for getting the US to act against Iran.
Critics will say Netanyahu is cutting a deal with a transactional American president at the expense of letting Hamas survive. Others will argue that if this was part of the price for getting US action in Iran -- if it was a calculated sacrifice in the service of a more important end -- then it was well worth it.
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