How Trump lost control of the war in Iran

 As Donald Trump insisted he was calling the shots in the Middle East, Israel and Iran were busy firing them.

Aware that his increasingly fragile truce with Tehran was hurtling towards collapse, the US president reached for his phone, accepting call after call from any journalist who had his number.

There was a mild rebuke for Iran – which on Sunday night launched salvos of ballistic missiles at targets in Israel – with Mr Trump using Fox News to deliver a message to Tehran: “You’ve shot your missiles. That’s enough. Get back to the table and make a deal.”

The way the US president framed it, Iran’s response had some justification after Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, ordered strikes on the southern outskirts of Beirut earlier in the day, despite previous pressure from Washington not to.

One round of tit-for-tat appeared to be enough for Mr Trump. A further Israeli response, he told Axios, risked triggering a cycle of retribution that would become ever harder to contain.

“Each of them had their fun. Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don’t need another one,” he said.

Directing most of his pressure at Israel, the US president added that Mr Netanyahu would fall into line and accept a deal with Iran, whether he liked it or not.

Mr Trump told the Financial Times: “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots.”

Despite professing to loathe the “mainstream media”, the president loves talking to journalists.

Yet this was not simply Mr Trump indulging himself at a moment of crisis. He was engaging in foghorn diplomacy, using the media to amplify a message that he will no doubt have delivered more forcefully in private.

As far as Iran and the US are concerned, Mr Netanyahu now represents the chief obstacle to securing the deal both sides have been stumbling towards since agreeing a truce two months ago.

The US and Israeli leaders may have gone to war alongside one another, but the divergence in their priorities is becoming increasingly difficult to disguise.

Mr Trump desperately wants to extricate himself from a conflict that has not gone according to plan, and which risks unleashing lasting turmoil on the global economy unless resolved before global oil inventories run dangerously low.

The last thing he wants is a return to all-out hostilities as the US prepares to co-host the 2026 World Cup.

For the winner of Fifa’s Peace Prize, a return to war is not the look he is aiming for. So far, at least, Mr Netanyahu has proved unwilling to oblige.

Early on Monday, Israeli forces hit military sites and a petrochemical complex in southern Iran, prompting fresh waves of Iranian missile launches.

In recent weeks, increasingly intense exchanges of fire between Iran and the US in the Persian Gulf have strained the truce, though the parameters remained relatively clear, with Washington insisting it was acting only in self-defence.

With Israel and Iran now striking each other directly for the first time since the ceasefire began, the dynamic has changed, complicating Washington’s hopes of containing the crisis.

Instead, with Iran gambling, Mr Trump floundering and Israel cornered, the danger of events spinning out of control is growing by the day.

When the war began on Feb 28, Mr Netanyahu prided himself on the fact that, for the first time, the US and Israel were fighting side by side.

But as the active phase of the conflict meandered inconclusively into an uncertain truce, the Israeli prime minister found himself relegated from centre stage to the wings – a bystander to events he could no longer fully control.

It was perhaps inevitable. He and Mr Trump were no longer aligned on their core priorities. The US president frets about the Strait of Hormuz, a matter of only peripheral importance to Israel.

Mr Netanyahu is far more concerned about Iran’s ballistic missiles, nuclear programme and the threat posed by Tehran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

The US president’s willingness to give Mr Netanyahu a free hand has diminished over time. Washington initially backed Israel’s claim that the truce did not cover the conflict in Lebanon – an assertion disputed by Iran and even by Pakistan, which brokered the deal.

But Mr Trump’s patience has ebbed as Iran has grown increasingly insistent that a permanent agreement with Washington cannot be reached while Israel continues bombing Lebanon.

Matters came to a head a week ago when Mr Netanyahu announced he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to strike targets in Beirut’s Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs after accusing the militia of repeated ceasefire violations.

With Iran threatening immediate retaliation if Mr Netanyahu carried out his threat, Mr Trump intervened dramatically, instigating what was reportedly an explosive telephone call with the Israeli prime minister.

During the conversation, Mr Trump is said to have questioned the wisdom of Mr Netanyahu’s strategy (“what the f--- are you doing?”), reminded him of the debt he owed Washington (“I’m saving your ass”) and warned of Israel’s growing isolation (“Everybody hates Israel because of this”).

Mr Netanyahu duly stood down, earning scorn from hawks within his own coalition, who accused him of turning Israel into an American vassal.

Under intense US pressure, Israel and the Lebanese government again agreed to a ceasefire, contingent on Hezbollah withdrawing its operatives from southern Lebanon.

But the militia swiftly rejected the terms, saying they failed to guarantee a full and immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the country.

It did not take long for hopes of de-escalation to unravel. With Mr Netanyahu, facing an election later this year, under mounting domestic pressure, Israel shrugged off Iranian threats and struck Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday in retaliation for a Hezbollah missile attack on northern Israel.

Social Media

Iran appeared to step back from the brink on Monday, saying it had delivered a “painful response” to Israel. Both have reasons to pull back. For all its rhetoric, Iran is not rushing to rescue its beleaguered proxy. Hezbollah, after all, was created to protect Iran, not the other way round.

Tehran has shown little hesitation in abandoning its ally before, barely responding when Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, during a devastating 71-day campaign in Lebanon in 2024.

Iran’s insistence on making Hezbollah central to any deal with Mr Trump is more likely a test of how far the US president is willing – or able – to restrain Israel. Hardliners in Tehran see little point in a peace agreement that Mr Netanyahu can violate at will.

Likewise, from a military perspective, Mr Netanyahu may himself be searching for an off-ramp in Lebanon. The 2024 campaign was conducted with metronomic precision.

Coordinated pager and walkie-talkie attacks, targeted assassinations and deep intelligence penetration of Hezbollah enabled the IDF to claim a decisive victory and badly weaken one of the gravest threats to Israel’s security.