Did Trump just end the Israel-Iran war?

Australia Broadcast Center

5 hours ago

Sam Hawley: Donald Trump has announced a ceasefire in the Israel-Iran conflict, declaring it should be called the 12-Day War. It came not long after Iran fired missiles at an American military base in Qatar, retaliating against the US bombing of its key nuclear sites.
News report: As evening crept across Qatar, the night sky lit up. Iran firing upon the Gulf state, sending ballistic and short-range missiles towards the Al Udeid base run by the United States.
News report: Qatar says its own missiles successfully intercepted the attack and no one was injured, as the base had already been evacuated.
News report: Flights have been suspended and airspace closed across the Middle East amid fears the situation could escalate further.
News report: Breaking news: It's just been announced by Donald Trump that he has brokered a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Iran, a complete and total ceasefire.
Sam Hawley: But there was confusion over whether Iran and Israel had agreed to Trump's ceasefire in the hours following the social media post. Today, Jonathan Panikoff from the Atlantic Council's Middle East program on whether peace will hold. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal Land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Jonathan, let's come to the details of this apparent ceasefire in a moment, announced, of course, by Donald Trump on his social media account. But first, a quick look at what led up to it. Incredibly, an attack on a US air base was a catalyst for peace in Donald Trump's eyes. Wasn't it?
Jonathan Panikoff: It absolutely was. I think this was always going to come down to a fairly binary choice by Iran in terms of how it responded. Choice one was to, frankly, undertake a major attack, escalate the potential of conflict, bring US retaliation in a way that would really threaten the regime. But the regime's number one goal has always been survival. And I think tonight we saw that play out. So what you saw instead was the Iranian regime undertake a pragmatic attack that, frankly, followed a playbook we've seen from Iran before, a largely symbolic attack, one intended not to cause any casualties, but one that they could then at least have some bit of saving face and go back to the Iranian people and say: Look, we attacked the US, we stood up, now we're happy to de-escalate on our terms. Even if it's really not.
Sam Hawley: Yeah, so Iran's calculation was it must spare US lives or the consequences for it would be enormous. Is that the calculation there?
Jonathan Panikoff: I think that's the bottom line calculation. I think if you've seen US casualties as part of Iran's response, it would have been pretty hard for President Trump to make the decision that he wasn't going to respond and then risk, frankly, an escalatory spiral in which this engulfed the broader region potentially.
Sam Hawley: Regardless, of course, it did cause quite a bit of chaos, including for international travellers with Qatar closing its airspace.
Jonathan Panikoff: Absolutely. Look, obviously airspace being closed not only in Qatar but throughout the Gulf was going to cause some significant inconveniences and some real challenges, but I think in the end, if it also brings us to a ceasefire and a resolution, that's something that ultimately the region as a whole will breathe easier over, and my sense is a lot of folks in the region disappointed for travellers, but will take that trade-off.
Sam Hawley: So, Jonathan, more broadly, what do we read into this action from Iran? It must be incredibly weakened. It also looks like it's not going to try and block the Strait of Hormuz, which was another big worry, which would have caused a major escalation, of course, because it's a major shipping route for oil.
Jonathan Panikoff: That's right. It would have caused a real escalation and been hugely problematic. I think not having that, I think a little bit of a downturn, I think was probably what Iran wanted. The reality is Iran has had historically three parts of its power projections in the region, a triad, if you will. One has been its proxies throughout the region, like Hezbollah and Hamas. A second part has been its ballistic missiles program. And the third part was its nuclear program. And regardless of whether you believe that this was the right thing for Israel to do, the wrong thing for Israel to do, not just about the nuclear program, but Israel's actions throughout the region over the last 20 months, vis-a-vis Iran and its proxies, Iran has been significantly diminished in all three of those areas. And so now I think the question is, OK, does it portend new opportunities with a diminished Iranian power, which it could, or does Iran look to go and align closer with Russia in a way that long-term could be dangerous? Does it look to quickly try to rebuild, which would be problematic, but certainly is an option.
Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Jonathan, of course, while this was all unfolding, Israel was continuing to strike Iran. It launched wide-ranging strikes on Tehran. It was winning this war, I assume.
Jonathan Panikoff: I think it was winning the war, but Israel had two overall initial objectives. One was to diminish Iran's nuclear program, especially with the U.S. help at Fordow. That was certainly accomplished. The second was to diminish Iran's ballistic missile capabilities. And Israel didn't actually target the ballistic missiles. It targeted the launchers, and it targeted Iran's production facilities for those. There was concern in Israel from their estimates that Iran could have double or triple the amount of ballistic missiles it does today within the next five years. This was about slowing that and trying to undermine it as much as possible. But Israel also faced a challenge. While it's true that Iranian ballistic missile attacks into Israel have been diminished significantly thanks to Israeli strikes, at the same time there was real concern about the number of interceptors that Israel had left. There was some reporting that the numbers were critically low. That could have meant that Israel had to rely on the U.S. or others. I think that certainly might have happened for a time. But Israel was probably also running out of key targets and concerned about its own defence capabilities. And so I think Israel's going to look at this quite happily with the end result, even if it's not perfect.
Sam Hawley: All right, well, as we mentioned, Donald Trump has now announced this ceasefire, a complete and total ceasefire, he says.
News report: "Congratulations to everyone," it says in capital letters, with an exclamation mark, of course. "It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a complete and total ceasefire when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in-progress final missions!"
Sam Hawley: Although initially that was read, of course, with caution, because, well, Donald Trump can be an unreliable source, can't he?
Jonathan Panikoff: Yeah look, I think it's not unreasonable to be cautious about, you know, agreement on true social before it comes out from the Iranians and the Israelis themselves. I think it would be hard to imagine the Israelis would defy this after the amount of, frankly, leverage President Trump has built up with them by taking the decision to strike Fordow. But I also think that there's going to be a bit of a question here. You would not be surprised to still see some additional last strikes as Israel tries to get in a few last targets destroyed. The question now is, will it hold? I think certainly Iran would like it to. Israel, I think, will probably say yes. But there's real concerns about, has all of Iran's highly enriched uranium been destroyed because of the strike at Fordow, or was it moved beforehand? That could invite questions about, OK, are there follow-on strikes in the weeks or months to come that are required, or can there be a diplomatic solution to any remaining components of Iran's nuclear program?
Sam Hawley: I was going to ask, is Israel really confident at this point that it has destroyed or severely, severely damaged Iran's nuclear program? That is what it set out to do.
Jonathan Panikoff: I think Israel is confident that it's significantly set back Iran's nuclear program such that it's not an existential threat in the way that it was concerned it would be, that Iran could be weeks away from actually having a nuclear weapon. And whether or not that assessment was accurate, and obviously there's been some consideration that the US assessment may be different, Israel truly believe that, it seems. That probably is no longer a concern. But that's different from saying that Iran's nuclear program is completely obliterated and gone. And I'm not sure that that's nearly as true, and so there still may be real requirement for diplomacy or for future strikes.
Sam Hawley: Mm, all right. This declaration of a ceasefire also came just a day after Donald Trump had hinted that regime change was really what's needed in Iran. So has he now abandoned that idea, has he?
Jonathan Panikoff: I don't know if President Trump ever held that idea sincerely or it was something that he was throwing out to simply gain leverage. I don't know that those are mutually exclusive either. We've seen that the President sometimes has ideas that are initially about trying to gain some sort of leverage and then he actually ends up fulfilling them. But I think what has been clear is President Trump clearly wanted to get back to some level of diplomacy. I think there is concern within the US political system among President Trump's supporters from his MAGA base about how this issue was dividing the base. He had said he wanted to keep this narrow, that it was about the nuclear program only. If he went further toward regime change, I think it really could have split his base in a way that would have been problematic given the number of contentious and challenging domestic issues the President is facing. My sense is this gives him an off-ramp as well to not have to really face that type of divide.
Sam Hawley: Well, as you indicated, Jonathan, ceasefires can be broken, of course, and they have been broken many times in the past. It's a very fluid time still, isn't it?
Jonathan Panikoff: It is. I think this is a fragile ceasefire. I think we'll have to see, frankly, what agreement ends up coming to in the end and what is required of Iran, what they're willing to do, and what is required of Israel in order to keep it.
Sam Hawley: Just tell me, how do you think now the world will view Donald Trump's decision to join this conflict, to bomb Iran?
Jonathan Panikoff: I think even though we have a ceasefire today, it's still too early to know. Look, I think publicly there was a lot of condemnation. There was support from Australia, from some European quarters, but even privately, a lot of Arab governments, the message being sent privately were different than the message being sent publicly. They've lived with the threat of Iran for a lot of years, of an Iranian nuclear program. In one way, there's real opportunity here, because if this is extended, and it doesn't just end now, but there actually is a broader diplomatic agreement to limit any future Iranian nuclear program as well, then it means you really could have a more peaceful region. That Gulf states, for instance, wouldn't have the threat of an Iranian nuclear program hanging over their heads, and that would mean we'd have less proliferation. We've already known that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, has been very clear, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, so too will Saudi Arabia. They would not have been alone. Turkiye, UAE, others may have been in that mix. And so I think history may look favourably upon that. At the same time, sometimes you don't know how these things are going to go. And there's also another avenue in which the Russians, who are also significantly isolated, say, look, we're going to actually increase our strategic alignment with the Iranians, and we're going to work together to try to repair some of their power projections in the region. And that may mean working with them eventually on a nuclear program. I don't think that would be first, but it wouldn't be a surprise too to see Russia decide it wants to put back air defences into Iran, that it's going to help Iran rebuild its ballistic missile program. And then it's not a far step to deciding also, if it really feels under threat, that it's going to contribute to helping Iran rebuild a nuclear program. Of course, it'll be for civilian purposes will be the claim. That won't make the region any calmer about it.
Sam Hawley: Presumably Donald Trump will take this as a victory for the United States and for himself.
Jonathan Panikoff: Certainly, I think Donald Trump was going to take this as a victory, no matter how it came out, to be totally honest. That's just the nature of President Trump. But given that you have a ceasefire, so long as it holds, given that the U.S. role was limited, given the war was 12 days, and given that Iran's nuclear program is significantly, significantly set back, and the U.S. has demonstrated now, it's no longer theoretical, a willingness to use force that'll have to be in the back of Iran's mind, but also China's mind in terms of the strategic steps it takes in the future. Donald Trump will see this as a victory.
Sam Hawley: Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council's Middle East Program. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Adair Sheppard. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.