The reported profanity-laced phone call between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which Trump allegedly told Netanyahu he would be in prison if not for Trump and demanded an end to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon, was followed quickly by a Trump social media post declaring a new ceasefire and thanking Netanyahu for turning his troops around.
Ruthie Blum, former adviser to the Office of Netanyahu and co-host of the Israel Undiplomatic podcast, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to put that episode in context and offer her assessment of where the Iran campaign stands and what kind of deal, if any, is actually achievable.
Blum said she gives more weight to the fact that the call was leaked than to the specific contents of what was said. She said leaders in alliance have disagreements throughout history, and the substance of a difficult phone call between partners trying to manage a complex shared military campaign is less significant than the fact that someone with access to that conversation chose to put it in the press. She said whoever was responsible for the leak did ill will both to Israel and to the United States and should be fired, because the larger picture is what matters, and the larger picture has been a genuinely remarkable partnership between Trump and Netanyahu in confronting the Iranian threat that has destabilized the Middle East for forty-seven years.
She said the disagreement between the two leaders was almost certainly not about the fundamental goal but about strategy, and that on the core question of what this Iranian regime is and what it wants, Trump and Netanyahu are aligned. The regime will not make a deal on terms that actually resolve the underlying threat, not because Iran lacks pragmatists in suits who attend elections and appear on television, but because none of them are actually in charge. The IRGC and the Supreme Leader make the decisions, and their goal is not accommodation with the West but its eventual subjugation. She said what Trump may not have fully grasped is that perception in the Middle East matters enormously, and that the combination of military success followed by ceasefire followed by prolonged negotiation has sent a signal to both the Iranian people and to Gulf State partners that America may not be the strong horse they were counting on.
She discussed the Iranian people specifically, noting that they took to the streets in January after decades of regime oppression, were willing to accept hardship, were encouraged when Operation Epic Fury began on February 28th, and had posters of Trump celebrating American intervention. Trump told them to hold on, that help was coming, that conditions would improve enough for them to act. Since the ceasefire announcement, she said, they have become despondent and worried. They know their regime better than Trump does, she said, and they see the prolonged negotiation as a bad sign.
On Lebanon, she said she is puzzled by the current posture. Marco Rubio is correct that Hezbollah is the problem. The Israeli ambassador to the United States is correct that Hezbollah is the problem. And yet representatives of Israel and Lebanon are negotiating in Washington while the Lebanese government demands Israeli withdrawal rather than expressing any gratitude that Israel did the job Lebanon was too weak and afraid to do itself. She said there is a fundamental incoherence in treating the Lebanese government as a good faith partner in a discussion about the organization that has been holding the Lebanese people hostage.
On the prospect of achieving the stated objectives of obtaining Iran’s enriched uranium and reopening the Strait of Hormuz without a resumption of military force, Blum said she does not believe it is possible. She said the pattern of Iranian negotiating behavior has been to accept a framework, add conditions, and then add more conditions, while Iran’s underlying position that it never wanted nuclear weapons is a decades-old claim they have maintained throughout, meaning their agreement with Trump not to develop or purchase nuclear weapons is not actually a concession at all. She said what worried her specifically about Trump’s weekend interview with Lara Trump was the framing of Iranian agreement not to develop or purchase nuclear weapons as a meaningful negotiating achievement, when Iran has been saying exactly that for years regardless of what it was actually doing.
She said the regime in Tehran does not contain moderates in any meaningful sense when it comes to the fundamental objective. The factions that observers label hardliners and pragmatists all share the same goal of death to Israel, death to America, and subjugating the West. The difference between them is only in how to pursue that goal, not whether to. She said trying to apply the framework of mainstream versus radical within a Western political party to the Iranian regime fundamentally misunderstands its nature, and that no deal structured around the good faith of any Iranian faction will be durable because none of them are operating in good faith by any Western definition of the term.