By Gao Wanying
The situation in the Middle East escalated sharply within 24 hours from June 7 to 8. Following Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, Iran immediately retaliated by launching ballistic missiles at Israel. Subsequently, defying US opposition, Israel launched counterstrikes against military targets inside Iran. Although this conflict did not cause major casualties, it shattered the fragile peace since the US-Iran ceasefire in April this year, plunging the Middle East into a new, highly uncertain period of turbulence.
Iran's missile strikes triggered a strong reaction from the US, but what Washington did first was not to condemn Iran, but to put pressure on Israel. US President Donald Trump immediately stated his position through the media, explicitly demanding that Israel refrain from retaliation. He noted that US-Iran negotiations were already very close to a final agreement and that any escalation could lead to a collapse of the talks, rendering prior US efforts futile. Trump even claimed that the final say on Middle East affairs rests with the US, not Israel.
Trump's attitude reflects the US dilemma in the Middle East. Reaching an agreement with Iran as soon as possible to achieve "controlled stability" in the region has become a current diplomatic priority for the US. This is not only about whether the US can completely extricate itself from the Middle East quagmire, but also directly bears on the Trump administration's political fortune at home. To achieve this goal, the US is willing to sacrifice Israel's security interests to some extent. From Washington's perspective, though malicious in nature, Iran's missile strikes caused no casualties; whereas if the talks collapse, the US will face a series of consequences, including an energy crisis, soaring inflation, and a bogged-down "Indo-Pacific" deployment. Therefore, even at the risk of damaging the US-Israel alliance, the US must suppress Israel's impulse to retaliate and protect the hard-won agreement with Iran at all costs.
However, Israel's strategic considerations run completely counter to those of the US. Israel has always viewed Iran's nuclear program and its regional proxies as a direct threat to its survival. For Israel, any form of compromise between the US and Iran is an act of betraying Israel's security interests. Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly stated multiple times that Israel will not accept any agreement that allows Iran to retain its uranium enrichment capability, nor will it allow Iran to build an "anti-Israel encirclement" around Israel through its proxies. Out of such considerations, Israel has repeatedly launched military operations at critical junctures of US-Iran negotiations, attempting to obstruct the conclusion of an agreement by creating faits accomplis.
In general, this direct military conflict between Iran and Israel is not a brief, isolated military friction, but a signal of further realignment in the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. As the strategic considerations of the US, Israel, and Iran shift, the Middle East will enter a turbulent period fraught with uncertainty.
On the one hand, the US-Iran negotiation process will become increasingly arduous and tortuous. This round of conflict has exposed the irreconcilable contradictions among the US, Israel, and Iran. Iran's military support for its proxies has sharply increased Israel's sense of threat, Israel is bound to further disrupt US-Iran talks and obstruct a reconciliation between the two sides, so as to prevent its own security from deteriorating into a passive state. Against this backdrop, the US is caught in a dilemma. It is unwilling to abandon its hard-won negotiation results and disrupt its strategic retrenchment in the Middle East, yet it is unable to fully restrain Israel's unilateral actions. The trilateral game has plunged into a stalemate, and the subsequent US-Iran talks may become more protracted and uncertain.
On the other hand, the risk of escalating conflict in the Middle East is mounting. Through this military action, Iran successfully tested and verified the strategic bottom line of the US—that Washington will not easily sacrifice its global strategic layout and Middle East retrenchment goals for the sake of Israel's security interests. This strategic perception may alter Iran's behavioral pattern. In the future, to consolidate the influence of the "Axis of Resistance," Iran may further strengthen its ties with proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi movement in Yemen, and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq. This, in turn, will trigger a more violent strategic counter-offensive from Israel, leading to escalated conflicts in multiple hotspots including the Lebanese border, the Gaza Strip, and Red Sea shipping lanes, thereby further worsening the turbulence in the Middle East.
(The author is from the Institute of Middle East Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.)
Editor's note: Originally published on china.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.