Brokered by the US and France, the fragile Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire went into effect late last month.
From the agreement’s implementation on 27 November until 25 January 2025, there will be a 60-day period for Israeli military forces to leave southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah agreed to transfer its arms north of the Litani River and the Lebanese army is to deploy at least 5,000 of its troops to the border area, where they will be joined by a UN force and French soldiers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured Israelis that his country’s military operations in Lebanon, which intensified in September, had “set Hezbollah back by decades” and that the time had come for Tel Aviv to shift its focus to the “Iranian threat” and the war in Gaza.
Yet, right-wing extremists in his government such as Itamar Ben-Gvir slammed the ceasefire as a “historic mistake” because it committed Israel to withdrawing from Lebanon without establishing a “security belt” in southern Lebanon.
The ceasefire is good news for Iran
Despite Netanyahu’s framing of the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire as an opportunity for Tel Aviv to turn its attention to Iran, and the fact that officials in Tehran have criticised the US- and France-brokered agreement for being skewed in favour of Israel, the Islamic Republic’s leadership is, on balance, glad that this ceasefire went into effect. Tehran also hopes that the ceasefire will last and not unravel, even if multiple factors indicate a serious risk of that outcome.
There is good reason to conclude that Iran played a role in convincing Hezbollah to agree to this ceasefire. A main concern in Tehran was that the Lebanese organisation risked further degradation and decapitation had it continued fighting against Israel. For the Islamic Republic, such a scenario would be extremely negative.
“I think that it was the Iranians who convinced the Hezbollah leadership to accept the ceasefire because Iran cannot see the destruction of Hezbollah. It would be a serious blow to Iranian security,” Dr Sina Azodi, an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, told The New Arab.
Continued warfare between Hezbollah and Israel stood to further prove Israel’s capacity to inflict harm on Iran-allied groups in the Middle East with Hezbollah being the most important one to Tehran. As Dr Azodi put it, “The ceasefire allows Hezbollah to survive and avoid total destruction by the Israelis, which would further weaken Iran’s position in the region”.
“One of the main purposes that supporting Hezbollah has served for Iran has been to provide it with a powerful deterrent. In the past, Tehran aimed to threaten Israel and the US with severe retaliation through Hezbollah should they attack Iran. Hezbollah is not dead and still has the capacity to inflict damage on Israel, but its ability to play that deterrent role for Iran has clearly diminished,” said Dr Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, in a TNA interview.
“Iran therefore had little to gain from seeing the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continuing. It therefore supports the ceasefire largely by default,” added the Ottawa-based scholar.
This ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel has provided Tehran with a “much-needed breather,” explained Veena Ali-Khan, a fellow at the Century Foundation who focuses on the Gulf. She pointed out that the Iranian leadership is now in a better position to redirect its energy toward the nuclear-related issues with the Europeans, the Turkish-backed rebel offensive against the Syrian government, and Iran’s internal challenges.
“Continued support for the Lebanon front amidst Israeli bombardment would have severely drained its military, political, and financial resources that now might be redirected to Syria, all while risking a direct conflict with Israel – something Tehran is keen to avoid,” noted Ali-Khan.
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The Iranian narrative
There are different ways of looking at the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire.
Given that Hezbollah began attacking the Israeli military in the occupied Shebaa Farms on 8 October 2023 in solidarity with the Palestinians and vowed to continue fighting the war against Israel until the implementation of a ceasefire in Gaza, the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire being agreed upon prior to a cessation of hostilities in Gaza was, at least in that sense, a win for Tel Aviv.
Put simply, the Israelis managed to push Hezbollah away from its maximalist position vis-à-vis Gaza and delink the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. Additionally, the Israelis killed Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and other high-ranking figures in the Lebanese organisation, while also inflicting massive damage on Hezbollah’s weapons arsenal, waging attacks on strategic crossings along the Lebanese-Syrian border, while terrorising people throughout Lebanon with unprecedented pager attacks in September.
At the same time, Hezbollah’s armed resistance forced Israel to the negotiating table. Even after Nasrallah’s killing, Hezbollah proved its ability to continue attacking Israel in ways that prevented Israelis from returning to their homes in the north while requiring many to constantly go into bomb shelters across the country, including in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
It was significant that Hezbollah managed to strike Netanyahu’s residence in Caesarea with a drone on 19 October. Not lost in the equation is that Israel’s military, for all its brutality, failed to take control of a single village in southern Lebanon.
Iran and other actors in the ‘Axis of Resistance’ will push the narrative about Hezbollah being victorious and the ceasefire itself proving Israel’s weakness.
“From one perspective, the ceasefire is significant as it highlights Hezbollah’s capacity to compel Israel into negotiations. Something along the lines of ‘Israel has failed to defeat Hezbollah, therefore it has agreed to a ceasefire’. Iran can frame this as a sign of Israeli vulnerability and the effectiveness of Iran’s broader strategy of cultivating and supporting resistance groups across the region,” Dr Ghoncheh Tazmini, author of Power Couple: Russian-Iranian Alignment in the Middle East (2023), told TNA.
Enter Trump 2.0
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House on 20 January 2025 adds many new layers of uncertainty to the Middle East, including the Israeli-Lebanese front.
The Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire is set to expire five days after Trump’s second term begins. Such timing has the potential to significantly exacerbate tensions in the region against the backdrop of important shifts in the Middle East which have benefitted Israel and hurt the Iran-led ‘Axis of Resistance’.
Mindful of the good reasons to expect the incoming Trump administration to subject Iran to ‘maximum pressure 2.0’, there are serious implications for Hezbollah-Israel hostilities that Tehran is not in a position to ignore.
“Increased sanctions and unflinching support for Israel’s regional initiatives will embolden Israel. For Iran, the expiration of the ceasefire coinciding with the resumption of US pressure presents a strategic dilemma,” explained Dr Tazmini.
“Tehran will need to anticipate and mitigate the dual pressures of renewed hostilities on Israel’s northern front and escalating American actions targeting its economy and regional influence. Ultimately, the nexus between a reignited Hezbollah-Israel conflict and the hardline policies of a Trump administration will exacerbate hostilities between Iran and its adversaries,” she added.
Dr Azodi believes that Iran will continue pushing Hezbollah to do what it can to keep the ceasefire in place, both throughout the remainder of President Joe Biden’s term and after Trump returns to the Oval Office early next year. But once Trump’s second term begins, the Iranians will assess that the new US administration “would give more freedom of action to Israel.”
This means that Tehran will be especially determined to avoid giving the Israelis “any excuse to escalate the situation or go after Hezbollah,” concluded Dr Azodi.
As Dr Juneau told TNA, “At the very least, given its recent losses, Iran will want to try to reduce tension in the short-term, to try to counter Israel becoming more emboldened by Trump’s arrival”.
This brings us to important questions about opportunities for US-Iran diplomacy in the era of Trump 2.0.
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Unique time for diplomacy
Officials in Tehran have been sending signals to the incoming Trump administration that the Islamic Republic wants to engage in dialogue while Trump and others in his circle are speaking of their desire to eventually strike a deal with Iran.
Negar Mortazavi, a Washington-based Iranian journalist, host of The Iran Podcast, and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, explained how there is a more “reconciliatory tone” from Tehran toward Washington, particularly toward the incoming US administration. “We’re increasingly seeing Iran signalling that they’re open to talking with the United States, but particularly the next Trump administration,” she said in a TNA interview.
The Iranians may not have been willing to sit down and talk with the first Trump administration, at least not in the manner that Trump wanted, but during his second term, Mortazavi believes that Tehran will go about engaging the US differently with more openness to reaching a deal with Washington.
“We see that the ceasefire is a cessation of hostilities for just 60 days, which gives them until January when the new administration is coming into power…That’s when the future of the conflict in the region is going to be solidified, based on the path that the new US administration is going to take. So, I think overall we’re seeing an opening for potential deals and diplomacy in the region and I see the ceasefire as one piece of that bigger puzzle,” added the Washington-based journalist.
Ultimately, Iran has high stakes in the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire staying in place without the two sides returning to war. With officials in Tehran, including moderates and even certain hardliners, advocating a return to negotiations with Washington after Trump’s second term starts with the aim of securing some degree of sanctions relief, it is quite clear that the Islamic Republic seeks to avoid any actions vis-à-vis Hezbollah and Israel that could decrease the chances of successful diplomacy with the US next year.
But with anti-Iran hawks being picked for high-ranking positions in the incoming US administration, it might be unrealistic to expect a lowering of tensions between Washington and Tehran after Trump returns to the Oval Office.
“Ideally, the ceasefire will remain intact, and hardliners within Trump’s administration will lack the momentum to escalate against Iran. However, recent statements from Trump’s inner circle suggest that this ideal scenario is unlikely and no matter what, maximum pressure 2.0 will push ahead,” warns Ali-Khan.
There is every reason to conclude the renewed “maximum pressure” from the US will be met with “maximum resistance” on Iran’s side. If that is the course of action pursued by the next US administration, relations between Tehran and Tel Aviv are set to remain extremely hostile irrespective of the status of the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire.
“Even with the ceasefire in place, both Iran and Israel remain on high alert. In Iran, there is lingering concern that after Lebanon, Israel may set its sights on Tehran. After a brief period of relative quiet, rhetoric has resurfaced among hardliners, with renewed threats of a counterattack against Israel,” Ali-Khan told TNA.
“This ongoing cycle of threats only underscores that while tensions may have slightly eased, they remain far from resolved. Both nations are still ready for the next potential round of escalation,” she added.
Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics
Follow him on Twitter: @GiorgioCafiero
