Iran Will Be A Spoiler in Trump’s Peace Plan
President Trump inked a historic achievement in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which resulted in Israeli hostages being released and much-needed relief for Palestinians in Gaza. As important as this moment is, it is critical for policymakers to remain clear-eyed that there will never be true peace in the Middle East so long as the Iranian regime is in power. It will be a spoiler.
In his speech before the Israeli Knesset, President Trump directed part of his address towards the mullahcracy which controls Iran. “We are ready when you are and it will be the best decision that Iran has ever made, and it’s going to happen. The hand of friendship and cooperation is open. I’m telling you, they (Iran) want to make a deal…it would be great if we could make a deal.”
Previous American presidents have made such overtures to Iran’s leadership. In January 1989, months before Ali Khamenei became Iran’s supreme leader, President George H.W. Bush in his inaugural address beckoned Iran into the community of nations, promising “goodwill begets goodwill.” President Obama in 2009 likewise offered Iran and others that “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
But fundamentally, despite repeated overtures from American presidents of both parties, friendship and cooperation with the Iranian regime have remained off the table because of the nature of the Iranian regime itself—its core foreign policy pillars since the 1979 Islamic Revolution have remained countering the United States and pushing it out of the Middle East while eradicating the State of Israel. Those objectives will remain irrespective of the Sharm El-Sheikh peace summit. In fact, Tehran rejected an invitation to participate in the summit itself. This was a turnaround as Iran was excluded from past Middle East peace summits, including Madrid in 1991 and Annapolis in 2007. Iran ran its own counterprogramming at the time, hosting an International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada in 1991.
If Tehran were to participate, it likely felt it would be seen as buying-into an American-led security order in the region, which it has consistently repudiated and tried to destroy. One of the core drivers for the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel was to torpedo the expansion of the Abraham Accords, President Trump’s signature accomplishment during his first term. Tehran has been trying to reverse the logic of the Abraham Accords to this very day, in seeking to rally the Muslim world around Israel as the region’s primary destabilizing actor—rather than Iran.
While some Iranian officials publicly indicated they welcomed the initiative to end the war, Tehran has a history of using its Foreign Ministry to endorse diplomatic initiatives to buy the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) time and space in the region to advance its aggression and instability. For example, for years, Tehran signed onto UN resolutions which endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict while arming and funding terror proxy armies which made that solution impossible. Thus, the rhetoric from Tehran often does not match the reality of its posture on the ground.
President Trump’s unprecedented decision to launch Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran’s nuclear facilities coupled with Israel’s stunning achievements in dismantling Tehran’s proxy network across the region have put the regime in a hole. It is suffering from a deterrence crisis, a diplomatic crisis, an economic crisis, an energy crisis, a water crisis, and a crisis of confidence between state and society to name a few. But that does not necessarily mean the supreme leader is poised to surrender. In fact, Iranian positions on a wide range of issues—rejecting zero enrichment, limits on its missiles, and halting support to terror proxies—remain the same after the 12-Day War.
In the aftermath of the two-year conflict, some voices in Tehran have been arguing that the October 7 massacre was a mistake. Jomhouri-e Eslami newspaper in Iran, whose editor is a representative of the supreme leader, wrote an editorial arguing as such. But despite Khamanei’s patronage, Jomhouri-e Eslami has a history of bucking the establishment, and its opinions are not necessarily reflective of the leadership. During the Friday Prayer sermons marking the anniversary of the October 7 massacre, the interim Friday Prayer leader in Tehran showcased the operation as a success and that Israel achieved none of its goals. The Office of the Supreme Leader exercises direct oversight of these sermons.
Rather than abandon its raison d’être, the Iranian regime is likely to find new ways to rehabilitate its grand strategy of eradicating Israel. Despite the ouster of Bashar al-Assad last year, the Iranian regime and its proxy militias like Hezbollah are still trying to use Syria as a land corridor for arms transfers. In late September, the Syrian Interior Ministry announced the seizure of 200 Grad rockets in Al-Qusayr. Already, IRGC-grown militias like the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria—Possessors of Might have started operating in the country, seeking to destabilize the new government.
Iran may also look to new ways to rearm Hamas, other Palestinian militant groups, as well as the Houthis in the aftermath of the ceasefire. Its cultivation of Africa remains strategic, particularly reestablishing weapons supply lines via Sudan. In exchange for providing drones to the Sudanese Army, Iran is reportedly seeking access to Port Sudan in the Red Sea.
On the eve of the Madrid peace conference in 1991, there was a rocket attack on the US embassy in Beirut. There was a bombing of the American University of Beirut thereafter. At the time, Iran and its proxies threatened to attack the sponsors of the conference as well as participants. Repeated Iran-backed Palestinian suicide bombings cast a shadow over the Oslo process throughout the 1990s. As the next stages of President Trump’s peace plan take shape, Iran, while battered and bruised, still retains tools to disrupt the initiative, especially as the most difficult issues in President Trump’s 20-point plan remain to be tackled.
Iran’s recalcitrance in compromising on its core ideology will linger with or without diplomatic engagement between Tehran and Washington. Its desire to destroy Israel persisted throughout the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal—and it used the proceeds from its sanctions relief to arm and fund terror militias to achieve that end during this period. Just days after the release of the Israeli hostages, Alireza Panahian, a cleric close to Iran’s supreme leader, presided over a ceremony unveiling a book published by the regime entitled “Israel Annihilation Plan: The Islamic Republic’s Strategy for the Destruction of the Zionist Regime.” In remarks this week, Khamenei himself went on a long tirade against the United States, calling it a terrorist. This underscores that instability in the Middle East will persist as long as Khamenei or a likeminded successor occupies his chair. The supreme leader is not interested in “friendship and cooperation” with Washington.
Jason M. Brodsky is the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI).
