Netanyahu’s Ceasefire: Banking on Trump’s Support Against Iran

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu announced a ceasefire with Lebanon on Tuesday, November 26, 2024, which went into effect the following morning. It is set to last for 60 days. The two nations have been warring with one another since October 8, 2023, with the war being particularly devastating for Lebanon. The nation has suffered thousands of casualties and a million of its residents have been displaced. Israel has reported handfuls of casualties on their end.

The ceasefire, however, is not one of peace but one that has called for more war with another of Israel’s adversaries: Iran. In Netanyahu’s speech, the Israeli prime minister outlined that the primary reasons for the ceasefire was to replenish their armaments and to pivot towards the Iranian threat. Expectedly, the U.S. provisionally approved a $680 million weapons sale to Israel mere hours following the ceasefire going into effect. And while Israel is allowed to replenish its defenses and manpower, Netanyahu warned that the ceasefire will be broken if Hezbollah attempts to do the same.

The temporary reprieve is seemingly needed for Israel, who has been waging an exhaustive war on nearly all its neighbors for the last year, and the timing suggests Trump’s upcoming presidency will be integral to Israel’s pivot towards Iran. After all, President-elect Donald Trump and his cabinet have promised that they will, on day 1, lift all delays and embargos on shipments of military armaments to Israel. With Trump set to take office on January 20, 2025, the timing and duration of the ceasefire doesn’t appear to be a coincidence but instead a foreboding of what’s to come.

Even the conservative political commentator, Ben Shapiro has predicted a similar trajectory albeit proudly given his Israel-first mantra. He asserted that “Joe Biden has been slow-walking aid to Israel” and that the ceasefire is “designed to allow Biden to leave and Israel to be armed by the incoming Trump administration.” Shapiro also did not see the duration of the shaky truce as a coincidence, saying that Israel sees this as a “ceasefire until Joe Biden is gone.”

Although Trump had promised to end the wars on his campaign trail, his war-hawking foreign policy cabinet, dubbed “The New War Party,” and his administration’s stated promises of unwavering support for Israel and a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran hints to the likelihood that the United States will economically and militarily support Israel’s planned escalations against Iran. Trump himself even recently declared that if the hostages that Hamas had taken are not released by January 20, 2025, “there will be all hell to pay in the Middle East” and that those responsible “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States.”

While many ordinary Americans frown at the prospect of their government’s continued foreign meddling, political pundit Ben Shapiro has elatedly reiterated the same prediction, claiming that Israel “will consolidate and refresh its forces in anticipation of the next round of fighting, when there is a president who isn’t a pathetic coward in relation to Iran.”

Tensions between Israel and Iran had reached new heights in early October of 2024 following Iran’s retaliatory missile barrage against Israel. Although the two nations have since exchanged fire, much of it has been reserved as both parties have expressed understandable caution. The prospect of violent escalation is, however, very likely in the foreseeable future and the likelihood of American involvement is alas growing greater. With an upcoming Republican administration that promises to be hawkish on Iran and loyal to Israel, it will be paramount for Americans, and the world, to be vocal against America’s continued meddling in a Middle Eastern conflict in which their involvement is endangering everyone, especially American citizens.