Trump and Netanyahu’s next gamble

Donald Trump has found a way to explain why he does not need to bomb Iran again. The pressure, his administration says, is already working. Benjamin Netanyahu has found a reason Israelis should keep him in government after taking away his majority. The Iranian danger, he says, demands unity. The two elections have left them with different problems. Trump remains president, facing Americans who want the costs of war brought down. Netanyahu remains in office while his opponents struggle to agree on a government. Both can still make decisions whose consequences reach Lebanon.

On November 9, Trump said he would hold off on fresh strikes after appeals from Gulf countries, while maintaining the naval blockade. The following day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that economic pressure was doing enough to make major combat operations unnecessary. Washington was offering a way to continue the confrontation without launching another bombing campaign. Reuters reports that Vice President JD Vance favours a deal while other senior officials favour maintaining pressure; the White House has not confirmed that account.

Americans have made clear what they want from the next Congress. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted November 6-9 found that 62 percent of American adults wanted it to prioritise ending the Iran conflict. Seventy-eight percent wanted it to focus on the cost of living. Trump is asking a public preoccupied with household bills to accept the continuing costs of his Iran policy.

His choices remain uncomfortable. A deal would require concessions he would have to defend. Renewed bombing could bring back the costs voters are demanding he reduce. Keeping the blockade allows him to insist that he is applying pressure while giving diplomacy more time. But if fuel prices and disruption remain painful, Americans may judge the result more harshly than the explanation.

The incoming Democratic Congress will be able to question officials and challenge funding when it takes office in January. Trump can choose a course before then. New strikes could leave the next majority trying to contain consequences already under way. Equally, an agreement reached sooner could let him present Congress with an outcome many Americans had demanded. The election has changed his political circumstances more quickly than it has changed who exercises power.

Trump is betting that Iran will find waiting more expensive than compromising. That may happen. It also requires Washington to know what concessions would be enough to end the confrontation. Pressure can continue for months without answering that question. A president who promises results eventually has to explain what another month has achieved.

Tehran has its own calculation. On November 10, security official Mohsen Rezaei denied that negotiations were underway and said Washington had yet to provide an adequate response to Iran’s conditions. American electoral losses may encourage Iran to hold out. Yet a president reluctant to launch new strikes can still maintain a blockade. Celebrating Trump’s setback will not pay the cost of another month of restrictions.

In Israel, waiting serves a different purpose. Netanyahu can benefit if the people determined to remove him cannot agree on how to govern together. The arithmetic explains his opportunity. His bloc holds 53 seats in the new Knesset. Gadi Eisenkot and his partners have 48. Arab-led parties hold another 19. There are enough lawmakers opposed to Netanyahu to build a majority, but that does not mean they are willing to sit in the same government or support the same policies.

Eisenkot could seek Arab parliamentary support, but some allies reject that dependence. He could approach ultra-Orthodox parties, at the risk of compromising promises over military service. A unity arrangement involving Likud would force the question of Netanyahu’s place in it. Each route asks someone to abandon a position they presented to voters as a matter of principle.

Arab parliamentary support would also test whether Eisenkot’s partners accept Arab citizens helping determine who governs, or prefer another election to that dependence. Netanyahu can exploit that discomfort. It lets him turn a dispute about his own record into a dispute about who is entitled to help replace him.

Netanyahu is also asking Israelis to put the Iranian threat ahead of their differences over his leadership. At the opening of parliament on November 10, he called for unity against that threat. Eisenkot’s allies, meanwhile, introduced legislation for an October 7 inquiry, term limits and changes to laws passed under Netanyahu. One side wants to investigate how Israel was governed; the other is arguing that the danger outside requires political unity at home.

An Israeli voter can lose confidence in Netanyahu and still hesitate to replace him while the country feels threatened. Netanyahu does not need to manufacture a crisis for that argument to work. He needs enough Israelis to believe that replacing him would make an existing crisis harder to manage.

Eisenkot has to show that accountability can make Israel safer. If he succeeds in forming a government, renewed confidence in its leadership could give it room to make difficult decisions, including military ones. His background and opposition to Netanyahu offer no automatic answer about Lebanon. The parties keeping him in office, and the commitments they demand, will matter.

This is where the American and Israeli choices could begin to diverge. Trump has an incentive to reduce the price Americans pay for confrontation. Netanyahu has an incentive to keep the Iranian danger at the centre of Israeli politics. Those interests can coexist for a time. They become harder to reconcile if an Israeli demand for further military action threatens the relief Trump needs to deliver.

One possible outcome is a limited agreement with Iran that reduces immediate dangers while leaving larger disputes unresolved. Another is prolonged economic pressure, punctuated by incidents that keep everyone preparing for a war they say they want to avoid. A third is renewed escalation if either side decides the other has mistaken restraint for weakness. This week’s American statements favour continued pressure, but they do not remove the other possibilities.

For Lebanon, each possibility carries a different cost. An agreement could lower the risk of another regional confrontation without settling Israel’s military presence here. A long standoff could keep businesses postponing investment and families postponing their return. Renewed fighting would again test whether Hezbollah treats Iran’s war as an obligation imposed on the Lebanese. None of these outcomes can be read directly from an election result. Trump and Netanyahu are trying to recover from their voters’ verdicts. Lebanon cannot afford to become the place where either man proves he has not been defeated.