The supreme leader’s soldiers and Trump’s representatives

The Iranian revolution was born out of the conflict with the “Great Satan.” Ayatollah Khomeini’s approval of Iran taking American hostages at their country’s embassy in Tehran was akin to blowing up the bridges. The first actual shot of the war was the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

Iranian fingerprints were found again, sometimes obscure and sometimes unmistakable, in embassy bombings and hostage-taking incidents. America responded by preventing Iran from defeating Iraq in the bitter war between the two countries. The American response escalated when Donald Trump ordered the killing of Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad airport.

Iran has harassed America, but avoided direct war with it, for decades. Trump changed the rules of the game when his aircraft bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities and then returned, alongside Israel, to punish Iran for dragging the negotiations out with obfuscation and quibbles.

Observers recalled all of that this week as they watched the men who had flocked to take the Swiss test. They also remembered that Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf is a product of the very machinery that had clashed with America and unsettled the neighbors in the Middle East. Qalibaf is a former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ air force who made his way through several posts before becoming parliament speaker. Abbas Araghchi also volunteered to join the Guards during the Iran-Iraq War before rising through the corridors of diplomacy.

The negotiations will certainly be thorny, especially if Trump continues to bombard the talks with tweets and threats

Ghassan Charbel

Observers also thought of how J.D. Vance was born a year after the bombing of the Marine barracks. Jared Kushner was born two years after the birth of Khomeini’s revolution and Steve Witkoff was a real estate lawyer when Khomeini returned to Tehran. The negotiations will certainly be thorny, especially if Trump continues to bombard the talks with tweets and threats, and they will be in great need of Pakistani and Qatari mediators.

The files of the Middle East being opened at the Burgenstock resort does not mean that Swiss winds will blow over those managing the files. Switzerland does not resemble the contemporary Middle East, which sleeps on a heavy inheritance of conflict and hatred. Switzerland chose neutrality as a path and reaped the fruits even when the old continent sank into two devastating world wars. Moreover, Switzerland’s model is, first and foremost, a deep decision to coexist among races, languages and dialects.

The Switzerland of today was built on accepting the right to difference under the ceiling of the law. Erasure is not permitted and coups are out of the question. The Swiss Confederation does not produce inspiring presidents who impose their will on the constitution. Nor does its system allow for the birth of factions or militias. The cantons do not tamper with the borders drawn for them and the final word always belongs to the ballot boxes.

The Middle East is different: crises of existence and borders; maps that sometimes overflow onto those of their neighbors; a struggle of interests and a struggle of identities; old appetites disguised in new clothes.

The people of the Middle East watched the Swiss meeting from afar. They wondered what made the meeting possible and persuaded the warring parties to sit under a single roof and address one another through proposals instead of drones, and through clauses instead of mines.

Naturally, the question arises: Is it America that changed or Iran? Or have the two countries discovered the peril of continuing down the path of war? Has the US administration discovered that Iran’s strongest weapon is the capacity for absorbing losses, which it built through its long experience with sanctions? Has Washington concluded that toppling the Iranian regime is impossible without a ground war whose losses would be difficult to predict, and that Israel miscalculated when it wagered on the regime’s collapse?

Conversely, did Tehran benefit from Trump’s lack of patience, especially after the global economy was hit by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, not to mention the specter of the midterm elections? Did Tehran conclude that the dream of expelling American forces from the Middle East — a dream that has haunted it since the early days of the revolution — is unattainable? The scenario of the “great blow,” which Yahya Sinwar drew upon in the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, did not break Israel’s back; rather, has the conclusion become that the blow has made it twice as aggressive and savage?

Iran probably sensed Trump’s desire not to return to war. It has sought to capitalize on the returns from closing the Strait of Hormuz and so placed a ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, at the top of the memorandum of understanding’s agenda.

Netanyahu received the ‘Lebanese clause’ with a degree of astonishment, while avoiding any explicit expression of anger

Ghassan Charbel

Iran’s keenness to begin with the “Lebanese clause” is highly significant. First, it is a message of support to Hezbollah, which launched a war of support for Iran that left mass destruction in the villages of southern Lebanon. The message is that Iran, having lost its “border” with Israel through Syria, is not about to accept the same through southern Lebanon. Iran was quick to show how it could use the ceasefire in southern Lebanon as an obligatory passageway for discussing the other clauses, going so far as to announce that it would close the Strait of Hormuz pending the imposition of a ceasefire there.

Benjamin Netanyahu received the “Lebanese clause” with a degree of astonishment, while avoiding any explicit expression of anger, aware of how difficult it is to control Trump’s reactions. There is nothing surprising about this. Boarding the Trump train is, from the outset, conditional upon accepting his commands, which are grounded in “America First” and “Trump First.”

Partnership in war does not mean partnership in the settlement. When you fight with another’s weapons and ammunition, it is difficult to control when he presses the brakes and to prevent him from ending the journey before reaching the station you had hoped for.

Netanyahu had hoped to break Hezbollah’s back and make its disarmament a binding clause of any settlement, but he found himself facing different American calculations. He bowed before the pressure of the occupant of the White House, perhaps because he was convinced that many other mines would emerge in the negotiations of the coming weeks: mines related to the future “management” of the Strait of Hormuz, the highly enriched uranium, and frozen Iranian funds. Moreover, the memorandum of understanding does not address Iran’s missile arsenal and its limits, let alone Tehran’s relations with the proxies it has spread across the region, from Lebanon to Yemen, passing through Iraq.

The journey of the supreme leader’s and Trump’s representatives will not be easy. The war was long, blood was shed and billions of dollars were frozen. It is also a battle of image: the image of Iran and the image of the “Great Satan.”

• Ghassan Charbel is editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. X: @GhasanCharbel

This article first appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat.