Will the War With Iran Resume?

Will the War in Iran Resume? ….Yes, but with the U.S. on the sideline….

by Paul Larudee, published on Substack, June 21, 2026

Donald Trump has accepted the fact that the US cannot win a war with Iran. In fact, he will probably agree that it was a mistake, though perhaps not publicly. The image of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting at the head of the table in the White House situation room, with Trump and his team around the rest of the table, and David Barnea, Director of Mossad and other Israeli military and intelligence leaders on screen behind Netanyahu, is now etched in Trump’s mind as the moment when he was duped into the Iran war with assurances that it would be over in a week, with a new, compliant regime in Tehran. Trump is not a forgiving man, and although his gratitude to supporters like Myriam Adelson may not have waned, his newfound skepticism of Netanyahu thus became a major factor in US relations with Israel.

Trump clearly wants to settle with Iran. He wants the Strait of Hormuz to remain open and he wants nuclear enrichment constraints that looks like some kind of a win. He doesn’t mind returning the frozen Iranian assets held in the US or reducing or pulling out US military forces from the region, or reducing or eliminating the economic sanctions on Iran. In fact, he may be ready to do business with Iran.

But Israel has other intentions. At every stage, Israel has advised the US to destroy Iran with all its resources, even when it became clear that the remnants of the US superpower did not have the resources to accomplish that. After all, what does Israel have to lose in fruitlessly exhausting the US military? Nevertheless, Trump seems to finally recognize the futility of such an attempt. At most we should expect occasional minor localized skirmishes.

This does not mean that mean that war with Iran will not resume, just not with the US. As Israel has pointed out, it is not a party to the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran. But that memorandum requires a ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon, where Israel is doing everything possible to fulfill its century-old dream of seizing south Lebanon and killing or expelling its population. Hezbollah, AKA the Lebanese resistance (which, contrary to Israeli propaganda, includes fighters and supporters of all religious affiliations, though predominantly Shiite Muslim), is having something to say about that. The US is therefore obligated by the MoU to restrain Israel into compliance, and Iran to restrain Hezbollah.

That will be a tall order. Today’s Israel is under the powerful political influence of radical messianic eschatological religious groups who believe that it is their duty to usher in the age of the Jewish Messiah (similar to, but not the same as Christian Zionists). For several decades, part of Israel’s internal political strategy has been to encourage the growth of such groups as diehard warriors for the military. The downside is that such groups can come to dominate the political order, as well. That is now the case, where they are represented in the Israeli cabinet by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, without whom Netanyahu would not have a government. Neither Smotrich nor Ben Gvir are troubled by whether they will win a war with Iran, nor whether the attempt to conquer and annex south Lebanon will destroy a potential ceasefire with Iran. They only see their sacred duty to fulfill the ancient Jewish prophecies of a greater Israel. At present, that means seizing south Lebanon, regardless of the consequences.

As things stand, they have agreed to silence Israeli weapons in Lebanon until further notice, if it is agreed that 1) Israeli troops will remain in a “security zone” 8-12 kilometers inside Lebanon from the border, 2) they are permitted to increase the numbers of troops in that area, 3) they may continue to demolish the villages in the area, 4) 1.2 million Lebanese refugees will be denied permission to return to their homes in a much wider area of the south, and 5) Israeli troops do not “feel threatened” by Hezbollah units. These conditions are clearly designed to assure a resumption of hostilities, with the aim of capturing south Lebanon.

Hezbollah, on the other hand, has agreed not to fire upon Israeli troops in Lebanon, provided that they remain in the “security zone” without further encroachment, and that they voluntarily vacate all of Lebanon within two months, in which case, Hezbollah will agree to withdraw their forces to specified boundaries away from the border. The Israeli demands demonstrate quite plainly that they do not intend to comply.

We cannot expect such fragile “agreements” to last. And when they do not, Iran will close Hormuz and attack Israel – mainly in the north – until Israel stops. Israel will then attack Iran, on the assumption that its big US brother will rush in to help. Will the US join in? I suspect that Trump may tell Netanyahu that Israel is on its own, or at least that the US will supply no more than aerial refueling, logistics, some weapons and intelligence. No US forces. The US has already been tested, and it failed. Why would it try again?

Iran will obviously be up to the challenge. Their missiles and drones are capable of wreaking vast destruction on Israel, but they will not immediately go farther than forcing Israel to remove its forces entirely from Lebanese land, air and waters. But what happens next? What are the consequences for the parties? Will Israel concentrate on its genocide in Gaza and the West Bank? Will Iran respond? Will Israel try to recapture parts of Lebanon after a pause of months or years, as it did with a pause between 2000 and 2006? Will Israelis abandon the Zionist dream/nightmare, and emigrate in droves in order pursue a more hopeful dream elsewhere? Will Israel become so despised that it will finally lose the last of its influence in the US after abandonment by the rest of the world? Will it wither and die for lack of outside support, like the Crusader kingdoms of a thousand years ago? These questions will be answered sooner or later.