The former US ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides spent the past two days going up and down the 22 floors of a high-rise hotel in Tel Aviv, and it wasn't by choice.
He was told to head to a shelter as Iran launched missiles in response to Israel's attacks on Lebanon, which reached as far as Beirut's suburbs on Saturday. Despite an exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon for weeks, to Iran, the attack on Beirut was the last straw. Iran has long maintained that Lebanon will be a crucial part of any comprehensive deal it signs with the US.
But this conflict is taking place against the backdrop of a very impatient US President who seems to want a peace deal with or without Israel's approval.
Questions have arisen on whether cracks may be forming in what has long been seen as an unbreakable relationship between the US and Israel. But Mr Nides, who has worked under previous administrations, has his doubts.
“I was in the room when Biden hung up the phone on Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu]. This is not new,” he told The National from Tel Aviv. “The Prime Minister has always had complicated relationships with US Presidents ... [..]. To appreciate him is to also argue with him and yell at him, and this has certainly been the case with [Donald] Trump.”
The personalities of both Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu might be behind the more public displays of diverging views, he added. Mr Netanyahu “can drive people a little bit nuts”, and Mr Trump “has a colourful personality at times too”, the former ambassador said.
This war of words and wills is not without consequence; it could be the determinant of whether and when a deal can be struck with Iran and what that would look like.
But getting to a deal is not a simple or straightforward transaction. Mr Nides's own involvement in the 2015 nuclear agreement has made him familiar with the intricacies of reaching a settlement with Iran.
“It took a year and a half to negotiate that 195-page agreement... The Iranians aren't stupid and know how to negotiate with us,” he said, adding that Mr Trump is learning that the Iranians “don't just roll over”.
That said, Mr Nides predicts that the US and Iran will strike a deal similar to the nuclear agreement, even if Mr Trump will not necessarily see or market it as such. “There will be something that looks very similar to what we negotiated in 2014 – but they're not going to call it that, of course.”
He also acknowledged the predicament the Israeli Prime Minister finds himself in, given the tense environment. “The Prime Minister is in a little bit of a box, given the constraints President Trump has articulated, that he wants the war to end.”
There is no denying the complications involved in the US President trying to end a war that he started while selling it as a win, and in preventing the US from being dragged into a confrontation with Iran while attempting to exercise dominance as Mr Netanyahu covers Israel's attacks in Lebanon, Gaza and Iran with the veil of national security.
“There's a lot of different dynamics here. It's not just one country – it's multiple. Not just the Iranians, the Iranian proxies. It's not just what Israel believes, but it's what the US believes. So this is a multi-dimensional chess game we're playing, and we'll see how it all plays out.”
