Former US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley has warned that the American and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities in June, while tactically effective, risk setting off a chain of destabilising consequences across the region.
Speaking to The National in New York and referencing an article he co-authored with veteran Palestinian negotiator Hussein Agha, Mr Malley said actions that appear to deliver short-term gains in the Middle East have repeatedly produced the opposite effect over time.
“Things that might succeed in the short term may have very different consequences long term,” he said, adding that the region’s history is “a whole list of military 'successes'” that later backfired.
He pointed to Israel’s operations in Beirut and against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Tunis, the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American intervention in Lebanon.
In each case, he said, “short-term, 'victories' end up boomeranging,” producing outcomes such as the rise of Osama bin Laden, strengthened Iranian influence in Iraq, the Taliban’s return to power, and the emergence of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Our point is, don't focus on the immediate, because this is a long movie,” he said.
Mr Malley said last summer’s attacks also demonstrated that “Israel had supremacy over Iranian airspace and extraordinary intelligence” about Iranian personnel and facilities. That, he argued, could weigh heavily on Iran’s calculations should it consider rebuilding parts of its nuclear programme.
“If Iran chooses to restore or resume its nuclear programme, it’s going to have to think many times, because it knows that Israel is watching and the US is watching,” he said.
The strikes “did set back Iran’s nuclear programme,” he added. “It didn’t obliterate it in the way that President Trump said, but it did set it back.”
Asked about a realistic outlook for US-Iran relations, Mr Malley said he could plausibly imagine either renewed military escalation or an unexpected diplomatic breakthrough under President Donald Trump.
“I wouldn’t be surprised” by further US-Israeli strikes, he said, but nor would he be shocked if Washington and Tehran reached a nuclear understanding that indefinitely suspended Iranian enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief and restored UN inspections.
Still, he warned that any such diplomacy would face obstacles. Deep mistrust in Tehran, where leaders believe Mr Trump “betrayed them not once, not twice, but three times,” has made the prospect of returning to negotiations increasingly difficult.
Shifting to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Gaza, Mr Malley discussed his new book Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel-Palestine, written with Mr Agha.
Mr Malley, who has worked on Middle East policy under Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said the book offers a close-up personal account of decades of US-mediated negotiations and why they have failed repeatedly.
“There were times when I thought peace was possible,” he said. “I think at Camp David in 2000, for example, when some of us thought we were almost there. But if you look back, none of the issues being negotiated by Israelis and Palestinians were even close to resolution.”
He added that while there may have been “moments when, with different circumstances, different leadership, different US policy, different attitudes from Israelis and Palestinians, peace might have been possible,” the sheer number of ideal conditions required should prompt deeper reflection.
“If that perfect alignment has never occurred, and we now are in a situation that is much, much worse than we were back in 1993, 1998, 2000, 2014, and all those times when people were seeking the two-state solution, then maybe that perfect alignment of stars is never going to happen,” he said.
“And we need to ask a deeper question, which is whether the objective itself is the right one.”
Asked whether the world was clinging to a fantasy by continuing to call for a two-state solution, Mr Malley said he understood why the idea persisted.
“Whether you're a government official or you're an activist, and you're looking for something, particularly in the wake of the horrors that we've been witnessing for the last two years, you look for something that seems easy…and familiar,” he said.
“The two-state solution has become that refuge for people who are sort of hoping against hope that they will find something quick that will resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has caused such misery and such heartbreak and desolation and destruction and calamity over the years.”
"We need a solution, and Israelis and Palestinians need to find a way to coexist, but rather than sort of cling to the most immediate idea that's out there, let's take the time to think about the deeper reasons about why it has failed for so long, since in any event peace is not about to break out," he added.
But even as he urged a broader rethink of the peace process, Mr Malley acknowledged the political realities shaping present-day negotiations.
Asked why Mr Trump succeeded in securing a ceasefire agreement when Mr Biden could not, Mr Malley said the Republican was prepared to do two things his predecessor was not.
“One was to put more pressure on Israel,” Mr Malley said. “I think he had an asset that President Biden didn’t have, that virtually nobody would fault him for pressuring Israel but the fact is he was prepared to use whatever tools he had to tell [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, ‘It’s done. It’s over'.”
“He also opened up a channel to Hamas, which is unheard of in the history of any US administration,” he added. “President Trump … doesn’t seem to be constrained by any of the habits – good or bad – of American diplomacy … [he] decides if we're going to try to get a deal with Hamas, we need to talk to them.”
Mr Malley said that while Mr Biden “wanted the end of the war", his team “failed to take the decisive measures needed to bring it about".
Instead, Mr Malley said, the administration chose to “maintain a bear hug” with Israel and continue to provide it with the weapons that ensured the war wouldn't end, purportedly to avoid showing public divisions that could be exploited by Hamas, Iran or Hezbollah.
“That was a tragic decision, because it ensured that the war would continue and that the deaths would pile on,” he said.
He added that President Biden only began invoking the two-state solution once the war in Gaza was already underway.
“President Biden, in the middle of the war that Israel was waging in Gaza, all of a sudden discovered the two-state solution, which he had ignored for the prior two years… Did he suddenly find religion after October 7 and then he believed in it? No. The reason he mentioned it then was because he couldn’t think of anything else, and he needed to show there was a political plan — to placate Arab opinion, placate domestic opinion, and to find some way to salvage normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”
Mr Malley expressed scepticism about Mr Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza’s future governance.
"There is so much in this that is distasteful and there's so much of it that it that could go wrong, because it reeks of a colonial type agreement and because there's no details," he said.
Mr Malley questioned whether the plan could ever be implemented, given the deep mistrust among the parties involved.
“Hamas doesn’t want to disarm or give up its role, even if it no longer wishes to govern Gaza directly,” he said. “And Israel has never liked international forces not under its control."
