Saturday in Islamabad, today in Washington — Diplomacy is struggling to find its place amidst the chaos of Middle East wars.
What happened in Pakistan between Americans and Iranians, and what could happen today in Washington between the ambassadors of Israel and Lebanon, is just the beginning of a negotiation. The serious part has not yet started.
Certainly, the two meetings are quite unprecedented: between Americans and Iranians, it was the highest level of meeting since the birth of the Islamic Republic in 1979; the same between Israelis and Lebanese, one has to go back a long way; the two neighboring countries, with no diplomatic relations, have seen more wars and occupations than negotiations.
Demand for surrender
But just meeting is not enough to turn it into a negotiation: it needs to happen at the right moment in the conflict. Clearly, this is not the case in the two parallel tracks, which makes the period dangerous.
There is still the illusion, on both sides, that they can gain more through arms or cunning than through negotiation. In Islamabad, Vice President J.D. Vance declared, before boarding the plane for Washington after 21 hours of discussions: “‘They did not accept our terms’, our conditions”.
This statement speaks volumes: asking the other party to accept a list of conditions is not negotiation, it’s a demand for surrender. It reveals the fact that Donald Trump assumes that Iran is on its knees and just needs to surrender. He fails to understand that the Revolutionary Guards see things very differently: for them, surviving 25,000 American and Israeli bombings is a victory, and the mood in Tehran is not about surrender.
The survivors of the regime also believe they have a secret weapon with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which they believe will force the American president to give in first due to pressure from markets and public opinion.
As long as both sides are under illusions about each other, the negotiation is not mature, even though, it seems, parallel discussions have been taking place since the failure in Islamabad. In the meantime, it is happening in the Strait of Hormuz.
Fool’s march
For Lebanon as well, there is a fool’s march. Israel only accepted to meet with the Lebanese government to counter the ceasefire demand in its war with Hezbollah. The day of the ceasefire in Iran, April 8, was the deadliest in Lebanon: 350 dead.
The Israelis will not give up on a historic opportunity to destroy the Shiite movement and create a security zone in the south. The Lebanese government also wants to disarm and neutralize Hezbollah; but everyone, including Israel, knows that it does not have the means or the will to do so because of the risk of civil war. It arrives in Washington in a position of weakness, but has no choice.
Simply meeting with the Israelis earns the Lebanese government the accusation of “treason” in a polarized country reliving its fractures of fifty years ago. Don’t expect miracles in Washington today. Diplomacy is waiting for its moment, and it will come because military successes do not necessarily end wars.
