Will Doha Ceasefire Talks Dissuade Iran’s Response?

The most important issue the Westerners are currently obsessed with is the type of Iranian response to the assassination of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Over the past two weeks, they have sent various messages to Tehran in a push to dissuade the latter from reaction.

In this situation, the American government has tried to prevent the expansion of the scope of the war by negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza.

White House officials hope that with the ceasefire in Gaza, the Islamic Republic will avoid attacking the occupied territories. This is the claim that US President Joe Biden made on Tuesday and said that he expected something like this to happen.

This comes as some Western sources, citing Iranian officials, claimed that Iran said that if the ceasefire is reached in Gaza, it will abort ongoing preparations to strike Israel. 

David Ignatius, a writer specializing in foreign policy, believes in an article published by Washington Post that Biden is trying to defuse the "ticking time bomb" between Iran and Israel, and the hasty attempt to resume the Doha talks is also to prevent Iran from attack. 

Karine Jean-Pierre, the spokeswoman to the White House, said that "we believe that the negotiators should sit down at the negotiating table since reaching a ceasefire agreement is the best way to calm the tensions that we are witnessing." 

Linda Thomas Greenfield, US ambassador to the United Nations, said on Tuesday that the overall goal of the US in the region is to defuse tension, create deterrence, stand against any future attacks and avoid regional conflicts. 

"This begins with the conclusion of an agreement for an immediate ceasefire and the release of prisoners in Gaza,"she said. 

Therefore, the US moves to end the war in Gaza are more to save the Israeli regime from Iran's punishment than to help the people of Gaza.

The American and Western hope for resumption of ceasefire talks comes as there are no firm signs of Iran putting aside its plans to punish Israel. 

Although Iran wants a ceasefire in Gaza and in the past ten months has worked so much to end this barbarous war on the civilians, the Iranian-Israeli confrontation has nothing to do with Gaza developments and they are two separate cases. 

Iran has announced the change in the rules of deterrence with the Israeli regime and considers the punishment a part of establishing and explaining these rules to the Israelis in order to prevent the regime from repeating attacks on its interests at home and in the region. 

Actually, the two-week delay of the response to Israel by the Iran-led Axis of Resistance is not to see what the outcome of the negotiations in Doha will be, rather this strategy of the Resistance camp is to spread fear and chaos in the occupied territories before launching extensive operations, as the media reports of the internal situation in the occupied territories show that the normal routine of life is completely disrupted.

On the other side, Biden's optimism for ceasefire comes as the US administration has no serious option to put strains on Tel Aviv to halt war. 

While it is obvious to all that the continuation of American political and military support to the regime is the main driver for Netanyahu's continuation of war, instead of pressuring Tel Aviv, the White House has recently approved a new package of arms aid to the Israeli military. 

Negotiations shrouded in mystery 

Though the negotiations have started on Thursday, Hamas as one of the main sides of any deal said that it will not participate in the talks. 

Hamas announced in a statement that this movement asks the mediators to present a plan to implement what was agreed by this movement on July 2, 2024, based on the UN Security Council resolution. Hamas stressed that it is sticking to its demand and believes that the truce talks should focus on the previously discussed agreement, rather than discussing a new one. 

Despite the announcement of Hamas's position, Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the US State Department, Vedant Patel, had said on Wednesday that the "Qatari partners have confirmed that they are trying to get Hamas representatives to participate in the ceasefire agreement negotiations this week. It is not yet clear whether these efforts will reach a conclusion before tomorrow's negotiations." 

Hamas leaders do not trust the Israeli officials and have earlier conveyed their conditions to the Israeli side, but hardliners in Tel Aviv opposed these conditions. Although Hamas showed flexibility in its main condition, namely a complete cessation of the war in Gaza and international monitoring of the implementation of the ceasefire, the Israelis still insist on their ambitious demands, and this issue led to collapse of the talks. 

Even now, one of the reasons that blocks clear prospects for the talks is the lack of a political will among Tel Aviv officials. 

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu claims that he is willing to resumption of the talks and a prisoner swap deal, but in practice he does otherwise. 

During past months, Netanyahu has made no move showing that he really wants the return of the Israeli prisoners, and even with successive attacks on Gaza, he killed dozens of them. Some of them have been killed by the Israeli attacks in recent days. 

The Israeli prisoners have not been a serious obstacle on the way of the Israeli army to commit genocide in Gaza, and Netanyahu has shown that the lives of the prisoners are not important to him and he thinks more about maintaining his political position and preventing the collapse of the cabinet.

That is why the families of the prisoners blame Netanyahu for failure to strike a ceasefire deal with Hamas. In their latest press conference, they announced that Netanyahu is trying to escalate the tensions instead of working out a prisoner swap agreement. 

On the other hand, Netanyahu in recent weeks set multiple conditions for resumption of talks with Hamas which many observers believe represent obstacles to the ceasefire. The New York Times Tuesday reported that Netanyahu added new conditions to the terms of the agreement which demanded the immediate release of 33 alive prisoners and also asked his negotiators to make as the main criterion the viewpoint of Tel Aviv about the identity of the Palestinian prisoners Hamas asked their release and determine the mechanism of return of the Palestinians to their life in northern Gaza. 

Netanyahu’s office denied this report, however, and threw the ball into Hamas’s court and claimed that the movement wanted 29 alterations in May 27 ceasefire proposal that the PM rejected. This claim came while Yedioth Ahronoth in a report said that Tel Aviv set new conditions for Gaza talks. 

The Americans have also acknowledged Netanyahu's barriers in the way of an agreement and said that Netanyahu's new condition includes stay of Israeli army on the border between Gaza and Egypt. 

Israel has said for months that it would not agree to a ceasefire unless its troops could search Palestinians for weapons as they travel from south to north Gaza. This act is a pretext for the occupation forces to arrest any Palestinian they suspect as a member of Hamas, something Hamas leaders have opposed.

Netanyahu's repetitive tactic 

Netanyahu’s game on the eve of the talks is a repetitive tactic to foil the negotiations and blame Hamas for failure to reach a deal. 

Netanyahu is not interested in a Gaza ceasefire because he is pressed by threats of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who frequently warns that if war is halted, he will resign from the coalition cabinet. Ben-Gvir's exit from the cabinet means its collapse and end of Netanyahu’s political life. So the PM needs to continue the war to save his power. Netanyahu knows that due to the wave of criticism against the cabinet, there will be no happy ending for the hardliners including him the day after the collapse of the government. So, he is interested to continue the war in hope of change in war conditions or even victory of Donald Trump. 

From another aspect, the extremist settlers under the leadership of Ben-Gvir, by attacking the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, ignite the war with the Palestinians. Therefore, with these provocative actions and the lack of political will in the Netanyahu government to stop the conflict, reaching a ceasefire in Doha is unreachable. 

Khalid Torani, a Palestinian-American politician, believes that "failure to reach an agreement will lead to an escalation and acceleration of Iran's response, and this seems to be what Netanyahu wants as he is eager for Iran's response."

Some political analysts agree that Netanyahu intends to drag Iran into Gaza war and so activate a regional conflict. 

Still, Iranian officials have said that they are not seeking a war and their response will come in a way that the Israeli regime will not commit another stupidity and at the same time prevent escalation in the region.