Iran warned Israel that any attack on Beirut would trigger a response. Israel was not deterred: it bombed the Lebanese capital anyway. Iran then made good on its threats, but the barrages of ballistic missiles it fired at Israel failed to cause serious damage. That may have been a deliberate choice, since a destructive attack could have ended the ceasefire entirely. Regardless, Israel’s riposte caused real harm—not just to military targets but also to a petrochemical plant, a vital part of Iran’s energy sector and its industrial base. This was a lousy scorecard for Iran. Not only did it fail to deter Israel, it ended up suffering more damage than the country it sought to deter. For a time, Mr Trump may restrain (though not halt) Israel’s war in Lebanon. But if the current limbo drags on, Iran may face an uncomfortable choice between escalating its attacks on Israel, thus risking the truce, or allowing Israel to continue chipping away at Hizbullah. The regime has had more luck with changing the behaviour of America. Closing the Strait of Hormuz and firing thousands of missiles and drones at Gulf states helped persuade Mr Trump to accept a ceasefire in April. Since it took hold, Iran has been walking a tightrope. It wants to show enough resolve that Mr Trump makes further concessions towards a deal, but not so much that he drops diplomacy entirely. On June 9th it downed an American Apache helicopter over the strait. Mr Trump decided to retaliate by bombing Iran’s air defences (though those defences were “100% annihilated” earlier in the war). Iran subsequently attacked—again—American bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Mr Trump sounded furious in a social-media post the next day: Iran had “taken too long to negotiate a deal” and would “have to pay the price”. That night he ordered another round of strikes on military targets. This is a dangerous cycle. Iran may want to show that the impasse will have costs for America, but the loss of a single helicopter was not enough to sway Mr Trump’s negotiating position. Conversely, if the pilots had been killed, he might have felt compelled to resume all-out war. Iran is newly confident in its capabilities, but they are limited. Hormuz is already closed, and Mr Trump seems not to care so long as oil prices do not

go much above $100 a barrel. Iran cannot resume widespread attacks on its Gulf neighbours without ending the ceasefire. Lobbing missiles at Israel is a poor deterrent. What looks like confidence can also seem like desperation: a regime more willing to take risks not because it is stronger, but because it has less to lose. ■ Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/06/11/iran-has-lost-its- fear-of-war

Middle East & Africa | A growing dilemma How Israel is frustrating Donald Trump’s Iran plans Binyamin Netanyahu has defied America twice in recent days June 11th 2026 FOR SOME 12 hours on June 7th fighting between Israel and Iran flared up as the two yet again traded missiles and air strikes. Then a tenuous calm was restored as Donald Trump insisted, rather unconvincingly, that “both sides, Israel and Iran, are looking to do an immediate ceasefire!” The American president does not want to see a renewal of the war that America and Israel fought together against Iran for 40 days, which led to an unresolved blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and a spike in global energy prices. The temporary resumption of hostilities highlighted Mr Trump’s twin failures to control his ally and cajole Iran to accept a lasting truce. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has now defied the president twice in

rapid succession. First, on June 7th Israel attacked Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, bombing what it claimed were offices of Hizbullah, the Shia militia that is Iran’s most powerful regional proxy. Less than a week earlier Mr Trump had imposed a limited ceasefire on Israel and Hizbullah that prohibited Israel from striking Beirut. Israel claimed its bombs were responding to Hizbullah attacks. Iran then sprang to Hizbullah’s defence, firing a salvo of 11 missiles towards northern Israel, but failing to cause any damage. Mr Trump thought this was enough, telling a reporter at Axios he was “going to call Netanyahu right now and tell him not to strike back”. Instead, Israel’s prime minister ignored the president’s instructions for a second time. Israeli fighter jets launched ballistic missiles at Iran, hitting targets including missile-launchers, an air- defence installation and a petrochemical plant that Israel claims is part of Iran’s missile industry. Iran struck back, firing 20 missiles at Israel, one of which hit the desert near the Dead Sea. The rest were either intercepted or fell short. Both countries made their point. Iran is unwilling to abandon Hizbullah, which it helped found in 1982 and in which it has invested billions of dollars. The militia remains one of the most important ways it can project power in the region. Israel, which now occupies a swathe of southern Lebanon, is determined to keep battering Hizbullah. For decades the two countries fought a shadow war in which direct attacks were taboo. Today both are prepared to resume firing in order to prove a point. This leaves Mr Trump with a dilemma. He has already tried and failed to impose ceasefires on Israel, in both Lebanon and Iran. He has frozen it out of the negotiations with Iran that are being brokered by Pakistan and other intermediaries. But leaving his partner-in-war out in the cold has not worked. After Iran’s latest barrage, the president claimed that Mr Netanyahu would have no choice but to accept any deal he reaches with Iran: “I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots,” he told the Financial Times. And yet Mr Netanyahu kept shooting until a second call from Mr Trump forced him to abort further strikes. It is hard to gauge the state of their relationship from Mr Trump’s rebukes of Mr Netanyahu, whose defiance has not led to any obvious repercussions.

The president recently told the prime minister on the phone: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me.” And yet Mr Netanyahu’s aides insist the two leaders are still close. “No other world leader has a closer relationship with Trump,” says one Israeli official. “But that doesn’t mean we know what he’s going to decide.” Although Mr Trump may be willing to tear a strip off Mr Netanyahu, he still is reluctant to break with his ally. Co-operation between the two armed forces is such that America could have blocked Israel’s strikes on Iran, had the president chosen to do so. Political constraints are not holding Mr Trump back. In the past, American leaders feared paying a heavy domestic price for confronting Israel. Now public support for Israel is waning. The collapse spans partisan, generational and religious boundaries. A Gallup survey released in February showed that, for the first time in two decades of polling, more Americans sympathised with Palestinians (41%) than with Israelis (36%), a reversal from 55% to 26% in Israel’s favour before the attacks of October 7th. Democrats—the party backed by most Jewish-American voters—are especially disillusioned, but other polling shows 57% of Republicans aged 18 to 49 also hold an unfavourable view of Israel. Some officials are keen to blame Israel for America’s failures to achieve its war aims in Iran and to secure a lasting peace. They are briefing accordingly. A recent leak about suspicions in the Pentagon that Israel is spying on members of Mr Trump’s inner circle, including his personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, may be part of such efforts. Mr Netanyahu has more pressing concerns than the long-term erosion of American support for Israel. He will face an election by late October and is coming under intense criticism, both from his allies and opponents, for failing to achieve decisive results in the wars Israel has been fighting for nearly three years. The Iranian regime retains its nuclear and missile programmes. Hamas, the Islamic movement that carried out the October 7th massacres, still controls the parts of Gaza that Israel does not. Likewise Hizbullah, despite being pummelled by Israel, remains capable of launching rockets and drones, while enjoying Iranian missile cover.

Since Mr Trump first announced a ceasefire with Iran on April 8th, Israel has tried to decouple the Lebanese front from the Iranian one and continue its campaign against Hizbullah. The president’s priority is reaching a deal with Iran. Increasingly, he seems to have concluded that doing so will require him to impose limits on Israel. As for Israel, it has once again proved it can strike targets throughout the Middle East, but cannot translate this into strategic gains. And just as dangerous: it risks losing its American ally in the process. ■ Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//middle-east-and-africa/2026/06/08/how-israel-is- frustrating-donald-trumps-iran-plans

Middle East & Africa | All at sea The first-ever robotic rescue at sea is a milestone An American drone recovers downed pilots in the Strait of Hormuz June 11th 2026 In april america’s armed forces sent planes and helicopters deep into Iran to rescue the crew of a downed fighter jet. The recovery of the crew of an Apache attack helicopter shot down by Iran near the Strait of Hormuz on June 9th was less dramatic than that episode. But it will go down in military history as the first ever drone rescue at sea. America’s Central Command (centcom), which runs military operations in the Middle East, said that an uncrewed surface vessel (usv), essentially a ship without sailors, recovered the two crew members within two hours of the crash. It is part of a larger robotic revolution in casualty evacuation, or casevac.