To believe that terrorism seeks peace agreements is nothing more than pure academic naivety. The reality is that it seeks to buy time to rearm by calling for dialogue tables that show public opinion going in several directions, but in the end, they are going nowhere. This unfolds while it seeks to improve its capabilities to then continue with armed struggle, as demonstrated last weekend with the Iranian missile attack on Israeli civilians.
The current instability in the Middle East demonstrates that the various "ceasefires" temporarily agreed upon with marginal actors and states sponsoring terrorist violence have always been weak, tactically manipulated, and definitively fraudulent, hence in the Arab world they are known as Hudna (truce).
If we look back at the background and meaning, the first Hudna in Islamic history is known as the Treaty of Huday Biyah, signed in March of 628 AD between the prophet Muhammad representing the nascent Muslim state of Medina and the ruthless pagan tribe of the Quraysh, which controlled Mecca. This pact laid the foundations of diplomatic and military doctrine of Hudna in the Arab-Islamic world (understood as a temporary peace truce for a maximum period of 10 years). Many of Muhammad's closest followers, including the future Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab, strongly opposed the treaty as an unnecessary capitulation to the idolaters. However, the Quran validated the decision in Surah 48 (Al-Fath / The Victory) explicitly defining that agreement as “a manifest victory.” Nevertheless, what several followers of Muhammad did not know was his intelligence and military brilliance, “the Hudna was not a defeat, but a masterpiece of retraction strategy to neutralize the military threat from Mecca for ten years.” However, the truce lasted barely two years. In the year 630 AD, an allied tribe of the Quraysh attacked an allied tribe of the Muslim followers of Muhammad, violating the clauses of the pact-treaty, leading to its automatic dissolution due to the non-compliance of the people of Mecca, Muhammad advanced on the city with an army of about 10,000 men that he had armed and organized during this truce and thus, captured the city practically without resistance.
Returning to the present, jihadist fundamentalism and its satellite militias pivoting around the ideology of the Islamic Revolution, which are financed by Tehran, continue to challenge global security.
To eradicate this threat, the international community must adopt a firm and uncompromising stance towards those who use extremism as a form of expression to generate geopolitical changes and/or maintain certain status quo regional. On the other hand, the West must understand that in Lebanon, the collapse of the many ceasefires between Hezbollah and Israel shows that they have all been nothing more than Hudnas until the Shia organization strengthened and was able to successfully attack its Israeli enemy again, just like in Huday Biyah, but without the victorious outcome as the Prophet over Mecca.
While the agreements of supposed ceasefire between Israel and the pro-Iranian group are nothing more than empty vessels, another reality takes place on the ground. After weeks of intense Israeli military campaign aimed at dismantling the infrastructure of Iran's military arm in southern Lebanon, the administration of President Donald Trump pushed for a “strange” truce framework.
The agreement brokered by Washington stipulates that Israel must stop its bombings on the southern suburbs of Beirut in exchange for Hezbollah to stop firing projectiles towards the towns and cities of northern Israeli territory. However, as has been demonstrated, this has been the first notable failure of the administration regarding the extensive diplomatic conversations that Washington sponsors between Beirut and Jerusalem. Hence, in circles of close advisors to the president, there are some - the fewer - who mistakenly argue that Trump should order a major military offensive. These people do not understand that Hezbollah is wounded and militarily degraded like never before, but it is not merely a military structure on the brink of collapse due to Israeli military and technological superiority. Hezbollah is more than that, it is “an idea” that has settled at Iran's expense not only in the Shia community of Lebanon, it exceeds it, and is also present in the Lebanese diaspora in Europe, Africa, and Latin America; therefore, the fight against it must have another legal approach, without dismissing the military but not naively believing that the organization will reform and lay down its arms to incorporate itself as a political party in the Lebanese democratic arena, that will not happen, simply because it is not its reason for existence.
The reality of the conflict that keeps military hostilities alive can be summarized in a series of critical aspects: a) Continued military actions manifesting in fierce fighting and artillery attacks, drones, and air bombings by both sides attacking Israel's northern border and similarly in Hezbollah's stronghold in the south of the country and the suburbs of Beirut.
Hezbollah does not comply with the basic conditions of a truce, launching explosive drones and rockets against Israeli positions. This generates the inevitable military response from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that systematically eliminate terrorist commanders and operational figures on the ground in Lebanon. Hezbollah officially rejects a definitive ceasefire if it does not include a total withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, although it seems that it is already too late for that and it is unlikely to happen. That scenario confirms that the Shia group led by Iran uses “diplomacy” only to stop the Israeli advance, without disarming fundamentally or adhering to the part of the commitment that pertains to it.
On the sides of Washington and Tehran. The diplomatic rope between the United States and Iran is more than fragile. The situation there is one of maximum alert and total diplomatic paralysis. Following the recent Israeli bombings against facilities of the Islamic regime in response to ballistic projectiles fired by Iran in the last few days that have broken the temporary truce to discuss the future of the 60% enriched uranium arsenal buried in Iran, there is no sign that the conflict tends to diminish. However, no progress has been made in that regard, so at this moment, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with international intermediaries, is seeking in Washington to consolidate a Memorandum of Understanding, but the negotiations are undergoing a pendular and critical phase close to rupture with resistance even within the U.S. Senate, from Vice President JD Vance, from sectors of the Republican Party itself that place President Trump in an uncomfortable position regarding compliance with the goals of this war.
The Iranian regime, now supposedly commanded in the shadows by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, has unilaterally suspended indirect dialogue with the White House at least twice. The Iranian government demands the immediate cessation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Gaza as a non-negotiable condition to return to the negotiating table, although that is unlikely to happen.
Thus, as a measure of global economic pressure, Iranian forces have kept traffic blocked through the Strait of Hormuz and fire upon commercial vessels, which also impacts the global energy market significantly. Direct combat continues, Tehran claims to have shot down three U.S. drones and one helicopter, also bombarding Kuwait's main airport, provoking retaliation from the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) against its radar bases.
At the same time, Washington continues projecting financial asphyxiation and the absolute and unconditional disarmament of the regime to validate any peace process in the region. The U.S. administration has imposed a new doctrine that presents itself as inflexible through the Foreign Affairs Committee. Washington has made it clear that the disarmament of Shia militias (both Hezbollah in Lebanon and pro-Iranian factions in Iraq) is the only way to lift economic sanctions.
The conditions demanded by the U.S. government are structured around the following non-negotiable pillars: Total surrender of missile, drone, and light weapon arsenals to the exclusive control of national armies, both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Kata’ib Hezbollah (The Iraqi Party of God Brigades) and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (League of Just) also from Iraq, and with them the dismantling of their clandestine economies by definitively closing the systems of cash transfer and parallel financial institutions that Hezbollah uses to evade international controls, in addition to the strict compliance with UN resolutions, which equates to the total and unequivocal application of Resolutions 1559 and 1701 of the UN Security Council to guarantee a Lebanese-Israeli border area free of Hezbollah fighters.
Regarding the U.S. and Iran, the relationship between Washington and Tehran is of maximum alert and total diplomatic paralysis. The Iranian government demands the immediate cessation of Israeli military operations in Lebanon as a non-negotiable condition to return to dialogue, even knowing that this will not happen until Hezbollah complies with Resolution 1701 of the UN Security Council.
In this politically-military board of such effervescence, firmness in counterterrorism approaches will be the only way out; recent history demonstrates that one cannot pacify those who have the destruction of the other as their doctrine. Thus, ceasefires in the Middle East have transformed into empty bureaucratic tools, while the West seeks negotiated exits to stabilize global energy markets, radical groups seize the voids to resupply themselves and initiate new waves of attacks against whom they consider their enemies, whether military or civilian.
In other words and to conclude, until the West understands that terrorism will not be stopped with signatures of “agreements” destined to be unfulfilled in Geneva or Washington but with the dismantlement and neutralization of its financial and operational capabilities, the world will remain under threat, and all countries, in any latitude of the globe, must consider themselves targets of its actions.
By George Chaya. Washington DC
Professor George Chaya is a Senior Advisor on Middle Eastern affairs in National Security and expert in Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) based in Washington DC, USA.
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