Israel’s unprecedented strikes against Iran early Friday morning were shortly followed by Israeli officials boasting that Trump deceived Iran with duplicitous diplomacy in order to catch it by surprise. This perspective was lent credence in some’s minds by Trump’s posts here and here where he reminded everyone that he threatened Iran with “something much worse than anything they know” if another nuclear deal wasn’t reached and then pointed out that Friday was day 61 of his 60-day ultimatum.
His exuberant support for Israel’s strikes after having earlier warned against them, all while his administration still claimed that the US wasn’t involved in those attacks, convinced many that the abovementioned Israeli officials were telling the truth. It therefore seemed that Trump’s rift with Bibi was indeed part of the ruse. This compelling interpretation of events would have drastic ramifications if true since Russia might then be spooked into pulling out of the Ukrainian peace process if Putin believed it.
Ukraine’s own unprecedented strikes against Russia at the start of June were themselves preceded less than a week prior by Trump warning in a post that “bad things…REALLY BAD” might soon happen to Russia if it doesn’t agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine. Although the White House denied that Trump knew about them in advance, Putin might now be doubting him more than ever before after the duplicitous diplomacy that Israeli officials just boasted about, but it’s still unclear what he thinks about all of this.
While the official Kremlin readout of Putin’s calls with Bibi and Pezeshkian later that day noted that he condemned Israel’s actions, he also reiterated Russia’s support for a political resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue and said that it’ll keep promoting de-escalation. His Foreign Ministry’s statement said pretty much the same and “call[ed] on the parties to exercise restraint”, while his top UN Representative claimed that “the British sheltered the Israeli aircraft involved in the operation at their base in Cyprus.”
From the looks of it, unless Russia is practicing its own duplicitous diplomacy, it doesn’t seem like Putin and company believe that Trump duped Iran. Rather, it appears that they share the viewpoint introduced by conservative commentator Glenn Beck and former IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus, who agreed that “[it’s not] deceptive to make plans to go in on day 61.” In other words, Trump truly wanted a deal and was thus against Israel attacking Iran before day 60, but he wasn’t going to stop them afterwards.
This interpretation would account for why Bibi claimed that the original plan was pushed back from late April on the pretext of operational reasons. It could have also contributed to what might actually be a real rift between him and Trump after all if Trump feared that Bibi would strike before the timeline passed and thus ruin the deal that Trump truly wanted. Israeli officials’ boasts might thus be a psy-op to manipulate Iran into striking regional US assets so as to provoke the US’ direct involvement in the war.
Trump and his team didn’t deny those claims, probably because Israel’s unprecedented strikes were so successful (though perhaps they would have denied them if they weren’t), but they also didn’t confirm them for escalation-control purposes. Ultimately, there’s no way of knowing whether Trump really did deceive Iran with duplicitous diplomacy, but it’s significant that Russia hasn’t signaled that it agrees with this explanation and is instead calling for mutual restraint and reaffirming the importance of diplomacy.
