Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken pops into my mind when I think about the turbulent Middle East.
Israel and the Palestinians have seen the road leading to peaceful resolution of conflict but not taken it. The United States and Iran took that road once.
In 1947 the United Nations showed Jewish settlers and Arabs in Palestine the road to peaceful co-existence with a plan that partitioned the land into separate Jewish and Arab states. The Arabs rejected the plan and Jewish settlers created the state of Israel on land they controlled. The road taken led to wars between Israel and the Arab states in 1948, 1967 and 1973.
In 2000 US President Bill Clinton tried to mediate a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians at Camp David in Maryland. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat looked at the road to peaceful co-existence but did not take it. Their respective demands were irreconcilable.
Clinton’s Camp David summit was the last time Israel and the Palestinians jointly considered taking the road leading to peaceful co-existence. Over the next two decades Israeli settlers clashed with Palestinians in the West Bank and the violent Hamas regime in Gaza remained committed to a vision of Israel’s extinction.
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians became horrifically violent in 2023. Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed more than 1200 people and 251 were taken hostage. Israel’s ruthless military retaliation blasted Gaza into rubble and killed more than 70,000 people.
The ceasefire since October 2025 has not been peaceful. Israel continues military operations in Gaza to further ‘‘degrade’’ Hamas and Israeli settlers continue to harass Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) governs in the West Bank and wants peaceful co-existence with Israel. However, 90-year-old PA President Mahmoud Abbas is unpopular and the PA needs reform to be a competent government for a Palestinian state.
Israel doesn’t want to take the road that leads to co-existence with a Palestinian state, at least not yet. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared a Palestinian state will not be allowed on his watch.
Extreme right-wing ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich advocate for Israel’s annexation of Gaza and the West Bank.
Meanwhile, the US and Iran have been enemies since the creation of Iran’s Islamic Republic in 1979.
Iran’s nuclear energy programme has been the most contentious issue. Iran insists on a sovereign right to nuclear energy and pledged to use it for only civilian purposes. The US, and most other countries as well, distrust Iran’s pledge to refrain from building nuclear weapons.
US President Barack Obama chose to take the road leading to peaceful resolution of the controversy over Iran’s nuclear energy programme. Obama’s diplomatic initiative was supported by the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany. The US and its negotiating partners were collectively referred to as P5+1 (Permanent members of the UN Security Council + Germany).
Iran President Hassan Rouhani also chose the road for peaceful resolution. He was a liberal reformer on domestic affairs and wanted to normalise Iran’s relations with the US and Europe. Rouhani persuaded Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to approve negotiations with the P5+1 coalition.
Negotiations resulted in an agreement officially titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal of 2015. Iran agreed to limit enrichment of uranium far below the level needed for nuclear weaponisation. In exchange, the US and the European Union agreed to lift sanctions on Iran and release Iranian funds in their possession.
In 2017 Donald Trump began his first presidential term and torpedoed the Obama-Rouhani accomplishment. He denounced the Iran nuclear deal in characteristic hyperbole as the worst deal in American history, withdrew the US from it, and imposed extensive sanctions on Iran.
The American betrayal discredited Rouhani’s foreign policy. Iran’s economy and currency cratered from the impact of sanctions. Massive liberal social protest that started in December 2025 was brutally crushed by government security forces.
Trump chose to take the road leading to war. The US and Israel have been attacking Iran with devastating airstrikes since February targeting government leadership, military sites and infrastructure. Iran has retaliated with airstrikes targeting American allies in the Persian Gulf region, merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and Israel.
Trump advertised himself as dealmaker and peacemaker throughout his successful campaign for a second presidential term.
However, he lacks the diplomatic acumen that enabled Obama and Rouhani to achieve peaceful resolution of issues. When coercive diplomacy failed to secure Iranian submission to his demands, Trump chose war to force submission.
Palestinian, Israeli and Iranian civilians have suffered greatly from war since 2023. University of Otago professor Graham Redding poignantly reminded us in a recent ODT column (16.3.26): ‘‘War is always, at best, a tragedy, at worst, a catastrophic failure of human community’’.
- Richard Byrne is a retired professor of government and history at the University of Maryland Global Campus, now resident in Dunedin.
