‘The Israeli system is clear: The next country that needs to be weakened is Türkiye’

In an exclusive exchange conducted by Harici Medya on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy offers a clinical dissection of the shifting tectonic plates in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Amidst the fog of ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran, Levy delineates a region caught between the unpredictable whims of the Trump administration and Israel’s ambitious pursuit of regional hegemony.

Daniel Levy, a senior adviser to the government of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, was part of the Israeli team that attended the Taba summit with the Palestinians in 2001. He also participated in the second Oslo negotiations in 1995 with then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Between 2012 and 2016, Mr Levy served as Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is currently president of the New York-based think tank US/Middle East Project.

The veteran diplomat provides a sobering analysis of the fragile ceasefires in Lebanon and the intrinsic link between Netanyahu’s political survival and the perpetuation of conflict. Crucially, Levy draws attention to a burgeoning sentiment within the Israeli establishment that increasingly frames Türkiye as a long-term strategic challenge, mirroring the rhetoric once reserved for Iran. This profound dialogue serves as a roadmap for understanding the complex interplay of personal egos, military-industrial interests, and the calculated destabilization of state structures across the Levant.

First of all, of course, the talks are going on right now with Iran and United States. There were certain news coming in the morning. First, Donald Trump claimed that everything is fine, the Strait of Hormuz is open. Then things didn’t go that way. It seems that the Americans didn’t open their own blockade and now the Iranians want to go back to closing the Strait themselves. So, so what do you expect from the ongoing talks right now? Which direction do you think that things will lead into?

I think there are three or four basic possibilities, scenarios. One is there is a deal of some kind. Second is there may be some quiet understandings or expectations, but there’s not something you could really announce as a deal. But the American President decides he’s had enough anyway. He declares victory and walks away. Of course, Iran, with equal, if not greater justification, will also declare victory and everyone will give their speeches. But essentially the ceasefire will hold, there’ll be an arrangement in Hormuz, etc. And that could transition later to negotiations. But, so that’s the second scenario. Third scenario is Trump decides that the way to get a deal is to do one big final strike just to show that he’s still the tough guy, he’s the warmongers. The Israelis and others, those inside his administration, convince him to strike again.

Like an amphibious assault. Like a what?

Well, it could be. What I’m saying is there’s another American-Israeli aggression, maybe from Trump. The goal is you escalate to de-escalate like he did in June of 2025. But once you do that, you’re no longer in control of events because Iran will respond. If that’s the third scenario, then either that segues towards a resumption of a prolonged conflict, or that segues towards walking away, declaring victory. Sorry, negotiation. We seem to be more in the non-escalation trajectory at the moment. Even though there are the things going on in Hormuz, which if the Americans are going to blockade, of course the Iranians are as well. So that’s where we are. The problem is in trying to decipher what will happen next. Of course, there are lots of moving parts, but the thing that makes this most difficult is you have an American president who is not only unpredictable, not only incompetent, but also incoherent. He has no strategy and therefore he doesn’t really know why he went to war, what he wants to get out of the war. I know there are people who think that’s naive to claim that; no, of course, there’s American geostrategy. You’re trying to take hold of an important choke point in world energy. It’s good for the American military-industrial complex. All those arguments are fine. There’s an element of that. But that’s not what’s defined this war. What’s defined this war is the fragile ego, the peculiar personality, easy to manipulate, as we saw with Netanyahu. The reports of how Netanyahu went to the White House, went to the Situation Room, told the American president a story which in any other American administration, the experts would say, “Mr. President, now that our guest, the Israeli Prime Minister, has left, here’s what’s really the story. We’re not doing this.” This president fell into the trap that no other president has before. The trap’s been laid before by the Israeli prime minister. So because of those things, it’s more hard to predict than it would otherwise be. And the president, President Trump, can lurch from, you know, one… he can wake up one morning, he’s spoken to someone, he’s heard an interview on Fox TV and make one decision, and then the next morning makes another one. So it seems that he is fed up with the war. He knows that the politics, the economics are difficult for him to manage. But maybe he thinks he’s Jesus again tomorrow and he carries on the war.

The Lebanon part of the war was really on the spotlight because Pakistan was saying one thing, Iran was saying one thing, then the United States and Israel were saying the complete opposite of what they were claiming. So what we have seen from the beginning of those talks with the ceasefire, it seems that the initial discussion was about actually involving Lebanon, too. And now we come to a point where Israel was reluctant to listen to what Donald Trump or the entirety of American systems tells them to do. But now, for some reason, Donald Trump managed to push Israel to hold a ceasefire on their own. So do you think that this is a failure by Israeli government to not be able to hit their war goals, which was reaching out to the Litani River? What do you think about it?

So, first of all, and this is playing out inside Israel, this doesn’t feel like a win on Lebanon. They’ve destroyed things. That’s their modus operandi. But being told, and especially the very particular language that President Trump uses in his Truth Social postings, “Enough.” This isn’t where Israel thought it would be. It also makes it quite clear that this was part of the deal, that it was the Iranians and the Pakistanis who were telling us the truth on Lebanon. It is also probably the clearest indication we have that Trump actually wants to close the escalatory logic of this war and to be in an ending this deal, de-escalation place because he’s imposed this ceasefire in Lebanon on Israel. It also shows us that if the Americans want to impose something on Israel, they can. Not that we needed any proof of that. Because it’s obvious America has the leverage. America gives them the weapons, America gives them the political support. If America says stop, Israel says yes; it tries everything to avoid that. It will continue to try to provoke. So inside Israel, there is a lot of criticism. First, as usual, Israel overestimated its own capacity and underestimated that of its adversary. You had the Northern Commander of the Israeli military saying, “We were surprised by Hezbollah still having this capacity to send rockets to fire on the ground.” But, and the “but” is important. As usual, it’s a ceasefire, Israel style. And it’s a ceasefire that the Americans have accepted, at least in this respect, Israeli stipulations on the ceasefire. Which means Israel is still physically inside Lebanon. So it doesn’t have the larger security buffer, but it has a significant security buffer. In fact, they took additional land inside Lebanon, bordering Syria, in the hours leading up to this declaration. And Israel, according to the document, the text, can act to prevent immediate operations from the other side. But who defines what that is? Who defines what the threat is? As long as Israel defines the threat, it will define it widely. Nonetheless, Israel has been significantly curtailed, which never happens on the Palestinian front, of course.

With Netanyahu government, there are a lot of, maybe conspiracy theories, maybe more normal comments. But people are claiming that Netanyahu is pursuing more and more war around their neighbors and with Iran because he wants to, you know, just keep going in the political scene. If they stop, maybe he’s going to get into a court case, he’s going to get arrested. Do you think that’s the case or do you think that the Israeli government and Israeli state itself wants to pursue these wars?

So I don’t think it has to be one or the other. It can be both. And I think in this case it is both. Netanyahu, who is alive, by the way, in terms of rumors of conspiracy theories… Well, it’s a weekly rumor. Exactly. It has served him politically since October 7th to be a permanent wartime leader, for Israel to be in perpetual war. Every week he’s still supposed to be in court. Every week he still sends his lawyers to the courthouse to say, “I can’t come this week, I’m busy with the war,” which is genuinely what’s happening. It seems like with the election getting closer, he wants these conditions and he has many options: Lebanon, Iran, Gaza, West Bank. So it’s not just a continuation of war, it’s a continuation of war on multiple fronts. There are other elements to this. Economically, part of how Israel has managed its economy is a version of military Keynesianism, which has been to pump money into the economy not only through the military-industrial complex, but also through the compensation that reservists receive. So part of the money in the Israeli economy at the moment is the very generous packages that those who sign up for more and more and more weeks of military service are getting. And Israel went into this war with a low debt-to-GDP ratio, so it has headspace to keep doing that. But then there is the part of this that’s not about Netanyahu, his personal court case and political management. This is about something that goes much deeper. He has support from the opposition. The opposition criticized: “Why didn’t you get the Americans to do more with us in Lebanon? Why didn’t you build more shelters?” They’re actually mad that they stopped. The opposition are just as belligerent in this respect as the Prime Minister. Back when there were discussions over the Israelis being held in Gaza, the opposition would say, “Get the hostages released and then resume the attack. Why don’t you at least get the hostages released?” So this goes much deeper into Israeli conceptual thinking and how the state has gone on a journey to promoting and then manufacturing societal consent for genocide against the Palestinians and war in the region. And so the way one has to understand this is Israel has a vision for regional domination that requires the weakening and collapsing of surrounding states, of any potential power balances or anything that could emerge as a peer competitor. Of course, Israel’s not the only one that has been involved in encouraging the collapse of states. Israel wasn’t the primary actor in Syria for sure. Israel did then go and smash up what was left of what the Syrian successor leadership could have done after Assad fell. And it even includes trying to… there are some states you’re not going to collapse, but you want to co-opt them. You want them to become dependent on Israel, more vulnerable, like the Gulf. Israel’s desired intentional outcome from this war with Iran was that the Gulf would be more weakened. And of course, the Israeli system is very clear in which country next needs to be weakened; it’s a country called Türkiye.

Yeah, I’ll get to that. But firstly, the cost of doing all of that, the road to regional hegemony, if you will. It’s always claimed that it’s Israel’s reputation and Israel’s friendships, all in the West, in Europe, in the United States and everything. But there’s this idea that if this war stops, somehow, not just Iran, all of that stops. Probably Israel has the idea that things will go back to how it was before. There won’t be any sanctions, there won’t be any, quote-unquote, “hard feelings” with the Western countries. Do you think that’s going to be the case? Because when Germany put sanctions on weapons sales to Israel, they waited for a ceasefire in Gaza, and the moment that it took place, there was just no more sanctions or no more ban for weapons sales. So do you think that’s going to happen with European states who right now are showing negative emotions towards Israel’s actions?

So I think this is a project of overreach, of exaggeration, which is typical of a state that goes to a very extreme place, which is the case in Israel today. But the Israeli, Netanyahu and others’ counter-narrative would be: so far it works. So one thing that’s going on here is while we’re in this moment of fluidity and while he still has Trump onside in the White House, and while everyone else is going, “Oh, my God, what do we do with Trump?”—Europeans, Arab allies, even Tier One Asian-American allies—Netanyahu is saying, “Let’s exploit this moment to strengthen our position to the maximum possible, and then things will settle down again, but we’ll be that much stronger.” So the bet he is placing is if Israel is successful enough, then the others won’t have a choice. They’ll be dealing with a much more powerful Israel. You know, as soon as Germany went one way, it went back the other way. And not only went back the other way, Germany has now signed one of its biggest drone manufacturing deals with an Israeli military arms company. So Netanyahu is saying, “Look, if I can pull this thing enough in my direction, if I get more of the Gulf with me, then India will be less reticent about taking sides. It will be more with me. I have the relations with Greece and Cyprus on energy. Maybe I force Lebanese gas to come this way, maybe I force the Syrians into a similar arrangement. Even if we’ve lost image, even if the reputation looks different, power talks and we can lose the campus and we can lose public opinion, but we can retain enough power that people won’t have a choice. And then they’ll basically accept in Europe as well.” Everyone will look at America as unreliable. This is even thinking for a post… kind of how do we function with an America that has reduced power? If we can assert this, others will fall in line. That’s the gamble. That’s the bet that Netanyahu is placing. There is, to my mind, sadly too much evidence that it’s not a crazy bet. Now, I don’t think it’s going to work. I think there will be blowback. I don’t think he can succeed. But that’s what he’s trying to do. And at the moment it’s not clear that he will fail.

Final question. You already mentioned about their will to, you know, have a quarrel with Türkiye. They’re making it evident in the media, they’re making it evident by their politicians and the claims they do. But at the same time yesterday Mr. Tom Barrack was here and he asked the same question if there will be a fight between Israel and Türkiye. And he said that it’s just rhetoric, there’s nothing serious behind it, that they are just being pushed by people around the leaders like Netanyahu and Erdogan. So I would like to ask you, is there a realistic scenario where Türkiye and Israel are going to face each other and what position the United States will take in such case?

So we’re not talking short term, but this is more than rhetoric. Israeli officials go around the world to their friends and they say, “We need to talk to you about Türkiye, why this country is dangerous.” They are beginning to talk about Türkiye in the way they used to talk about Iran. And Iran was not a short-term project. Iran was a decades-long project of creating the conditions for a confrontation. They warn about the Turkish missile program. That’s the language that they use. But it’s not just that. Türkiye would be not a serious actor in statecraft if it wasn’t now testing on the other side, which I’m sure it is, which is to look at… we’re not talking about war in the short term. What we’re looking at is what vulnerabilities can we begin to create or exploit. One should, for instance, see the energy relationship not only with Greece and Cyprus, but with Egypt. And if they can pull, as I said, Lebanon and maybe try and pull Syria just to test… maybe we can’t, but let’s try. Try the first time. If there is a Syria-Israel relationship, they will see where it can go. Now, I’m not saying that will happen; I don’t think it can. But on Lebanon they will try. They may get further. On Syria, they will try. The relationship on the Kurdish front, Israel got a defeat there when the Americans came in and said, “No, we’re not going to,” when the SDF was forced into the climb down that it was forced into with the Syrian state. So they get setbacks as well. Somaliland, the Israeli recognition of… So there are going to be things happening in places that you go, “What was that about?” and then you say, “Oh, okay.” One of the angles to this story, like the Somaliland story, is a Turkish angle. Israel putting a base somewhere next to where Türkiye has an influence. Sudan. Israel’s not a main actor in Sudan, but Israel’s closest friend in the Gulf is a very main actor in Sudan. So let’s see what we can do there. So you will see sometimes under the surface things going on if Israel is able to continue to pursue this. Now, the counterpoint to that is whether you begin to get an alliance in the region which includes containing and deterring Israel as part of its DNA, as part of its mission statement, if you like. And that’s the subtext to a lot of what is going on is whether Israel can pull more people in its direction or whether we get something that begins to look like containment. But if Israel could continue to pick off country after country, one at a time, then it will continue to escalate its future planning in a belligerent way vis-à-vis Türkiye. If it is forced to roll back some of its ambitious domination project, then the Türkiye thing is too much of a stretch.

Thank you so much, sir.

Pleasure.