The Israeli cabinet is meeting this afternoon and is widely expected to approve a ceasefire deal in Gaza. It means that US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war and redevelop the region may soon get underway. But even if the surviving hostages are returned and the IDF retreats from the Strip, the peace will be extremely fragile as there are powerful sections on both sides who view the compromise as a dangerous failure.

On the Israeli Right, for example, some suggest the Trump plan amounts to a capitulation of the country’s original war aims: the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip, the obliteration of Hamas and the exclusion of both it and the Palestinian Authority from any future role in its governance. Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs — an influential think tank close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — told us that Hamas has been allowed to treat the deal as just another prisoner swap in Gaza’s recent history.

Bringing home the hostages is, according to Diker, “necessary to help Israeli society heal and to remove the major leverage point that Hamas has on Israel”. But it is nonetheless “a very high-risk exchange”, made even more perilous because Trump has used “a lot of his personal, political power” to make it happen. In other words, how much leverage does Trump have left to keep Hamas from retaliating once Israeli troops leave Gaza? Diker, for his part, says he has seen nothing to suggest that Hamas would not remain in Gaza once the ceasefire begins, allowing it to resume its “jihad” against Israel.

According to Diker, after last year’s decapitation of Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and Israel’s strikes on its nuclear programme in June, sabre-rattling by Iranian officials is not being taken seriously in Jerusalem. But sabre-rattling there is, and senior officials who spoke to us say that if either the Trump deal or its rejection leads to the end of Hamas, Iran will do whatever it can to rebuild the “resistance” under new management.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Iran had warned Hamas not to trust Trump, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ elite foreign affairs unit, the Quds Force, was “working closely” with elements of Hamas leadership and senior figures opposed to the disarmament process.

“The resistance, in our view, provides security for the region and must not disappear,” the Iranian official said. “Years of effort have gone into building it, and it must be preserved. Some senior Hamas figures are actively requesting our support.”

In recent months, Ali Larijani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council appointed by its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has made numerous trips to Lebanon, Iraq and other countries in the region. These have been widely publicised by Iranian state media and the official said they had a clear purpose: not just to “demonstrate support” for Hezbollah and other militant groups, but to “explore new opportunities” for establishing a possible successor to Hamas. If this peace deal succeeds, “some believe that new fronts in the resistance should be opened — with the help of leaders unwilling to betray the cause.”

In a similar vein, Hamas’ representative in Tehran, Khaled Qaddoumi, on Tuesday told Iranian TV that the “rumours” Hamas was ready to disarm as required by the Trump plan, were simply “not true”. He waxed lyrical about the October 2023 attack on Israel, saying it showed that “we in the Islamic world can carry out great deeds”.

The release of the remaining hostages is looming. That is undoubtedly a moment for celebration. But in Tehran and Jerusalem, many fear Trump’s optimism about the conflict’s end is misplaced.