President Donald Trump has walked back his 48-hour ultimatum demanding that Tehran permit the free passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. He has suspended threatened strikes on Iranian power plants for five days to pursue what he described as “productive conversations” with Tehran. “If it goes well, we’re settling this – otherwise, we’ll keep bombing our little hearts out,” Trump told reporters.
Trump’s withdrawal of his ultimatum and the fact that negotiations are taking place do not necessarily mean that the US has thrown in the towel in the face of Iran’s continued defiance. It is equally possible that the US president is simply seeking to buy time until the US forces currently heading for the region have deployed. Given the yawning gap in the US and Iranian positions, it is difficult to see how talks at this stage could bear fruit.
It appears increasingly likely therefore that if Iran’s de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz is to be broken, it will ultimately require direct US action. If the Iranian imposition of control by force on a vital global waterway is not reversed, meanwhile, then the Islamic Republic will emerge from this round damaged but intact, and strategically strengthened.
President Trump’s claim last Friday that the war was “militarily won” has some merit to it. The US and Israel have decimated Iran’s top leadership echelon, killing around 30 senior officials including the Supreme Leader, and demonstrating an astonishing intelligence penetration of the innermost sanctum of the Teheran regime.
Iran’s ballistic missile array has been massively reduced, its ability to launch these missiles severely set back, its conventional naval capacity almost destroyed. The US and Israeli forces have near freedom of action over Iranian skies. Israel is continuing daily to strike at the regime’s ability to govern, striking at regime personnel and at facilities and positions of the Basij and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
But while the US and Israel exhibit near full spectrum dominance of the skies over Iran, and deep penetration of the structures of governance and coercion on the ground, these do not constitute “victory” if the Iranian regime remains intact, defiant, able to exert direct control over a vital global trade artery, and to threaten Washington’s vulnerable Gulf allies at will. That is the current situation.
Iran, as evidenced by its dismissal of Trump’s ultimatum, is showing no sign that the present amount of pain that Washington and Jerusalem have inflicted on it is sufficient to cause it to seek terms or to retreat.
Rather, Teheran, publicly at least, issues its own defiant terms. In an interview with the pro-regime al Mayadeen media channel, an Iranian official this week listed a series of conditions that Teheran insists on as part of any ceasefire. These far exceed anything that Washington could conceivably agree to. According to the official’s statement, Iran demands binding guarantees that the war will not be repeated, compensation for damages inflicted during the war, the closure of US military bases in the region, and the establishment of a new legal regime governing the Strait of Hormuz (presumably permanently enshrining Teheran’s current de facto management of the Strait).
Iran’s demands constitute an effort to fundamentally redefine the regional order to its advantage. The official interviewed by al-Mayadeen indicated that Iran was not seeking an immediate end to hostilities, and “does not see a near horizon for a ceasefire.” Rather, Teheran wants, says the official, to “punish the aggressor” and deliver a “historic lesson.”
Is Teheran’s defiant stance mere bravado, a thin cover over a collapsing structure? There is little evidence at present to suggest this. Rather, the regime appears to consider that its hold over Iran is currently intact. It also is apparently working under the assumption that it controls the dynamic of escalation in the current conflict. Teheran thinks that its demonstrated capacity and willingness to keep striking at energy facilities in the Gulf, its control of Hormuz, the implications these have for oil and gas prices and for the global economy, along with what it sees as the US desire to avoid an intensification of the conflict will play to its advantage, causing Washington to blink first.
The next weeks will show if the Iranian regime is correct. The US has a number of options, if it wants to assert its own control of the process of escalation.
Once the two Marine expeditionary units currently on the way arrive to the region, the range of potential US responses will widen. The first is due at the end of March, the second in mid April. With these forces available, the US could then consider seizing Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports pass. Iran appears particularly concerned about this possibility. An article in the IRGC-linked Tasnim news site this week threatened that Teheran would “turn the Red Sea and the Bab al Mandab strait into unsafe areas” should the island be seized.
So the question now is who controls the escalation ladder? Who blinks first? Iran has successfully defied apparent American expectations that it would quickly capitulate, and dismissed US threats and ultimata. At the same time, it has suffered massive damage. Can the US increase pressure on Iran to its breaking point, forcing Teheran to climb down? Or will Iran’s calculus, that its higher willingness for pain will enable it to escalate to beyond a point where the Americans are willing to go, prevail? Achieving the former will clearly require a greater application of force. Talks based on the current status quo, meanwhile, risk confirming the latter. As usual, the issue comes down to the US President’s currently unclear intentions. We will find out soon.
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