It’s almost not worth considering, but precisely because it comes from the White House, the mad manoeuvrings and silly airings of the US President must be taken seriously. But only to a point. Over the last week, a series of events have taken place demonstrating the growing alarm within the administration that things are simply not going according to plan. Iran is proving asymmetrically resourceful, threatening and durable. Tehran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, waterway to some fifth of the world’s oil and global shares of other products, including gas and fertiliser, is biting financial markets.
On March 20, President Donald Trump openly considered scaling back operations in the war with Iran. This assertion was somewhat cheapened by the deployment of 2,500 additional Marines to the region, along with a request to Congress for an additional $200 billion for the conflict. On social media, Trump claimed that the US was “getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”
These objectives have always been hopelessly vague, but the President offered a few pointers that failed to clarify matters beyond the usual tactical triumphalism that has accompanied the briefings of this administration. Iran’s missile capability, including launchers “and everything else pertaining to them” were being “degraded”. Iran’s defence industrial base was in the process of being destroyed. The country’s navy and air force, including anti-aircraft weaponry, had been essentially eliminated. Tehran would never be permitted “to get even close to Nuclear Capability”, with the US always in a position to react speedily and “powerfully” in such a case. Fifthly, Washington’s Middle Eastern allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others, were to be protected. (Iran has made the fifth point not merely redundant but false: the US security guarantee has not been worth the rather expensive paper it was inked on.)
As for the Strait of Hormuz, dreamy suggestions involving guarding and policing by those nations using it followed. The US would provide assistance to such countries “in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them.” No such indication of engagement by said countries has been forthcoming, and Iran remains, to date, firmly in control of the Strait.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did little to fan the dust away, claiming that Trump and the Pentagon had “predicted it would take approximately 4-6 weeks to achieve this mission.” Take your pick, Leavitt: a few weeks, a month, six months. Either way, on an ongoing daily basis, “the Iranian Regime is being crippled, and their ability to threaten the United States and our allies is being significantly weakened.” For a cripple, Iran continues to do astonishingly well, only permitting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz it approves of, and continuing its drone and missile strikes on targets that have extended as far as the joint US-US base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Much of the chatter about the chat involves the usual parties. On March 22, Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were again involved in negotiations, this time with Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf. (The speaker denies having ever had such discussions, describing it as “Fake news” with the purpose of manipulating “financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped.”) The mentioning of this official was already suspicious, given the shortsighted, rather neanderthal tactics of the US-Israeli war machine in killing off, not merely the top echelons of the Iranian leadership but secondary, somewhat skilled officials who might serve to engage in diplomacy. Other reports point to the mediating role of Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan in passing on messages between the US and Iran. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry was good enough to signal that backchannel conversations were ongoing between Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
On March 23, with the clock ticking for yet another ultimatum for Iran to meet – opening the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping or face the destruction of its energy grid – Trump again took to the pulpit of Truth Social to announce, just before markets opened, that “very good and productive conversations” had taken place between the parties “regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East.” Given such progress, he had instructed the Pentagon to postpone strikes that had been promised against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a period of five days, conditional on continued progress.
Tehran was having none of this. “There is no negotiation whatsoever between Tehran and Washington. The statements of the president of the United States are within the framework of an attempt to lower energy prices and buy time for the implementation of his military plants.” On both points, the statement is shrewd. The man in the White House may claim to be an unparalleled master of making deals, but when it comes to Iran, he was proven a crotchety novice and stumbling saboteur, always impressionable towards Israel’s needs and incapable of maintaining a consistent front.
Diplomacy has been used as a stalling measure, as it was leading up to the attacks of February 28 on Iran. With market shocks, Trump’s timed announcement of progress with Iran on terms that remain sketchy (presumably they remain opening the Strait, the abandoning of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile capability, and its funding program for Shia proxies across the Middle East) seems designed to calm trade before the next round of strikes. In the chaos, Iran remains calculatingly resolute.
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