By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Latest: Tentative Deal Reached to End Iran War

Trump Orders Stop to U.S. Naval Blockade

The U.S. and Iran have reached an initial agreement early Monday to open the Strait of Hormuz and further extend a shaky ceasefire in the Iran War, potentially allowing desperately needed oil and natural gas to reach the global market (AP/Associated Press, June 15).

Iran signalled implementation would not start until the signing, which key mediator Pakistan said occur this Friday in Geneva, Switzerland.

This would provide a way to end a war that has killed thousands across the Middle East, including the top leaders of Iran’s theocracy, and sparked a historic energy crisis.

The Islamic Republic itself, is now less a theocracy and more a military junta dominated by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

And defenceless to a regime, Washington and Jerusalem also went to war to eradicate Iran’s nuclear programme and end the threat it poses.

The initial agreement known as the memorandum of understanding will leave Tehran with some leverage, as the two sides engage in serious negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme and its future role in the Strait of Hormuz.

Many details would be left to a 60-day period for negotiations, which may or may not succeed (NYT/The New York Times, June 15).

According to Steven Erlanger of the NYT, in the course of this war, Iran has gone from appearing weak and defenceless to a regime not only surviving, but also retaining important military and nuclear capabilities.

Iran’s extensive security apparatus seems firmly entrenched and in control of all aspects of governing, society and foreign policy.

Iran is now led by “a younger, more brazen generation in power,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House.

Aaron David Miller, a former American diplomat now at the Carnegie Endowment, called “a transition from divine power to hard power.”

Trump has defined his career in politics with extreme displays of dominance and control much of which has not been received with much favour — neither among his domestic audience, nor the international community.

His first real test will come in about four months in the mid-term Congressional elections on November 3.

It will also be a test for the principle of the ‘Separation of Powers’ which the framers of the U.S. Constitution had laid down.

And in the Middle East, he faces a rolling crisis that keeps thwarting his impulses and craving for naked power.

The New York Times columnist Anton Troianovski writes that Trump wants always to call the shots, but controlling the course of the war against Iran has been a major challenge (June 10).

Trump has lashed out against his close partner Benjamin Netanyahu telling the London Financial Times that the Israeli leader “won’t have any choice” but to accept a U.S.-negotiated deal with Iran. “I call the shots,” he said.

But at the time of writing, Trump was still trying to rein in Netanyahu, writing on social media: “Israel and Iran must immediately stop “shooting”.

Trump should be following his own advice, after all it takes two to tango. He should stop attacking Iran for every little provocation.

One hundred days after starting the U.S.-Israeli was on Iran on February 28, Trump is grappling with his own version of the sort of Middle East quagmire – the ‘forever wars’ – that beset his presidential predecessors – and that he solemnly promised to avoid.

He won a tactical reprieve Monday last week when Iran and Israel both said they would hold their fire after their first strikes on each other since April.

But the fundamental deadlock remains, according to Troianovski.

At the same time, Iran hawks in Washington warn that the U.S. president faces a strategic defeat and as polls show broad disapproval of the war as the midterm elections approach.

“Trump launched a war of choice overestimating America’s military capacity and underestimating Iran’s,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“That is a box that Trump cannot get out of right now.”

That box includes Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which the U.S. counter-blockade on Iranian ships and ports has been unable to resolve.

There is also Trump’s demand for wide-ranging concessions by Iran on its nuclear programmes, which Tehran is resisting.

“I worry that the president’s going to codify a bad deal,” said Brad Bowman, a former U.S. Army officer and senior military expert at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a Washington think tank that takes a hawkish line on Iran.

Trump has let his frustration show.

He complained on social media that critics were “chirping” that he should “move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not to go to war, or whatever.”

He said that they should “sit back and relax” because “it will all work out well in the end – It always does!”

Trump also insisted that he had not violated his personal campaign pledge to avoid “endless wars” even though a conflict he called “a little excursion” in March had entered its fourth month.

“Look at Iraq. You were there for years,” Trump said in an interview with Kristen Welker of the NBC’s “Meet the Press”, “We’re there for a few months. And the Threat is largely over. Soon, it will be over.”

But there is a fundamental difference.

In Iraq, U.S. ground forces toppled Saddam Hussein’s government within weeks before eventually getting bogged down in a yearslong  insurgency.

In contrast, the Iran war has stood out for how quickly it has revealed the limits of what American firepower can accomplish.

Bowman said that if the war left the Iranian leadership “angry and still armed,” with newfound influence over the Strait of Hormuz, “the I’d say that is a negative outcome for the United States.”

“The United States has demonstrated that it has the pre-eminent military in the world, but that military power also has limitations,” Bowman said.

“I do worry that this administration underestimated the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Bowman conceded that a sharp escalation of the war by the United States would also be problematic, and that the depletion of U.S. munition stocks had harmed America’s military posture in Europe and Asia.

But he acknowledged that his preferred route of heightening the economic and political pressure on Iran would be difficult to maintain for Trump, given Iran’s ability to keep gasoline prices high with its grip on the Strait.

Deepening Trump’s struggle to control the course of the war is his mercurial relationship with Israeli PM Netanyahu who has angered the U.S. president with fierce strikes in Lebanon in his fight against Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned Shia militant group there.

Miller, who specialized on the Middle East at the State Department, described Trump as largely successful in establishing leverage over Netanyahu.

Trump could well bring more pressure to bear on Netanyahu if it is necessary to secure an agreement with Iran, he predicted.

But getting to that stage would require extracting more compromises from Iran.

While Trump has shown that he can change Israel’s calculus, Miller said, “he’s not yet demonstrated that he can change Teheran’s” (NYT).

The writer can be reached at: shashimalla125@gmail.com