Iran War Nearly Over, Or Just Begun
So much winning.
WaPo (“Iran rejects Trump proposal to end war, leaving status of talks unclear“):
Tehran has rejected a 15-point ceasefire proposal by the Trump administration aimed at ending the Iran war, according to state media reports, as Israel continues to target senior Iranian leaders for assassination.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that Iran’s top naval commander, Alireza Tangsiri, was killed in an overnight airstrike, casting it as an effort to support the United States’ push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic.
The status of talks between the United States and Iran is unclear. Iran’s reported rejection of the U.S. proposal does not appear to suggest a total breakdown in negotiations. Tehran did not comment immediately on the Tangsiri strike, which it has not confirmed, and did not say if it had offered Washington a counterproposal.
Iran has previously offered its own terms for ending the conflict that include a demand that the United States and Israel pay compensation for war damage and recognize Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
WSJ (“Israel Races to Pound Iran’s Arms Production Before War Ends“):
Israel has shifted the focus of its air campaign from destabilizing Iran’s ruling regime to crippling its military-industrial base, hoping to deliver a more lasting setback in the time remaining before it has to stop the fight.
The pivot comes as Israeli officials have become convinced President Trump could soon try to end the war, people familiar with the matter said. After more than 18,000 strikes by the U.S. and Israel over the past four weeks, Israel’s military already has worked through its priority targets and is now going back to hit some sites again to deepen the damage.
The shift is another sign Israel has given up on hopes of bringing down Iran’s regime from the air. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said from the war’s outset that the operation aimed to create the conditions for Iranians to overthrow their government. Israel had carried out a wide-ranging campaign against Iran’s internal security forces since the start of the war, even hitting individual checkpoints and police cars.
But Israel and the U.S. since have concluded that any uprising would be unlikely to succeed against a still-entrenched government. Israel’s military hasn’t declared any strikes on Iran’s internal security forces since the beginning of the week, and Netanyahu has stopped publicly calling on Iranians to prepare to overthrow their government.
NYT (“Trump Delivers New Threats, Escalating Effort to Pressure Iran“):
President Trump on Thursday ratcheted up pressure on Iran to accept a proposal to end the war, warning them that otherwise “we’ll just keep blowing them away.”
The president issued his threat at a cabinet meeting hours after Israel said it had killed a naval commander who had been leading Iran’s effort to close a vital oil shipping route. At the meeting, Mr. Trump and a top adviser offered differing assessments of Tehran’s openness to negotiations. Iran has publicly rejected the overtures, though privately it has signaled some willingness.
“They’ll tell you, ‘We’re not negotiating,’” Mr. Trump said. “Of course, they’re negotiating. They’ve been obliterated.”
Two Atlantic staff writers offer wildly different intepretations of the next step.
Thomas Wright (“The Countdown to a Ground War“):
Donald Trump announced this week that the United States and Iran had made significant progress in negotiations, and he was allowing five days to reach a deal. Tehran denied that it was talking with Washington at all. This is not, in any meaningful sense, a negotiation: It is a countdown.
The timing is not coincidental. Thousands of Marines and much of the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne are en route to the Middle East. Trump may intend the talks to act as cover for an escalation decision already made. Even if he doesn’t, the structural reality is the same: When the deadline expires, he will be close to having significant ground-combat capability in the region and a collapsing diplomatic process to justify using it.
The gap between the two sides makes the collapse of talks likely. The American framework is, in essence, a demand for Iran’s surrender.
[…]
The war has not moderated the Iranian regime. It has hardened it. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now dominates Iran’s internal deliberations to a degree unprecedented even under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran effectively controls the strait, and it knows that this control affords Tehran real leverage. Iran appears to have concluded that it is better positioned for a war of endurance than for a negotiated capitulation.
[…]
A deal that leaves the IRGC in effective control of the world’s most crucial shipping lane, imposes no enforceable limits on Iran’s missile or enrichment programs, and offers the regime international legitimacy cannot easily be framed as victory, especially when America’s closest regional partners will be lining up to say otherwise.
[…]
Trump wants to avoid a messy, long war, which could lead to sustained high oil prices and a possible recession. Ground troops would seem likely to bring this outcome about—but Trump appears to believe that their introduction will instead deliver a decisive knockout blow, which will either compel Tehran to accept his terms or make a U.S. declaration of victory credible.
Shane Harris (“The Reason Trump May Pull Back From the Brink“):
President Trump has been sounding desperate lately for an off-ramp from the war he started, emphasizing progress in negotiations that may or may not reflect reality and declaring that “this war has been won” despite ample evidence to the contrary.
[…]
Trump’s whipsawing public comments and social-media posts have created confusion throughout the war. But this much is evident: Despite all Iran has lost, it maintains the military capability to cause a global energy crisis. If Trump hadn’t known this before, the Ras Laffan attack offered a clear demonstration.
A few days after the attack on Ras Laffan, Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, broke the silence he had maintained since the start of the war. The global economy is now facing a “major, major threat” from the disrupted flow of oil and natural gas, Birol warned during an event in Australia on Monday. More than 40 energy facilities across nine countries have already been severely damaged, he noted, so even if the war ended this week, it could take months or years to bring supplies back to prewar levels. Birol compared the loss of oil supply from the current war to the two major energy crises in the 1970s. The loss of natural gas, he added, is equivalent to the supply shock experienced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “This crisis, as things stand now, is two oil crises and one gas crisis put all together,” he said.
Countries far from the Middle East are already feeling the acute pain of shortages.
The ability of Iran to use the “energy weapon” by effectively closing the Strait has been part of our planning calculations since at least the early days of the George W. Bush administration. The IRGC’s widening of the war by striking out at the energy facilities of US-friendly regimes was perhaps less obvious, but certainly not a black swan event.
Weeks of attacks by US and Israeli forces have put a massive dent in the regime’s capabilities and capacity. But there’s little sign that any longer-term win is likely.
What President Trump will do about all of that is anybody’s guess.
James, I’m sure you know more about this than I do, and I’d like you to check me. I don’t think war ever moderates people. It radicalizes them. Until they are defeated, and that means in detail, with troops everywhere, not just in the capital, they aren’t going to moderate. Maybe not even then, but you have a shot of just getting rid of the worst radicals and picking more moderate leadership.
This is not an option that is viable for us, however. So the whole effort just seems misbegotten to me. The whole logic of decapitation strikes are to disrupt their ability to operate, not to moderate them in long-term policy.