WaPo (“Trump agrees to suspend attacks for two weeks if Iran opens Strait of Hormuz“):
Just 90 minutes before President Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline to wipe out “a whole civilization” with massive strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure and bridges, he granted a two-week extension for diplomacy to continue.
“Subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said Tuesday on social media, “I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.”
“We have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran,” Trump said. A 10-point proposal received from Tehran, he said, was a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”
Trump added, “This will be a double-sided CEASEFIRE!”
After Trump’s announcement, a statement posted by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, which he attributed to the Supreme National Security Council, said it too was responding to Pakistan’s request and Trump’s “acceptance of the general Framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal for negotiations.”
“If attacks against Iran are halted,” it said, “our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations.” For two weeks, it added, “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination” with the Iranian military.
[…]
In the 10-point proposal Trump said was a basis for negotiations, Iran demanded a permanent end to the war as well as an end to any attacks against the “Axis of Resistance,” as it calls its proxy groups in the region, including Hezbollah. According to a government statement reported by Iranian media late Tuesday, demands also included establishment of a formal protocol for passage through the Strait of Hormuz “that ensures an oversight role for Iran.”
The list called for recognition of Iran’s right to uranium enrichment, “withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from all bases and military deployment points in the region,” full compensation for war damage, the lifting of all sanctions against Iran and the release of all Iranian assets held abroad.
David Sanger, NYT (“Trump Finds His Offramp With Iran. But the Causes of War Remain Unresolved.“) assesses this outcome correctly, in my view:
At 8:06 a.m. on Tuesday, President Trump delivered an apocalyptic threat to Iran, declaring that unless his demand to open the Strait of Hormuz was fulfilled by nightfall, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Ten hours and 26 minutes later, at 6:32 p.m. Eastern time, he lifted the threat, for now. He said an intervention by the Pakistani government had led to a two-week cease-fire in a war that has wracked the world economy and showed off American technological dominance and unexpected Iranian resilience.
Mr. Trump’s tactic of escalating his rhetoric to astronomical levels certainly helped him find an offramp he had been seeking for weeks. That success alone may fuel his belief that the tactics he learned in the New York real estate world — ignore old conventions, make maximalist demands — works in geopolitics as well.
Without question, it was a down-to-the-wire tactical victory, one that should, at least temporarily, get oil, fertilizer and helium flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz, and calm markets that feared a global energy shock would lead to a global recession.
But it resolved none of the fundamental issues that led to the war.
It leaves a theocratic government, backed by the vicious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in charge of a cowed population that has been pummeled by missiles and bombs, and finds itself still under the thumb of a familiar regime, even if under new management. It leaves Iran’s nuclear stockpile in place, including the 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade material that was, in theory, the casus belli of this war.
It left Gulf allies reeling, with the discovery that the glass skyscrapers of Dubai and the desalination plants that make wealthy enclaves in Kuwait livable can be taken out by Iranian missiles and drones. Gas prices have soared, and are about to test Mr. Trump’s promise that they will fall again to old levels as soon as the fighting stops.
[…]
Now Mr. Trump faces the challenge not only of reaching a more permanent settlement but proving to the United States and the world that this conflict was worth flighting in the first place. And to do so, he will have to demonstrate that he has removed Iran’s death-grip on the 21-mile channel that makes up the strait, and its chances of ever building a nuclear weapon.
[…]
“Iran remains in the control of the Strait, which was not the case before the war,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. “I find it hard to believe that the United States and the world could accept a situation in which Iran remains in control of a key energy checkpoint indefinitely. That would be a materially worse outcome than existed before the war.”
So might a final agreement. Four weeks ago Mr. Trump was demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender,’’ saying he would determine when the country had been completely defeated. On Tuesday evening his tone was different. He agreed to base the next two weeks of talks on a 10-point plan Iran submitted to the Pakistanis. Mr. Trump called it “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
“Have you looked at Iran’s plan?” asked Mr. Fontaine. “It reads like a Tehran wish list from before the war, calling for a global recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium, the removal of all American forces from the region and a lifting of economic sanctions. And it calls for the payment of reparations to Iran for damage caused in the war.”
[…]
If he fails to get the 970 pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium out of the country, along with far larger quantities of lower-enriched nuclear fuel, he will have accomplished less in the billion-dollar-a-day war than Mr. Obama accomplished 11 years ago. In that agreement, Iran shipped 97 percent of its nuclear stockpile out of the country.
If he fails to win agreement that Iran will limit the size of its battered arsenal of missiles, or the distance they can travel, he will have fallen short on one of his top objectives.
And if his talks with a government led by the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is believed to be recovering from injuries in the bombing that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, end up cementing the new government’s authority, he risks selling out the Iranian people.
It was only a little more than five weeks ago that Mr. Trump was urging the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government. Now he is doing business with that government. On Tuesday he repeated his claim that the new Supreme Leader is part of a generation of “different, smarter, and less radicalized” leaders. American intelligence agencies have their doubts.
“Maybe this will work out,” said Mr. Fontaine, a former aide to the late Senator John McCain. “But there is a chance that this ends with the U.S. and the world in a worse situation than when it started.”
I would say that’s close to a certainty.
Absent major concessions in the next two weeks that Iran has zero incentive to make, the security situation in the region is markedly worse. An Iranian regime still reeling from the humiliation of multiple Israeli and U.S. strikes against itself and its proxies has stood up to the best the United States and Israel could deal out and survived. Instead of being led by a feeble 86-year-old with no succession plan, his 56-year-old son is now in place.
Certainly, the regime’s military apparatus is considerably weakened. Its navy and air force have been heavily targeted. But the IRGC has shown itself to be markedly resilient. And, of course, they now control the Strait of Hormuz.
In exchange, thousands of innocents across the region, including Israel, and a baker’s dozen of American servicemen are dead. Our flagship aircraft carrier is offline. Several planes have been shot down or otherwise destroyed. We’ve expended much of the magazine depth of some of our most exquisite weapons. We’ve spent untold tens of billions of dollars.
Oh, and world oil prices are up, to the detriment of American consumers and the benefit of Russia and Iran.
Other than that, it was a spectacular victory.
