The ‘Irrepressible’ U.S.-Iran Conflict
Both sides might like to stop but see too much to lose to make an agreement stick.
By Walter Russell Mead
President Trump speaks on Air Force One, July 8. Alex Brandon/Associated PressOnly one thing was falling apart faster last week than Graham Platner’s Senate campaign: The memorandum of understanding between the Trump administration and what remains of Iran’s civilian government.
By Monday, there was, as Gertrude Stein would put it, no there there.
The Iranians have no plans to negotiate an end to their nuclear program.
The Americans aren’t giving Iran sanctions relief.
Iran is firing missiles at commercial ships.
The U.S. is retaliating against targets across Iran.
Iran responds by targeting countries ranging from Oman to Jordan.
President Trump calls the Iranian leaders “evil people” and “scum” before reinstating the American blockade.
Mosques all over Iran echo with calls for the assassination of Mr. Trump.
This isn’t peace.
It isn’t even a cease-fire.
What we have instead was described in one of the most famous lines in 250 years of American diplomatic correspondence.
“It would be superfluous in me,” Abraham Lincoln’s emissary Charles Francis Adams wrote to the British foreign secretary, “to point out to your lordship that this is war.”
The core problem is that the conflict between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran is of the kind that Adams’s boss, Secretary of State William Seward, once famously characterized as “irrepressible.”
Iran wants to control the energy resources of the Persian Gulf, and there is no local coalition of states powerful enough to block it without American support.
The U.S. has believed for 80 years that ensuring the free passage of Middle Eastern oil and gas to world markets is essential to America’s prosperity and security.
Mr. Trump, a man for whom energy dominance is a central foreign-policy theme, is unwilling to give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran may make temporary concessions under grave duress, but it will not, perhaps cannot, abandon the drive for control.
Both sides seem to see more reasons to keep fighting than to throw in the towel.
On the Iranian side, the ability to block commerce even partially through the strait comes after a horrific series of humiliations and failures.
Hamas’s reliance on Iranian support turned out to be a vain hope.
Hezbollah is on the back foot. Iranian influence is under threat in Iraq.
The Houthis until recently were holding back from the latest round of fighting.
And Iran’s armed forces couldn’t prevent the destruction of most of its conventional military power, as well as of its civilian leadership and supreme leader.
Iran’s attacks on its Gulf neighbors and on neutral shipping have restored the self-confidence of the country’s hard-liners.
The destruction of civilian leadership has empowered the most radical factions of the regime.
And the resilience of the regime’s militias and clerical support amid failure and destruction have bolstered the hard-liners’ conviction that they can keep power indefinitely against renewed American attacks.
Finally, we shouldn’t underestimate the sense of joy and vindication that a global wave of anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred have given to the darkened hearts and minds of Iran’s current leadership.
Their resistance and defiance, they and their proxies in Lebanon and beyond believe, is turning the global tide against the hated “Zionist entity.”
They expect America will soon turn against Israel, and the holiest of holy wars can finally begin.
They conclude that Mr. Trump—worried about his falling poll numbers and the coming midterms, pressured by the Tucker Carlson wing of the Republican Party—won’t dare attack Iran in full force.
Mr. Trump for his part may be feeling more confident and less risk-averse than the Iranian leaders believe.
Iran’s assassination threats are more likely to enrage than to cow him.
With Russia weakened by its inability to end the war in Ukraine, and China facing economic worries and eager for a thaw with the U.S., Iran’s fellow revisionists haven’t exactly been rushing to its aid.
Iran’s attacks on its neighbors have deepened their hatred of its regime.
Iran’s effort to pressure the U.S. by firing at neutral and even friendly ships in the Persian Gulf tends to isolate the mullahs.
Mr. Trump will likely find it easier to build support abroad and at home for a war to protect oil supplies by stopping Iran’s blocking of the strait than he did for a preventive war against its nuclear program.
War is almost always a succession of surprises, many unpleasant.
This is especially true when unconventional leaders engage in an irrepressible conflict.
Diplomats and investors should be warned.
Both Mr. Trump and the Iranian regime may be taking their cues from John Paul Jones’s response when asked if he was ready to surrender.
“Sir,” he supposedly declared, “I have not yet begun to fight.”
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario