We now have a pretty good picture of what the next few months will be like in Trump’s on-again, off-again Iran war. The cease-fire will mostly continue, punctuated by periodic skirmishes. The Strait of Hormuz will be mostly open, but intermittently closed. There will be hollow threats of resuming full conflict, and no real progress toward containing Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
The events of the past few days will keep repeating themselves. If you’ve seen the movie Groundhog Day, you will have a sense of the endless repetition. But unlike the Bill Murray character, who finally gets it right, Trump never does.
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Beginning last Thursday, the U.S. military attacked Iranian communication and air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and mine-laying capabilities. The U.S. contended that this was in response to an attack on an oil tanker in the strait. According to Iran, the tanker had followed a route near the coast of Oman that Tehran had warned shippers not to use.
Iran retaliated with attacks on U.S. military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, and threatened to close the strait again. Trump then blustered on social media, “There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
But the Iranians have the upper hand, because they know that Trump, despite his threats, does not dare to wreck the oil-dependent U.S. economy again with just four months to go before the election. With the tenuous cease-fire, Trump has now achieved his main short-term goal, which is to limit the economic damage.
The price of crude oil is back to what it was before the war, but not the price of gas at the pump. High gas prices reflect reliance on the national stockpile, which has been almost depleted and will need to be replenished.
The skirmishes also derailed the latest round of negotiations. By Sunday, both sides had suspended attacks, talks were set to resume in the Qatari capital of Doha, the two sides continued to dispute what the deal actually provided, and the cycle began again.
Trump is now bored with Iran, and fundamentally unserious about the larger issues of national security. If he were serious, he would not have put Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in charge of Iran diplomacy or let Bibi Netanyahu talk him into launching the war in the first place.
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Meanwhile, the barbaric dance between Israel and Hezbollah will also continue. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled the latest U.S.-brokered Israel-Lebanon deal. It allows Israel to continue occupying most of southern Lebanon but turns over two small “pilot zones” to the Lebanese army, with the idea of neutralizing Hezbollah in those zones and eventually in all of southern Lebanon. However, Hezbollah is not party to the deal and vowed to continue attacks. Despite the hype, the deal is a fantasy.
So we will see a continuation of the warfare in southern Lebanon, which the U.S. committed to end as part of the Iran cease-fire. Trump will continue admonishing Bibi for violating the Iran deal, and Bibi will continue doing what he wants. This will further destabilize U.S. relations with Iran.
It all leaves Iran stronger and the U.S. weaker than before the war. On the crucial question of Iran’s nuclear capability, a major part of Trump’s rationale for the war, any possible agreement will be far worse than the one that Barack Obama negotiated in 2013–2015, which Trump tore up. And those negotiations keep being postponed.
If you want to get a sense of the serious, adult diplomacy that led to the 2015 agreement, watch this recent CNN interview with John Kerry, in which Kerry explains the two years of patient negotiation that led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the enlistment of Russia, China, and every other major world power as guarantors.
Under the JCPOA deal, Iran agreed to constrain fuel cycle activities that could lead to production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. The JCPOA restricted the number and type of centrifuges and the level of uranium enrichment, and Iran agreed to accept stepped-up International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring of its nuclear activities. In exchange, Iran received relief from nuclear-related sanctions but not economic sanctions. It was a stunning achievement of diplomacy, and nothing that Trump might achieve now will come close.
A friend observes, comparing Kerry and Obama and their diplomacy with the current Trump crew, “It’s kind of like Jurassic Park. I know these creatures roamed the political scene at one time, long ago, but now I’m getting to see them live [on the Kerry interview] and it’s a bizarre feeling. You see and feel how different they are from today’s creatures.”
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Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America. Follow Bob at his site, robertkuttner.com, and on Twitter. More by Robert Kuttner