It Ain't Over 'til the Fat Lady Sings
- Karl Johansson
- för 17 timmar sedan
- 9 min läsning
TACO Tuesday is not the end of the story. The war in Iran is not over yet, and likely won't be until there has been another round of fighting.
In a presidency defined by the melodramatic twists and turns of reality television it can be difficult to parse whether something is real or not, important or not. A new development in the second season of the Trump show is making a military theatre into political theatre. Is the ceasefire an end or just a commercial break? In this post I will try to sift through the overlapping messes that is the Iran war and its contradictory pause.
The announcement of a two week truce between Iran and the US was received with massive fanfare. In the early stages of this news cycle the ecstasy of peace overwhelms rational concerns like what the parties agreed on, and so both sides can credibly claim to have won. But as time goes on the terms will come under more and more scrutiny, and if those terms are the ones reported in Western media, then ecstasy will turn to indignation faster than the talks in Islamabad failed.
Just so that we are on the same level, here are the 10 points of the truce, according to an Iranian state broadcaster as reported by the BBC:
Complete cessation of the war on Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen
Complete and permanent cessation of the war on Iran with no time limit
Ending all conflicts in the region in their entirety
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz
Establishing a protocol and conditions to ensure freedom and security of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz
Full payment of compensation for reconstruction costs to Iran
Full commitment to lifting sanctions on Iran
Release of Iranian funds and frozen assets held by the United States
Iran fully commits to not seeking possession of any nuclear weapons
Immediate ceasefire takes effect on all fronts immediately upon approval of the above conditions
Most of the points are straight forward and uncontroversial. Ending the war and reopening the strait of Hormuz is not going to be a sticking point for either party, nor is vague and watered down statements about establishing protocols to ensure freedom of navigation in the strait. However, there are some conditions which will be difficult for the US to accept, and there is a risk that Israel blows up the negotiations by not withdrawing from Lebanon.
Let’s start with Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu needs a win in the war to have a chance at continuing his political career (carrot) and keeping his prime ministerial immunity from ongoing corruption cases against him (stick). If Israel started a war to finally bring down its arch nemesis Iran and the outcome is that all sanctions are lifted and that Israel has to pay war reparations to Teheran, Netanyahu’s career and the careers of all his ministers are permanently over. I would expect Netanyahu and his far-right allies’ designs on southern Lebanon include annexation in the long term so having to withdraw would be a hefty concession in and of itself. Perhaps the US can force Israel to abide by these terms, perhaps not.
That is assuming the US wants Israel not to sabotage this peace proposal. Trump has no intellectual consistency nor ideological commitments so he can be completely fine with a less than stellar peace; in a New York minute he will be on to the next project. But more principled American politicians and military leaders will find it difficult to accede to the proposed conditions as they amount to admitting defeat. As I wrote about in last week’s post, the US does not want to admit defeat as it would be a loss of prestige, which directly serves to weaken the US’ claim to being the preeminent Great Power.
If we go line by line, there is nothing that Iran gives up in exchange for peace in the reported 10-point plan. Iran opens up the strait of Hormuz, but it does not gain much from keeping it closed. Teheran has shown that it can close the strait, and everyone knows now that it could do so again which is far more valuable than keeping VLCC’s out.
Of course, the 10-point plan is Iran’s, and the US has put forward a 15-point plan with some quite different demands, including dismantling Iran’s nuclear facilities, limits on Iranian missiles, and ending support for Iran’s proxies among others according to Al Jazeera. Given where things stand now, it seems that the US has agreed to Iran’s plan to get this ceasefire rather than the other way around, but it is not entirely clear.
War is politics by other means, and given that the US and Israel have failed to reach their stated political goals of regime change and/or unconditional surrender, it is fair to say that Iran is currently winning the war. In any asymmetric war the stronger power has to win in order not to lose, but the weaker power only has to avoid losing to win. The US and Israel is far from winning at the moment, but they have a lot of rungs left on the escalatory ladder. Will they accept defeat and move on or gable on continuing hostilities?
If we widen the aperture and consider the other Great Powers, China wants oil to flow freely through Hormuz, but it also wants the US to lose the war and be humiliated, putting it squarely in the camp of supporting the 10-point plan. Russia meanwhile wants the strait closed to cash in on its oil exports, and wants the US to lose the war and be humiliated, putting it in the camp of opposing the peace plan. In a multipolar system with three Great Powers if two of them agree on something it will generally happen, making the US the vote to tip the scales. Meaning that it all comes down to domestic politics in the US.
On one hand, MAGA is generally anti-war, but on the other hand, nationalists always hate humiliating defeats. Trump’s base then is probably a non-factor in whether or not the US will accept the 10-point plan. Instead, it is going to be up to elites in the military, intelligence services, diplomatic corps, and the cabinet to put pressure on Trump to stay the course or continue the fight. My bet is that they will want to continue the war, as they think the war is winnable, and that the US’ negotiating position will improve if it escalates.
I think they are wrong, but that is neither here nor there.
It requires a great deal of humility and wisdom to cut ones losses early and move on instead of doubling down on a losing bet. That does not sound like Donald Trump, but he is an amoeba with no fixed position nor spine. If I were a betting man, I’d say that the war resumes and escalates. The question is more of timing. Perhaps the American political calendar will play a role, the summer is campaigning season which is unsuited to an unpopular war, but after the midterms there could be more room for military engagements.
Still, I've seen a bit of punditry in American media proclaiming that the situation as it stands is a clear and important victory for Iran. It is a perfect example of how the American foreign policy establishment is in denial about the US’ power. These people must acknowledge that Iran has successfully been able to challenge the US, but they can never even consider the idea that the US is in relative decline, so jumps to the conclusion that Iran is now a superpower or regional hegemon.
This kind of talk is clearly a way for the aforementioned elites in America to pressure the administration into renewing the conflict; indeed it is a preview of the sort of revanchism I mentioned last week.
On the other hand, it is quite clear to me that the downed F-15 which triggered a massive US rescue operation was not just a routine sortie going south. Western media has not given any credulity to Iran’s claim that it was a botched attempt at seizing the enriched uranium at Isfahan. But if it truly was just a rescue mission how did the US possibly manage to lose two MC-130 military transports? A single weapon support officer could be picked up by a helicopter, and indeed several helicopters were damaged and some even destroyed, including four little birds. ABC reports that the weapon support officer was a colonel, a curiously high rank to fly routine bombing sorties. I find Iran’s account of events far more plausible than the US’.
The takeaway then, is that the US has already tried and failed to mount a spectacular special forces operation. Trying the same trick twice would be insane, and therefore a raid on Iranian nuclear material is probably off the table as a form of escalation. If the US really wants to stick to its red line that Teheran will never have a nuclear weapon – remember that Iran’s 10-point plan does not mention the enriched uranium, but that the US’ 15-point plan includes giving up the uranium – then an over the horizon type air campaign has been proven insufficient. So, to make good on that war aim the US needs a real military presence in Isfahan, which is smack dab in the middle of Iran, in a mountainous area.
I think escalating with an eye towards capturing Iranian nuclear materials would be a hat stand idea, but then again so was the plan to use special forces to capture the enriched uranium. It is quite clear that the key decision makers in Washington live in a cultural environment where the primacy of American hard power is never even questioned. The question is never can the US do it, but should the US do it.
Financial markets seem to bank on the fact that a ceasefire inevitably leads to a lasting peace, after all financiers are brought up on economics which explain how everyone suffers from war and everyone gains from commerce. Meanwhile, energy analysts have been more alarmist, explaining that oil not coming through the strait is not a price issue but a risk of actual, real world, physical shortage. This simple fact imposes constraints on both sides of the conflict. The US cannot keep fighting if doing so means that the buses in Busan and the cars in Canberra don’t have petrol. But neither can Teheran choke most of Asia with its stranglehold on Hormuz.
Sooner or later the pressure will mount on both parties to open the shipping lanes. Jacob Shapiro and Marko Papic have debated this issue on a recent episode of Geopolitical Cousins, where Papic thinks the pressure will be greater on Iran and Shapiro thinks the pressure will be greater on the US. I fully agree with Shapiro. If the ceasefire breaks down following the diplomatic stalemate in Pakistan, most states will want Washington to blink.
One reason is that it is human nature to side with the underdog, and another that the US under Trump needs to be disciplined for rather than encouraged in its erraticism. But another important reason is that the Islamic Republic has actually done everything right. The US attacked Iran while the parties were negotiating, Iran has always matched target escalation, but has never been the first to move on to new categories of targets, Teheran has tried to make sure that some oil gets through the strait as long as it is not going west, and Iran actually agreed to a ceasefire in good faith despite the US’ proven and repeated betrayals of trust.
If you file the serial numbers off and consider a hypothetical where instead of Iran and the US doing these things they were done by state A and state B it is clear as day who’s the reasonable one and who’s the belligerent one. In north America and a Western Europe where transatlantic bonds run deep, and with a sizeable minority indulging or flirting with Islamophobia it is possible to be pro-US and anti-Iran from inertia. But if petrol stations have to close due to insufficient inventories in South Asia, or Sub-Saharan Africa, or in China people will have no illusions about whose fault all this was.
The final, and perhaps most profound point I want to make is this: both sides genuinely think they are winning. I don't think that either side is being disingenuous when it claims victory, which means that neither side feel that negotiations is the only option. If they feel they are getting a bad deal, restarting hostilities wouldn't be that bad, after all they are winning, which creates a very dangerous and unstable basis for negotiations.
So where does this all leave us? Will the ceasefire hold? Will we have lasting peace or a long war? I don’t know, but as things stand, I find it hard to believe that the US will be able to agree to Iran’s terms, especially as Israel will try every devious trick it can think of to derail the negotiations. Of course, in a sane world the US would realise that it has no choice other than withdrawing, but I doubt the US military and foreign policy establishment can swallow its pride. So my sense is that fighting will restart, the strait will be closed again, oil prices will spike, and in another month or two of fighting the US will unilaterally withdraw without negotiating a formal peace with Iran.
In short, the ceasefire is an intermission, not an end. In political theatre as in the opera, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.
If you liked this post you can read a previous post about multipolarity here or the rest of my writings here. I also have a section for longer reads I call essays here, I particularly recommend my series called The Bird & The Technoking exploring Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and its political and cultural implications. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!
I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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Cover photo by Ivan Dražić from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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