Donald Trump was quick to declare victory over Iran, but this weekend’s negotiations suggest that Tehran has the upper hand. His war of choice has backfired. His military solution has emboldened rather than weakened Iran. Diplomacy is his only reasonable option.
Trump may have hoped that the marathon 16-hour talks in Pakistan would extract him from his self-created quagmire, but the issues that have long divided Washington and Tehran are complex. When it turned out that Iran wanted to negotiate rather than capitulate, JD Vance, who led the US diplomatic team, packed his bags and went home.
The predictable failure to reach a quick accord is the latest evidence of how disastrous Trump’s war has been. None of his shifting goals for this act of aggression have been realized.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sold the war to Trump as an opportunity for regime change. If senior Iranian officials were careless enough to congregate above ground on the supreme leader’s compound, he argued, why not pick them off? Trump bought it but seemed to have no plan B when the regime survived by replacing one group of tyrants with another.
If anything, by killing several relative moderates, Israeli attacks strengthened the hardliners. Trump laughably claims that regime change has already occurred because the personnel are now different, but their policies are unchanged.
Trump and Netanyahu also wanted to destroy Iran’s military capacity so it could no longer threaten Israel and the Gulf Arab states with its missiles and drones, but US intelligence has found that Iran’s ability to replenish these weapons remains considerable. Even Netanyahu seems to concede as much. And Iran is causing enormous damage to the Gulf states.
The main issue for years has been Iran’s nuclear program. Affirming Trump’s “core goal”, Vance said that Iran must provide “an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon”. But that’s what the 2015 accord negotiated by Barack Obama would have done, yet Trump ripped it up in 2018. It is also what Iran pledged to do by ratifying the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 1970. Both were backed by intrusive international inspections.
Today, because of Trump’s one-upmanship over Obama, Iran is closer to a bomb. It has nearly 900lbs of highly enriched uranium (of some 60% purity), which could be further refined in a few weeks to the 90% purity needed for a nuclear bomb. Inspections have stopped.
Trump will be lucky to secure a deal as good as Obama’s. Then, for example, Iran agreed to relinquish 97% of its highly enriched uranium. For master-of-the-deal Trump, it has given up nothing.
A major sticking point has been whether Iran should be allowed to conduct low-level nuclear enrichment. Tehran insists it should have the same “right” as any other country under the nonproliferation treaty. Given the amount of blood and treasure it has spent to defend that assertion, it won’t abandon it readily.
The Trump administration has never explained why a reasonable compromise, such as allowing only low-level enrichment for scientific or medical purposes, would be inadmissible. Is avoiding token enrichment, which would be monitored by renewed inspections, really worth more war? Netanyahu wants a pretext for more bombing, but why should Trump go along?
Beyond these traditional issues, Trump has handed Iran a potent new weapon – the ability to close the strait of Hormuz and wreak havoc on the world economy. The strait is not an international waterway but lies within the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. However, the Law of the Sea convention treats the strait as freely passable to international shipping and prohibits tolls. Although neither Iran nor the United States has ratified the treaty, they have abided by it – until now. Trump’s might-makes-right world, where he invades and threatens nations willy-nilly, has only encouraged Iran to exercise its military might within its own sphere of influence.
Closing the strait is a more viable weapon than a nuclear bomb. A bomb cannot be used without risking devastating retaliation, let alone global condemnation. But the strait has shown itself to be eminently usable, already having sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing.
Iran sees the strait as a toll booth, potentially gaining more revenue than it does from selling oil. Trump responded by saying he would impose his own blockade, possibly targeting any ship that has paid a toll to Iran or that is traveling to or from Iranian ports. That is an act of war despite the ceasefire that is supposedly in place.
Trump calculates that Iran will capitulate because it needs the revenue from its own oil flowing through strait. Iran is betting that, with US midterm elections approaching in November, “Taco” Trump will be more sensitive to increased prices at the gasoline station. Who will blink first? I wouldn’t count on it being the Iranians.
Iran also wants reparations for the damage done to its infrastructure by six weeks of US-Israeli bombing. That is unlikely, but Tehran hopes to secure some of the needed funds by charging tolls in the strait, getting sanctions lifted, and gaining access to $27bn of its funds frozen abroad. Trump so far has rejected these proposals.
The Iranian government reckons that, despite his bellicose rhetoric, despite Netanyahu’s desire for more bombing, Trump doesn’t want the war to resume. His political base is rebelling at a no-war president who has become a warmonger, Republicans’ electoral prospects for November are plummeting as oil prices rise, and many Americans are outraged as he seeks an annual $1.5tn to fund his military adventures, a 40% increase, while cutting federal funding for housing and healthcare.
This colossal mistake of a war is no longer about Iran’s behavior. It has become a war for Trump’s political future. If not a “win”, he needs a face-saving exit. That is a terrible negotiating posture, and the Iranian government knows it. Despite Trump’s macho facade, it is a position of weakness.
Tempting as it is to smirk as Trump squirms to extricate himself from this debacle-of-his-own-making, the stakes are too high. Trump has threatened to annihilate Iranian civilization – a vow of genocide, even if it is likely to be realized “only” by the massive war crime of further destroying Iran’s infrastructure. How much more suffering must be endured to salve the pride of a flailing president?
The obvious solution is negotiation. That was true in February when Trump pretended to bargain while he prepared to bomb. That was true in 2018 when he jettisoned the carefully negotiated pact of his predecessor. No wonder Tehran doesn’t trust him, but that does not dispense with the need to negotiate. The door is still open to a deal.
But negotiation requires give and take. It demands compromise. It is not done by the edicts that Trump prefers. It can be slow and painful when dealing with a regime that seems to have endless patience for hashing out fine points. But the superpower has encountered the limits of military force, especially facing a regime that cares more about maintaining power than protecting its people. The world is a complicated place. Welcome to reality, Donald Trump.
