The Memo: Trump’s dash for off-ramp in Iran fuels fears of strategic defeat |
The Memo: Trump’s dash for off-ramp in Iran fuels fears of strategic defeat
There are huge questions hanging over the Trump administration’s strategic objectives in Iran, especially now that a tentative ceasefire has hit immediate turbulence.
Global relief on Tuesday evening, when President Trump backed off his ominous threat to lay waste to Iranian “civilization,” gave way to uncertainty and confusion Wednesday.
A key figure in Tehran, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, complained in a social media post that Washington had immediately violated three terms of the tentative deal, notably by excluding the situation in Lebanon from the ceasefire agreement.
Israel has invaded southern Lebanon, asserting it is seeking to counter the militant group Hezbollah, which is widely viewed as an Iranian proxy.
More than 1,500 people have been killed in this phase of the conflict in Lebanon, according to local authorities, and more than 1 million people have been displaced.
Qalibaf contended that the alleged violations by the U.S. meant that “a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations is unreasonable.”
A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, also posted a short clip of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire deal during Wednesday’s media briefing.
Baqaei asserted that this statement amounted to “early reneging” by the U.S.
For now, however, negotiations set for later this week in Pakistan appear to remain on schedule. At the briefing, Leavitt confirmed that Vice President Vance would lead the U.S. delegation in those talks.
The back-and-forth over Lebanon is only one part of the broader uncertainty around how much Trump really achieved during the roughly six-week war, however.
Trump and other senior figures in the administration, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, insist that the United States has won an emphatic victory in Iran since it began its strikes, in conjunction with Israel, on Feb. 28. They point to the thousands of targets hit and to the enormous degradation of Iran’s navy and air force.
But no one had any doubt that the U.S. military is far more powerful than the Iranian armed forces.
From the outset of the conflict, skeptics had warned about Tehran’s capacity to wage asymmetrical warfare, finding pressure points and intensifying the pain to a level its adversaries were unwilling to bear.
This is precisely what appears to have happened in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has been able to exercise effective control over the narrow shipping channel, through which around 20 percent of the world’s oil typically transits.
The de facto Iranian blockade sent oil prices soaring, pushed the price of gas at the pump up by roughly a dollar over the course of a month for Americans, and caused tremors in financial markets around the world.
Oil prices fell like a stone when Trump’s seeming acquiescence to a ceasefire became public Tuesday evening. But the fact remains that the U.S has not been able to wrest control of the strait from the Iranians.
Reading between the lines of Trump’s words, that appears unlikely to change in a fundamental way anytime soon.
A midnight social media post from the president included the assertion that the U.S. “will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made.”
Jonathan Karl of ABC News posted on social media that he had asked Trump on Wednesday morning whether the president could accept a scenario in which Iran charged a toll for ships passing through the strait.
According to Karl, Trump responded, “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture.”
Leavitt, at the briefing, emphasized that progress toward a longer-term settlement of the crisis was contingent upon the strait remaining “open with no limitations or delays.”
But that language implicitly acknowledged that Iran could indeed limit or delay shipping — a massive strategic lever for it to retain.
Similarly, one of the core U.S. aims in the war was supposedly to prevent Iran from ever having the capacity to manufacture a nuclear weapon.
Iran, for its part, says it is seeking nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes.
“Their desire and their plan to build a nuclear bomb inside their country is no longer going to be allowed,” Leavitt said.
But Iran remains in possession of its stock of highly enriched uranium. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran possesses around 970 pounds of the potent substance.
In recent days, Trump and Hegseth have both emphasized their claims that the material is under close U.S. surveillance.
“It’s buried, and we’re watching it. We know exactly what they have,” Hegseth told reporters at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday morning.
He also added, “They will either give it to us or we’ll take it out.”
Iran, which has been sounding a defiant tone, appears highly unlikely to simply hand it over.
There is, of course, one final and overarching problem for Trump — and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Islamic Republic has accomplished its most elemental goal: survival.
Predictions that U.S. and Israeli bombardments would embolden Iranian dissenters to take down the regime were wrong — so far. The killing, on day one, of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei only saw him replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. The theocratic leadership in Tehran never seems to have been at real risk of losing its grip on power.
Militarily, there is no question at all that Iran has taken a serious battering.
But strategically, it has won merely by not losing — and by showing it has the capacity to inflict serious pain and pressure on the West.
The lesson won’t be forgotten anytime soon — in Washington or Tehran.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
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