Briefing update and interviews: U.S.-Israel options on Iran war after Trump's China visit
The U.S. President’s once postponed and long anticipated trip to Beijing most likely impacted U.S. calibrations of its next moves on the Iran war in recent weeks. That visit is now over and it’s not clear what the balance of satisfaction versus frustration is on the results of the trip; optics and reality may not be so aligned.
The four options on the table prior to the trip in terms of the Iran war remain the same:
1. Resume U.S.-Israeli military strikes, perhaps with a view to escalating in order to de-escalate/declare victory, but with no reason to believe this round produces a better outcome for the U.S.
2. Walk away while declaring ‘victory’, hoping mediation can deliver a degree of predictability in the Iranian response (Iran will do the same in a compelling way).
3. Negotiate a deal—but that requires a demonstration of American sophistication and understanding of the parameters of the possible, which has been absent so far.
4. Continued stagnation. Thirty-eight days after the U.S. and Israel initiated a war of choice, there have now been an equal number of days where a kind of ceasefire has largely prevailed, with neither side budging significantly. That kind of semi frozen war could be prolonged.
The escalation camp—with Israel as cheerleader-in-chief is arguing that a short, sharp, painful round of strikes offers an on-ramp to a more resounding victory narrative (if the President then walks away with ‘no deal’) or will deliver that long-awaited Iranian capitulation and acceptance of an American post-war diktat.
There is every reason to believe these scenarios remain fictitious, which does not mean the President can’t be convinced and that they should be ruled out. Israel is not being shy in pushing for a resumption of hostilities— the Israeli press is full of briefings by officials to that effect and frustration that its calls have yet to be enacted.
Israel’s goal remains the deployment of U.S. military power (along with its own) to maximally degrade the Iranian central state and to induce state collapse, chaos and fragmentation to advance the (excessively ambitious and largely unattainable) Greater Israel agenda of regional domination.
While Israel’s sales pitch may be treated with more scepticism these days in Washington, DC (given its proven lack of credibility to date), the President is presumably immune or incapable of recognizing that he was duped by Israel, and there are a cohort of hawks inside U.S. government and those benefiting from the war, who are similarly aligned.
I discussed these dynamics recently on Al Jazeera’s The Bottom Line with Steve Clemons, and in a series of interviews with Chinese CGTN TV.
The negotiated option is bedevilled by a U.S. track-record of using talks as a cover for military preparations and escalation and by the unserious and incompetence (one presumes partially unintended) of the American negotiating position and team.
The difficulties are compounded by Trump’s 2018 upending of the JCPOA, the leverage accumulated by Iran during the war and the absurdity of negotiations now centring around the U.S. efforts to achieve parts of the status quo ante from before it launched a war. The Strait of Hormuz was open, and Iran had committed (under its assassinated former Supreme Leader) to no nuclear weapons capacity. Perhaps headlines for an agreement at most could be reached and the details kicked into the long grass—even that is considered to be a stretch.
All of the scenarios, including that of stagnation, will have to contend with the cumulative economic effects of a continued blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, and how to resolve that.
The U.S. president apparently was enthusiastic that a winning card had been identified in the U.S. imposing its own double blockade on the Strait. The assumption being that the pain would be greater for Iran, countries close enough to influence Iran (and even as a bonus, U.S. allies, notably in Europe, whom the President enjoys denigrating and treating with contempt).
That however assumes that U.S. resilience and capacity to absorb pain is greater than that of Iran. Clearly Iran is more significantly impacted by the war in terms of economy, destruction etc., but this is about relative thresholds of pain rather than absolute levels. The carry-over from the economic to the political in the U.S. still make it more likely to blink first (although even that consideration is partially mitigated by the incoherent and inconsistent nature of contemporary U.S. “strategy”, if one can call it that).
Presumably, if the blockade is to be mutually lifted, that would either depend on a deal, including attaining sanctions relief and unfreezing of assets for the Iranian side, or that Iran is able to gain some economic benefit, for instance by the taking a maintenance fee, if not toll, for its management of the Strait in relation to those vessels traversing it.
In the meantime, this continues to be a period of overall considerable churn throughout the region. The UAE is doubling down on its relationship with Israel, while Saudi-UAE tensions have been bubbling up again, and there have been a series of statements by current or former senior office holders in Türkiye, Saudi Qatar and elsewhere, pinpointing the need to also contain and deter Israel’s destabilizing and radicalizing regional ambitions.
In an interview with Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland at The Majority Report I went into some depth in relation to Israel’s positioning in the region and the trajectory that is on.
Finally, Israel continues to prevent either a ceasefire or serious negotiations on the Lebanon and Gaza front, and is perhaps preparing for an intensification of its military campaigns in one or both places. In both it maintains a strong military presence and daily killings—including the direct reoccupation of almost two thirds of Gaza, where the situation Israel imposes remains appalling.
As Israel heads to elections, there is very little challenge from the various Zionist parties to the extremism that has been on display for some time—including a wall-to-wall Zionist parliamentary coalition that backed a second bill allowing the death penalty, this time by the creation of a sui generis tribunal allowing mass show trials of those Palestinians arrested in relation to the crimes of October 7th.
I discuss the implications of that in this interview with Al Jazeera Arabic.
And for a big picture look at Israel’s journey down this road of maximalism, here is a longer interview with the CBC’s Nahlah Ayed, which includes excerpts from a speech I delivered in Ottawa. That can be listened to and read here.