One should never underestimate President Donald Trump’s ability to use sheer obfuscation to extract “victory” from a situation where the outcome is ambiguous at best. In the days to come, following Sunday’s announcement of a US-Iran ceasefire deal, the Trump administration will undoubtedly face questions about why it was worth killing thousands of people and spending more than $30 billion, not counting the extra costs Americans and people around the world have paid at the gas pump and the supermarket, on a war that succeeded only in reestablishing the prewar status quo: reopening a strait that wasn’t closed before the war, getting Iran to pledge not to build a nuclear weapon — a pledge it has made for decades — and replacing the country’s hardline regime with an ever harder line one.
Trump can claim the US and Israeli bombing campaign set back Iran’s nuclear and missile programs — though just how far set back they are is still unknown without inspectors on the ground — and that unlike Barack Obama, he won’t be sending planes full of cash from the US to Iran. (The money will probably be coming from Dubai instead.)
The deal will likely come under criticism from the Iran hawks who backed the war — some are already expressing concerns — but Trump may not face all that much pushback given how many of his opponents as well as his supporters simply want the war to end.
The bigger problem for the administration is that the agreement leaves so many issues unresolved that it’s far from clear that the war is actually over. And even if it is, we may just be witnessing the setup for future conflicts that keep the United States on an indefinite war footing in the Middle East.
Is the Strait of Hormuz really reopening?
“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, announcing the deal on Sunday. But Iran’s state media, spinning this deal as hard if not harder than the White House, also claims that the country plans to implement fees on transit through the Strait of Hormuz, contradicting Trump’s claim that the waterway would be “permanently toll free.”
It’s also worth noting that while Trump announced the lifting of the US blockade on Iran, it appears for the moment that Iran will not start implementing the deal until Friday.
That means the strait will not be open for five days — a lifetime in this conflict. Considering that the whole process was nearly derailed on Sunday after Israeli strikes in Lebanon, there’s no reason to assume this is completely finalized yet. Shipping companies and seafarers organizations, not surprisingly, say they need more clarification before they conclude that the Strait is safe for transit again.
Even if Iran does agree to reopen the strait to “toll free” traffic on Friday, the country’s implicit ability to close it again at any time will loom over its negotiations with the US for weeks to come — and beyond. The war has made clear that Iran’s control over the strait is a powerful leverage tool that it is unlikely to give up. The Hormuz genie can’t be put back in the bottle, and the days when free international transit through this crucial global trade chokepoint could be assumed are probably over.
Back to the nuclear drawing board
The deal effectively punts on the main US motivation in the war: eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. While the full text of the agreement has not been released, reporting has suggested that it will begin a 60-day ceasefire period to negotiate a full peace agreement, including a deal on Iran’s nuclear program. Given how long this issue has bedeviled US-Iran relations, a deal to resolve it in two months is a tall order.
The issues on the table include what to do with Iran’s estimated 440-kilogram stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Trump is insisting that what he refers to as “nuclear dust” will be excavated and removed from the country, but Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has issued a directive against this. The two sides are also still negotiating how long Iran would be prohibited from enriching uranium to lower levels for civilian use, what sort of inspection regime will be in place to make sure Iran is in compliance with any agreement, and the sequencing of when sanctions will be lifted in return for Iran’s compliance.
The differences between the two sides might be bridgeable — but given that the US and Israel have now attacked Iran during ongoing negotiations twice in the past year, trust is low, and Iranian negotiators may feel more emboldened to drive a hard bargain.
The Lebanon question
Trump directed yet another profanity-laden tirade at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, accusing him of poor judgment, after Israel launched an airstrike on Beirut in retaliation for a Hezbollah drone attack on Northern Israel.
Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran’s ally Hezbollah in Lebanon may very well be what ends up scuttling this whole process. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in his initial announcement of the deal, made clear that it included military operations in Lebanon, but Israel’s defense minister insisted on Monday that Israeli troops would not withdraw from the Lebanese territory it is occupying.
An outcome of this war that leaves Iran’s regime in place was always going to be a tough sell for Israel, particularly since the US seems to have dropped its demand for curbs on Iran’s ballistic missile program — a much more pressing threat for Israelis than Americans. But it’s hard to see Israel’s government agreeing to an arrangement that (from its perspective) takes away its ability to retaliate against Hezbollah attacks, particularly with Netanyahu heading into a tough reelection fight.
For Trump, the Lebanon issue is an unwanted distraction from his quest to reach an agreement with Iran. But neither Israel nor Iran are likely to let him treat it as a side issue.
The US is staying put in the Middle East
In an interview with the New York Times on Sunday, Trump once again threatened to restart military attacks on Tehran if Iran did not reach a final nuclear deal, but he also went further, suggesting that in the future the US could act as “the guardian of the Middle East” in exchange for 20 percent of the region’s oil revenues.
The idea of the US acting as a paid police force and security guarantor for the region is quite a departure from the foreign policy approach he ran on and his own critiques of his predecessors for getting bogged down in fruitless wars in the region.
Officials say the US military’s force posture in the region will remain unchanged during the next phase of negotiations. It’s possible the US and Iran might muddle through the new ceasefire period, and perhaps extend it a few times, without returning to full-scale hostilities. But as Trump recently said in a revealing joke, a ceasefire in the Middle East can imply shooting “in a more moderate manner.”
Though Trump continues to promise grand bargains to bring peace to the region, he may actually be gearing the US up for a version of Israel’s “mowing the grass” strategy: periodic military interventions to keep its enemies off balance, with no real end in sight. Unlike most Israelis, Americans — including Trump’s supporters — are likely to question why that’s worth their while.