The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Iranian government hailed the cease-fire with the U.S. by posting images on social media of President Trump waving the white flag and collapsing on his knees in defeat.

America’s allies and partners in the Middle East fear that Tehran may have a point—and that they will end up paying the price for a war in which the overwhelming military might of the U.S. and Israel failed to secure political gains.

Subjected to thousands of Iranian missile and drone strikes since the war’s start, the Gulf states are grappling with how to survive next to an emboldened Iran that, as of now, retains control over the crucial Strait of Hormuz and seeks to become a regional hegemon.

“Iran is the only one that is happy with the outcome. They have now been re-established as the policeman of the Gulf,” said Mohammed Baharoon, director-general of the B’huth Dubai Public Policy Research Center, a think tank in the United Arab Emirates. “We woke up to a deal that doesn’t reduce the risk, but instead replaces it with a bigger risk.”

To be sure, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has sustained heavy losses, including much of its leadership, and the two-week cease-fire doesn’t necessarily mean an end to fighting. Officials in the Middle East believe there is a significant chance that war will flare up again—possibly with even greater intensity. The region’s future is slated for discussion by the U.S. and Iran at talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Friday.

“It’s important to keep things in perspective. This is a temporary two-week cease-fire. This is not a deal,” said Hamad Althunayyan, a political analyst and professor at Kuwait University. “We could see an extension of that deadline, but we could also see a return to hostilities if the first round of negotiations is not successful.”

The extraordinary speed with which Trump went from threatening that “a whole civilization will die tonight” on Tuesday morning to accepting Iran’s maximalist 10-point demands as a basis for further negotiations a few hours later has left many in the Gulf questioning how hard Washington will push for a deal that achieves its objectives and protects America’s friends.

“Trump has decided to compromise, and with that compromise, he has sidestepped his allies in the Gulf,” said Mahdi Ghuloom, a Bahraini researcher at the ORF Middle East think tank.

Certainly, few in the Gulf approved of Trump’s pledge to destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure and bomb the country into the Stone Age until it reopened the Strait of Hormuz. On Wednesday, there was a palpable sense of relief in Dubai, Doha and Kuwait that these Gulf cities avoided potentially catastrophic Iranian retaliatory strikes on their own power plants and water desalination facilities.

Still, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. reported sporadic Iranian missile and drone attacks continuing on Wednesday, raising doubts about whether the cease-fire would hold. Separately, fighting continued in Lebanon, where Israel said it is going to pursue its campaign against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia.

Huge gaps remain between the Iranian and U.S. positions, including on the issue of Hormuz, a lifeline for the Gulf where one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas once passed.

While Trump said Iran agreed to the “complete, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” a statement by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted that passage through the international waterway will remain permissible only in coordination with Iran’s military. Iran has been collecting tolls from vessels passing the strait since the war began, a practice it seeks to make permanent to pay for its postwar reconstruction. [Continue reading…]