A forever war in the making
The memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran halted their war and provided a framework for talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Less than a month after it was signed, it has failed, and a document intended to halt a war has instead become a reason for resuming it.
The immediate dispute concerns who controls the Strait of Hormuz, but more is at stake. The collapse of even this minimal understanding could remove the last barrier between episodic confrontation and a forever war.
The memorandum was hardly a peace agreement. It did not reconcile the two countries, resolve their dispute over limits to Iran’s nuclear program or establish a durable regional order. It merely placed a guardrail for a relationship that had fallen into open warfare. If that guardrail gives way, each round of fighting will become the foundation for the next.
Renewed war will not alter the reality that gave rise to the memorandum of understanding in the first place. The United States can inflict devastating damage on Iran, but it cannot eliminate Tehran’s ability to disrupt shipping through the strait. Iran can impose severe economic costs by choking the waterway, but it cannot compel Washington to accept its terms. After more missiles are fired, ships attacked, infrastructure destroyed and civilians killed, the parties will return to the same negotiating table — only angrier and less capable of compromise. [Continue reading…]
The U.S. reimposed a naval blockade on Iran and intensified its airstrike campaign Wednesday in retaliation for Tehran’s attacks on ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The American strikes hit an Iranian army barracks, killed at least seven troops and wounded hundreds of people across the country, Iranian officials said.
Days of back-and-forth strikes by the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East — and renewed threats to the waterway crucial to global energy supplies — have shredded the interim deal to end the conflict and the region could tip back into all-out war. [Continue reading…]
Mike Rosenberg, a management professor at IESE Business School, told CNBC over email on Wednesday morning that “it seems we are no closer to a settlement” to end the conflict.
“The current return to war makes it clear that the terms of the Islamabad Memorandum, signed by Trump on 14 June, were unrealistic at the time,” he said. “As long as both sides seek an agreement that allows them to claim victory, I cannot see a positive outcome any time soon.”
Rosenberg said that the best the U.S. can hope for now is “a new version of the joint plan of action that Obama and his team developed years ago,” which he added will be difficult for Trump to accept.
“The Trump administration underestimated Iranian resolve and has no easy way out,” he said. “The most likely outcome is some kind of permanent ceasefire negotiated by Pakistan without any nuclear guarantees, and it is likely that the administration will avoid making that agreement before the mid-term elections.”
Andreas Böhm, a lecturer in international affairs at Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen, said the conflict was “tricky” to resolve and risked becoming a drawn-out, yearslong war.
“Trump is stuck in a mess of his own (and Israel’s) making and can’t find a face-saving way out of it, while the Iranians assume they are still in conflict and are therefore trying to maximize their gains and risk overplaying their hand,” he said in an email. “This might result in a long-time low-level conflict and therefore one of the forever-wars Trump pledged to end. Each side will try to raise the costs for the respective other until it will become prohibitive.”
Böhm, a specialist in Middle East affairs, told CNBC that Trump had “started the war without a goal,” making it difficult to predict what might come next.
“Without a strategy, it is not clear what he aims to achieve,” he said. ”[Trump] can’t open the Strait of Hormuz by force other than an operation of a scale that he will be unable sell to the American public. If he starts a broader war on infrastructure in Iran, the retribution will hit energy infrastructure in the Gulf.”
The only way out of the conflict now was through diplomacy, said Böhm, but he added that this would now be “much more difficult.”
“There might be some narrow runway where negotiations regarding Hormuz might land, but broader arrangements must come to terms with the fact that there is now a different reality,” he said. “We can’t go back to before to this war.” [Continue reading…]