Here are a few additional thoughts about the state of the war between the U.S. (and Israel) and Iran.
First, we had news from Reuters over the weekend that the U.S. and Iran might be on the brink of a ceasefire agreement, maybe as soon as Monday. It now seems like that was yet another example of a mix of over-optimism from broker countries trying to bring the sides together and, even more, the White House trying yet again to force a quick-to-fade market bounce. Yesterday afternoon I saw this piece in Haaretz which says that Pakistan (a lead country trying to broker a deal between the two sides) believes that Iran is now under the effective control of the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that this commander thinks Iran is winning and that he’s not willing to compromise on Iran’s key demands or accede to the United States’. It also notes that Pakistan thinks the U.S. is more eager for a deal than Iran.
I don’t think you need to be Pakistan to see that last point. Everything President Trump does sends that message. Now, in the wake of the Trump’s threat to “end” Iranian civilization tonight, Iran has reportedly cut off participation in ceasefire talks with the U.S..
A few moments ago I saw this snippet in the Times:
“The first thing that came to my mind is that I think Trump is under a lot of pressure, and that he has lost his mind,” said Lili, who works in the arts scene in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Where does Lili do her writing? I think she’s got a good handle on the situation.
Coming into today I had been meaning to write a post on all the ways in which, while this is not going great for the United States, it’s not going very well for Iran either. Iran can say it will be collecting tolls on tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Doing it is another matter. As much as the U.S. is trashing the international system, these are still international waters. The first time Iran sends someone a toll bill and they don’t pay, does Iran attack that tanker? After hostilities have ceased? Do they want to start the war all over again?
My best guess is that in the near term we’re probably going to see tanker owners making informal arrangements to get their deliveries through. The mix of uncertainty and cost there will keep oil prices high. Over time it will be much harder for Iran to make that stick. Most reporting says that the commander of the IRGC is now in functional control of the Iranian state. It may be easier for the regime hardliners to retain control during the on-going conflict than after it. There’s likely some incentive to keep the conflict going at least at a low level.
The Times says Lili is part of the Tehran arts scene. You have to figure that’s ground zero for parts of the population that would like to see the clerical regime go. As the U.S. has repeatedly learned, even when people hate their governments they really don’t like being under aerial bombardment. But after the conflict stops you’ll have an already really unpopular government using much higher levels of repression and with lots of thing broken. That won’t be an easy spot to be in.
For the U.S., this is turning out to be a kind of tour de force, high stakes, real-world escalation of how tactical victories, even brilliant ones, can coexist with catastrophic strategic defeats. Let’s set to one side for a moment the horrible and unimaginable threats the U.S. president is making. (This really is the moral aesthetic and idioms of pro-wrestling brought to the international stage.) My best guess is that Trump is going to find some humiliating climbdown. Am I confident? Not especially. But if Trump turns the U.S. military loose on Iran’s civilian infrastructure, that’s catastrophic for Iran. But it’s catastrophic in a different way for the U.S. It’s the ultimate pyrrhic victory. Again, you can blow up tons of stuff but secure a huge strategic defeat at the same time. Which is what we now appear ready to do, whether Trump backs down or doesn’t. Both forks on this road are incredibly damaging for the U.S., even though only one unleashes a new level of destruction in Iran.
Lili has this right. Trump is under a lot of pressure and he’s basically losing his mind. I do not say that in an exonerating sense of course. But he is unraveling, decompensating under the pressure and the fact that his standard tactics of bullshitting and TACOing aren’t working. (We learned in a report yesterday that the Saudis’ hard demand in the ceasefire talks is strict limits on the range of Iran’s ballistic missile program, certainly a deal-killer if the Iranians think they’re winning the conflict, which reportedly they do. Good luck with that.) It’s not that he’s unraveling under the pressure of this conflict. It was his unraveling under the pressure of domestic defeats, loss of power that led him to learn into his presidential prerogative powers where he can still act with untrammeled power. First Greenland, then Venezuela (which to his mind went great), and now this, which is really not going great and through which he is now deepening his domestic unpopularity to a dramatically new level. He’s also baking inflationary pressures into the U.S. economy which will likely last through the rest of his term.