ABNA24 - After the collapse of the Islamabad talks, Trump declared a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to ramp up pressure and force Iran to back down and reopen the waterway. But Tehran stood firm against the demand and the pressure campaign. Washington acted with extreme caution, despite some hostile moves, to avoid an escalation, while Iran issued timely warnings. In the end, Trump unilaterally extended the ceasefire, and the war effectively ground to a halt. Given the fragility of the current situation, three scenarios are expected:
Continued closure and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz: The wrestling between Iran and the US in the Strait of Hormuz has taken shape as a closure-blockade. Iran, with shrewd management, has closed the strait, while the US has imposed a blockade around it. Judging by the movements that have taken place since the American blockade, the two sides appear to be in a roughly equal standoff, but the reality is quite different.
The real issue has little to do with the number of ships passing through. It all comes down to time. If the current situation persists, time will increasingly work against the Americans. With every passing second, the US economic situation worsens, pulling its society deeper into the pressures of a war that no one has yet convincingly explained to them. To put it more plainly, by masterfully managing time and the strait, Iran has, for the first time, brought the war into the US own backyard, without firing a single shot in its direction. The Americans who paid $2 per gallon for gasoline before the conflict now pay more than double that. That reality has made the war and its painful impact on daily life impossible to ignore, an important factor shaping the future of both Trump and the war itself.
If, out of fear of these consequences or for any other reason, Trump tries to upset the current balance by seriously harassing Iran-linked vessels, Tehran, as it has repeatedly warned, will respond with decisive military action. That would, in effect, mean resuming a war that Trump had struggled just to steer toward negotiations.
Return to talks: First, any return to negotiations requires the US to immediately accept Iran's 10-point framework. Learning from the failed Islamabad talks, Washington must avoid derailing the process with side issues outside those 10 points, lest history repeat itself. Second, and even more critically, Iran's negotiating team must carefully assess both its own leverage and the Americans' hand, then engineer the talks accordingly. A close look at the US side reveals they come to the table empty-handed, nothing but the bluster and boasts Trump has leaned on. They, especially Trump and his allied media outlets, have tried to drown out reality with noise and project an image of victory. But victory has many signs, and none are visible to Washington. Those signs, however, can be seen in Iran.
Take Trump’s own favorite slogan: Iran must surrender unconditionally. Look at how the war has unfolded to reach this point. The truth from the battlefield is clear: unconditional surrender has no application to Iran, but it does to the US. So, it is the US that must bow to Tehran's demands by accepting its own unconditional surrender.
Setting aside the military evidence of the US defeat, too extensive to list here, one fact alone suffices. When Iran’s team sits down for any future talks, they will do so with millions of Iranians behind them, motivated, seeking vengeance for their martyred leader, and, for nearly two months now, producing ever-more-magnificent scenes of power, perseverance, struggle, and resolve to win at any cost. That unparalleled, overwhelming force looms over the negotiators. On the opposite side sits a team whose president, according to the latest polls, has managed, through sheer incompetence, to secure only 30-percent approval, a historic low in the US. That single point makes it abundantly clear which side must unconditionally surrender.
Resuming war: If the US takes any disruptive action that harms the rights and interests of the Iranian nation in the Strait of Hormuz, or if in any future talks it grandstand, repeating the Islamabad farce and dodging unconditional surrender, thereby scuttling the negotiations, then it will effectively shift the issue to the military arena, and conflict should be expected.
Although the path from diplomacy to military confrontation as described here is short and swift, Trump faces serious obstacles in making that transition. These hurdles will likely prevent him from taking that seemingly short route, if they allow him to take that costly leap at all. The most significant barrier is the cost-benefit analysis of the 40-day war across multiple dimensions. What military hardware or capability of the U.S. military did Trump not use during those 40 days that he could now hope to deploy for a different outcome? The US humiliation in that war is not merely a matter of overall military failure, it plays out in specific details. Iran's armed forces dealt devastating blows to every branch of the US's mighty, vaunted military, the very forces that had fueled Trump's arrogance and sense of power. Today, American commanders and military analysts cannot name a single powerful American weapon system that Iran has not destroyed.
So how can Trump launch a new war with an army that has been disgraced in asymmetric combat, stripped of much of its capability and equipment, and, most importantly, depleted of its credibility? Under these circumstances, which is the less costly and more sensible path: admitting defeat and surrendering, or waging a new war with such a broken, exhausted military? Given Trump's flawed judgment, Iran's preparing for an unintended war is among the most valuable recommendations of plain common sense.
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