The Whims of War – Part 9 The End Games

​ It now appears that both President Trump and his Iranian counter-parts are pushing to bring their conflict to an end; and they are both seeking to do so by applying pressure on what they perceive as their opponent’s principal weakness. President Trump is proceeding on the assumption that the Iranian government’s financial resources are largely depleted. Accordingly, he’s seeking to end the war by attacking Iran’s economy. The Iranians seemingly believe that President Trump is politically weak and can be compelled to make some important concession if the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is prolonged. Specifically, they believe that with each passing day Trump is losing the confidence of the American people, the vast majority of whom are being hurt by the economic bottleneck resulting from the Strait’s closure. The simple fact seems to be that both sides are gambling that they can outlast their opponent’s willingness to continue the war which means that there is no immediate end of hostilities in sight.

​​ Even though the U.S. is unquestionably the strongest nation on the Earth, there’s still a limit to how much President Trump is willing to expend (and risk) to achieve what he considers to be a satisfactory resolution of the war. From the war’s very beginning he has been unwilling to deploy ground forces to compel Iran’s ruling regime to comply with his dictates. It has also become apparent that air attacks alone are not going to compel the Iranians to capitulate. Initially, these realities prompted President Trump to rely upon his preferred method of coercion; namely, bullying and threats. Over and over again he threatened to rain devastation and death down on the Iranians. If the Iranians weren’t already immune to Trump’s verbal attacks before the war began, they have certainly become so over the past few months.

​​ Much to the contrary, Trump’s escalating threats of death and destruction only seem to have convinced the Iranians that our president is not prepared to escalate the U.S.’s military operations beyond air strikes. That’s what made him try to explore negotiating his way out of the mess he had created. While the Iranians welcomed Trump’s invitation to negotiate a conclusion to the hostilities, it quickly became apparent that they were in no hurry to complete those negotiations. In fact, they introduced a number of issues not addressed in the parties’ Memorandum of Understanding establishing a 60-day period of negotiations and periodically latched onto reasons to delay negotiations (like Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah) all in an effort to delay face to face negotiations and thereby maximize the concessions which President Trump might be willing to make to restore the status quo ante. 

​ Our president has been called many things, but he has never been accused of being patient. More importantly, he’s constantly haunted by a fear of losing a negotiation; and he has repeatedly telegraphed that fear by periodically responding to delays in the negotiations with threats to resume bombing  Iran’s infrastructure and escalating those threats with each successive delay.

​ President Trump’s efforts to speed the negotiations understandably convinced the Iranians that their delaying tactics were causing political problems for Trump. This became more evident when a bill was introduced in the Congress to compel him to end the war. There were also reports that the war was causing a serious depletion of our nation’s military arsenals, something Trump denied even though Pentagon reports showed that current stocks of offensive and defensive missiles are now less than 50% of their pre-war levels. In addition, news pundits were starting to conclude that the war was ill-conceived and was imposing increasing economic hardships on working class Americans. What may have been even more unsettling to American voters was their growing recognition that President Trump had no plan to bring the war to an end. These realities were also being reflected in the President’s “favorability ratings” which were steadily declining.

​​ While President Trump regards himself as a great negotiator, he was now dealing with a nation of “merchants” whose negotiating skills had been honed over thousands of years. They were not only well aware of the domestic pressures facing President Trump, but also that he had already been faced with two impeachment proceedings and was now heading toward a possible third which might seal his fate in ignominy. Their assessment of Trump’s precarious political situation was reflected in their own increasing conditions for peace. Those conditions included requirements that (a) the U.S. pay reparations for the war damages Iran had sustained, (b) all U.S military forces be removed from the Persian Gulf and (c) Iran be accorded the right to control of the Strait of Hormuz, with the power to charge for safe passage through it.

​​ These new conditions for peace were intended to (and did, in fact) prompt President Trump to reluctantly recognize that the Iranians were prepared to endure whatever calamities he might visit upon them. They also led him to conclude that military force would never secure more than a temporary reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps even more importantly, they made him realize that his threats of further military actions were not going to force the Iranians to settle the war on terms that would allow him to call it a success. Additionally, he was faced with the problems that the costs of the war had depleted our nation’s military capacity to the point that it was beginning to jeopardize its ability to prevent Russia and China from pursuing their own desires for territorial expansion.

​ Also vexing President Trump was the nation’s increasing rate of inflation. He had harped on the high level of inflation that had bedeviled President Biden to win the 2024 election; and now that same issue was working against him. The 30% increase in the price of gasoline which was a direct product of the war in Iran was also reminding his supporters that he had also pledged not to involve their nation in another “endless (and costly) war.” Although Trump’s term in office will continue until January 2029, a resounding defeat for his party in the Fall elections could bring about an earlier end to his political career. 

​ These sobering developments led President Trump to further conclude that his best path to secure peace with the Iranians was  to suspend negotiations with the Iranians and to apply economic pressure on them and their fellow countrymen. Even this would not provide an easy path to peace because the Iranians had endured many hardships in the recent past and were being steeled to continue to do so by Trump’s own threats of violence against them. The simple fact is that Iran had been subjected to a host of economic sanctions in prior years; and that the most that those sanctions had accomplished was to secure Iran’s acceptance of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or JCPOA). That was hardly encouraging to Trump who had caused the U.S. to withdraw from the JCPOA when he first took office in 2017 because it was anything but “comprehensive.” In explaining that action, he pointed out that the JCPOA didn’t address Iran’s ability to develop long range missiles or to fund terrorist activities throughout the Middle East.

​ Trump’s determination to continue to fight, rather than acquiesce in the Iranian’s demands, was first made known when he was asked by a reporter whether he was disturbed by his slumping approval ratings. His response was that Republican voters were not upset at him, but rather with their elected Congressional representatives. That statement, of course, was total nonsense because his approval ratings were plunging far more sharply than those of Congressional Republicans. Still, it revealed two important truths. First, it signaled his belief that his party was going to suffer a significant defeat in the Fall elections; and second, it was a tacit admission that he did not consider their problems to be his problems. In any event, it should have sent chills up the spines of most Americans who desperately wanted the war to end.

​​ If economic sanctions are to be the path that Trump will take to achieve an acceptable settlement, he will have to go much further than previous sanction efforts. Accordingly, it was hardly surprising that Trump and his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, announced that the economic sanctions which Trump will be imposing will be “far more stringent than anything the world had ever seen.” Although the Trump administration has yet to articulate just what those sanctions will be, they will likely include a naval blockade of Iranian ports so Iran can’t sell their petroleum to other nations as well as economic sanctions on those countries that continue to do business with Iran. At the same time, Trump will need to use our naval forces stationed in and around the Persian Gulf to enable ships of other nations to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. That will at least keep gasoline prices from not going significantly higher at least through the Fall elections.

​​ Working in favor of Trump’s new strategy is that the Iranian economy has been sorely damaged. Its currency has been deeply  depreciated through hyperinflation; its people have experienced hundreds of thousands of job losses; and its economy hads sustained an estimated $270 billion in infrastructure damage. (See, “Iran’s  Economic Catastrophe”) Still, increasing the level economic hardships that would bring about a change in Iran’s negotiating position could take weeks, if not months. Trump revealed his recognition of the difficulty of the task that lay ahead for him when he responded to a reporter’s question about the hardships being experienced by the sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln who hadn’t set foot on land for nearly nine months by saying that they had not been at sea “long enough.”

​​ The problem with Trump’s new strategy isn’t just that Iranians have become acclimated to living with economic hardships. Its government has announced its determination to resist any new pressures the Trump administration might seek impose. In that connection, it seems likely that the Iranian government would seek economic support from Russia and China, both of which would likely benefit from a continuation of hostilities. So long as the U.S. remained occupied with its war with Iran, it would be less inclined to aid Ukraine in its war with Russia. In addition, as long as the Strait of Hormuz was even partially closed, Russia would be able to maximize its revenues from its own sales of oil on the world markets. China, however,would be the biggest winner of a prolonged war between the U.S. and Iran. A continuation of the war would cause the U.S. to further deplete its supply of offensive and defensive weapons and would further tarnish its reputation as the defender of Europe and other nations around the Earth. This would deliver many of our now disillusioned allies into the out-stretched arms of the Chinese.

​​ The bottom line is that both sides are engaged in a game of “chicken” to see who will be the first to capitulate. The winner in such situations is usually the nation that’s defending its homeland. This was our experience in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars where the conflicts continued for nine and eleven years, respectively. The problem is that such situations tend to go on for a long time largely because the chances of prevailing in a war taking place on the opposing country’s territory is hard to win and because American politicians are loathe to accept defeat. Sadly for Trump, unlike his flawed negotiations with the Taliban that led to the unhappy end of our war in Afghanistan for which President Biden was blamed, at this early point in his current term it seems unlikely that he could negotiate a weak deal with the Iranians and not be blamed for its short-comings.