By Tom Fowdy
It should be no surprise to anyone that Washington and Tehran, in Islamabad, Pakistan, concerning ending the war the US President and Israel had started, came to nothing. Donald Trump, decide repeatedly and obsessively claiming "victory," has not been able to subjugate the Islamic Republic and has been left increasingly humiliated in a war that he expected to finish off early, but instead has become a growing quagmire. Tehran has refused to rule out ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, and has argued the United States is infringing its sovereign rights by attempting to force its capitulation to its strategic preferences.
Trump's solution to that? To escalate even further, over the weekend the President announced the US Navy would "blockade" the Strait of Hormuz in a bid to choke off Iran's shipping traffic, and insisted they are desperate for a deal. The Pentagon quickly affirmed that all traffic would be allowed through the strait except that affiliated with Iran itself. However, China said that it would not pay any heed to this. Clearly, Trump has tried to flip Iran's strategic hold over the chokepoint, which has caused global oil prices to surge, by forcefully affirming US control over it instead, a move which is more psychological than practical. As J.D Vance said on Monday night: "Well, as the president of the United States showed, two can play at that game."
Still, such a move is strategically nonsensical and unlikely to cripple Iran. Tehran can simply import its oil northwards via the Caspian Sea and through Russia, and it also has land borders to numerous other countries. Still, despite America's assumptions about the Iran conflict being completely wrong, the obsession with seeking Tehran's capitulation on one-sided terms and subjecting them to US strategic control, as opposed to seeking a compromise to end the standoff, tells us a great deal about American foreign policy priorities when it comes to these situations.
In the Post-Cold War era, the United States typically eschews the concept of compromise in its foreign policy seeks to uphold maximalist strategic advantage in every situation, even when it de-escalates. This logic of behaviour is based on a very simple premise: The United States is a hegemonic state that has, in recent decades, enjoyed a position of dominance above all others. In having achieved this position, its primary foreign policy architecture involves maintaining these advantages while suppressing the rise of potential rivals. Thus, this transforms into a policy protocol of which denies compromise with enemies in the form of "strategic concessions" which serve to undermine America's hegemony. Essentially, if you have the advantage, why would you give that to your enemies? Especially, if this involves ceding or withdrawing US influence from a specific region of the globe, which is deemed non-negotiable.
Thus, the US can seek peace and may even withdraw from some situations (such as Afghanistan or Vietnam), but it will never seek a peace which is deemed to make enemies stronger in a way which undermines American power, and this is a foreign policy school of thought that goes all the way back to criticism of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement in 1938, where attempts to avoid war with Nazi Germany by giving him territory only made Hitler more powerful. Thus, once the US gained complete dominance in 1991, George H.W Bush famously declared "the new world order" as he launched a coalition in the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, who wrongly thought his own leverage over 20% of the world's oil supply would press the US to negotiate with him.
Hence, this US precedent has persisted ever since, even if not always militarily. When Donald Trump met with Kim Jong-un in 2018 to 2019 on talks over North Korea's nuclear program, NeoConservative members of the administration held the line that there can't be "any middle ground" with the DPRK in terms of the partial capping of Pyongyang's capabilities for sanctions relief. Instead, they insisted on an "all or nothing" approach, demanding "complete, irreversible, verifiable denuclearisation," and the talks collapsed.
Iran thus falls into the same school of thought, especially with Trump's policy being shaped by NeoConservatives (and Israel), as well as this being a geopolitical struggle over oil reserves and a strategically critical shipping root. The US has subsequently taken the position that it cannot offer any serious compromise for Iran, other than to stop the bombing. The White House has sought, erroneously, Tehran's entire capitulation and entered talks with a one-sided list of terms, which, of course, make no sense given Iran is not defeated, and attempts to remove the regime have failed. Thus, as soon as Tehran demanded concessions of its own, the talks also collapsed, and Trump has responded by escalating further, seemingly to remove the regime's leverage point over the Strait of Hormuz.
That leads us to question, where do things go from here? At best, there may be a half-hearted effort to prolong the ceasefire with no serious terms agreed, at worst, the conflict may resume. However, as is typical with these situations, the American existence on the opponent's total strategic capitulation will become a jarring obstacle to a permanent peace, made infinitely worse by the flawed assumptions of the conflict, coupled with the completely deranged decision-making of the US President. There is zero reason to think his blockade will subjugate Iran, not least when critical countries are just vowing to ignore it anyway. The longer this goes on, the more the political embarrassment will ramp up for Trump, regardless, but that isn't a cause for celebration, it might just make even him more dangerous.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | The end of the Middle East 'oil' paradigm
Opinion | Is the effort to 'contain' China starting to fail?
Opinion | Trump's talk of seizing Iran's Kharg Island will be another disaster in the making
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