President Donald Trump likes to say that he holds all the cards in the Iran war. But at the moment that’s not true.
Iran has one card that has frozen the situation. The murderous mullahs are in no rush to make a deal, and may not even want one.
Trump said he didn’t even finish reading Tehran’s latest counter-proposal, calling it “garbage.” And he uttered his instantly famous line about the ceasefire being on “life support.”
As the war enters its third month, Trump’s upbeat talk has never been matched by Iran or its parliament speaker, Mohammad Ghalibaf. Its economy is seriously ailing. But their view is that as long as they get to keep their enriched uranium, some of which is buried, they’ll be fine.
WHY IRAN TALKS ARE IN LIMBO AS TRUMP SCRAMBLES FOR A WAY OUT OF THE WAR HE STARTED
Trump keeps declaring victory, but since the main rationale for the invasion was to keep the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon, anything less will be seen as a major failure.
Maybe this is just the president’s negotiating style, taking everything down to the wire. But the result is dueling blockades – Iran at the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. at Iranian ports – that again has Trump issuing dire threats.
What really rankles Trump is that Iran is charging “friendly” ships – those not tied to the war – 100 percent to pass through a waterway that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil traffic. Others are blocked from the strait, where Iran has laid explosive mines.
So the two sides are eyeball to eyeball over who, if anyone, will back down.
As the Wall Street Journal puts it:
“The U.S. and Iran are locked in a diplomatic stalemate over issues that have bedeviled the two sides for years, as the conflict settles into a gray zone that is neither war nor peace.
“The ceasefire is entering its second month and, despite sporadic violence, has now lasted almost as long as the fighting which preceded it. There is little to indicate that either the U.S. or Iran is ready to compromise, but neither wants to start fighting again.”
Trump told White House reporters that Iran believed he would get tired or bored of the conflict, or feel pressure to end it because of soaring energy prices.
“But there’s no pressure,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a complete victory.”
Iran, meanwhile, continues to portray itself as the winner of the conflict, its regime intact, its missile and nuclear programs still a threat. Ghalibaf warned the Americans against escalation in a Monday posting: “Our armed forces are ready to deliver a well-deserved response to any aggression.”
But instead of fighting, both sides have doubled down on dueling blockades that are hard to undo without one side blinking. The Trump administration has tightened a U.S. embargo of Iranian ports and vessels, while Iran has maintained its grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
The New York Times reported last night that U.S. intelligence officials, at odds with the administration’s public stance, say privately that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, “which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway.”
TRUMP’S LAST-MINUTE DELAY: WHY HE WAS NEVER GOING TO OBLITERATE IRAN IN THE FIRST PLACE
Trump did orchestrate a three-day ceasefire – and prisoner exchange – between Russia and Ukraine, which was mainly about Vladimir Putin not being embarrassed during his scaled-down parade marking the Soviet victory over Nazism.
As for Trump’s meeting this week with Xi Jinping, already postponed once because of the Iran war, the atmosphere has definitely chilled.
After a couple of trade wars, “China increasingly casts itself not as a fading civilization trying to catch up to the West but as a superpower poised to surpass it.”
A report from a Beijing think tank says the U.S. is “sliding toward polarization, institutional dysfunction and even “‘Latin American-style instability.” Such views are now increasingly being aired publicly rather than merely whispered.
The superpower’s propaganda machine, which plays up such tragedies as the Minnesota shootings, is acutely aware that the Iran war’s unpopularity is hurting Trump’s unpopularity as the midterms approach.
That’s one reason that Xi plans to pressure his counterpart about arms sales to Taiwan.
What’s more, China is building a new AI model that, while it still relies on chips from the American giant NVIDIA, shows that Xi is determined to blaze his own technological path.
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When asked yesterday whether China, which opposes the Iran war, could use its leverage, Trump said “no, I don’t think we need any help with Iran.”
Meanwhile, as Pete Hegseth refused to provide details, a top Pentagon official testified yesterday that the cost of the Iran war has risen to about $29 billion.
Trump prefers not to use the term war, but that sure sounds like far more than an incursion or conflict. The fog of war even extends to the federal budget.