Lose/lose: Both sides can lose the war on Iran
Iran’s top diplomat denied contacts with the United States amid more voices urging Trump to seek an off-ramp from the war on Iran.
Iran’s top diplomat today denied that he had been in contact with the Trump administration since the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran on February 28.
The denial by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of resumed contacts with Trump representatives comes as several US allies today rejected Trump’s threats and cajoling to join a coalition to try to secure the Strait of Hormuz for oil tanker traffic, at least before the end of the hostilities; and as a growing number of former US officials who worked on the Middle East urged Trump to seek an off-ramp from the war.
The war, now in its third week, has killed over 2000 people, seen Iran retaliate with a steady, low level barrage of missile and drone strikes against civilian and military targets in Gulf Arab countries and Israel, and led to a near standstill of oil shipments in the Strait of Hormuz, driving global oil prices to over $100 a barrel.
Araghchi said that a report today citing a US official suggesting direct contacts between Iran and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff had resumed was false. It was, he said, likely an effort by the Trump administration to try to calm spooked oil markets and an American public which has been wary of Trump dragging the United States into another big war in the Middle East.
“My last contact with Mr. Witkoff was prior to his employer’s decision to kill diplomacy with another illegal military attack on Iran,” Araghchi wrote on Twitter today.
“Any claim to the contrary appears geared solely to mislead oil traders and the public.”
Most US allies reject Trump demands to join war-time naval coalition to reopen Strait of Hormuz
“We will not participate in ensuring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz by military means,” the office of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on Twitter today. “The war in the Middle East is not a matter for NATO. Therefore, Germany will also not become involved militarily.”
Other countries, including Australia, Italy, Spain, and Japan indicated they would not be part of such an effort at least until hostilities cease.
A naval effort to open the Strait of Hormuz for oil tanker traffic really would be more feasible with a ceasefire, a former senior US Naval and Central Command official said today.
“I really think what… you want to drive towards, is both nations agree…at least for a temporary ceasefire,” retired vice admiral Kevin Donegan, the former director of operations for US Central Command, told a Middle East Institute panel today on how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Under that scenario, “the US is going to declare victory. Iran is going to declare victory. They have their different metrics on what victory is. But that at least starts to get you where flow through the straits can become much more likely than when there’s a direct conflict still going on.”
Trump urged to pursue off-ramp
“This war is increasingly one that nobody can decisively win, but almost everyone can lose from,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, said.
“An immediate ceasefire would be fragile, incomplete and politically unsatisfying,…but it is still the wiser course,” Vaez continued. “The alternative is to continue a war in pursuit of a cleaner outcome that simply does not exist. …The shooting must stop before the logic of escalation overtakes whatever space remains for diplomacy.”
“President Trump needs to find an off-ramp,” Dan Shapiro, a former senior Pentagon official and US Ambassador to Israel, wrote March 12.
While the American and Israeli military campaign “has done great damage to Iran’s leadership, missiles, nuclear sites, navy, and regime targets,” Shapiro wrote, “if the war and closure of the Strait continue, there is serious risk of global economic catastrophe.”
Least bad option is to get out
“The options for ending this war now are all bad,” Ilan Goldenberg, a former White House and Pentagon official who advised then Vice President Kamala Harris on the Middle East, wrote at Twitter.
“You can try to secure the entire Gulf and Middle East indefinitely – extremely expensive and maybe impossible,” Goldenberg wrote. “You can try to destabilize the regime by supporting separatist groups. It probably won’t work and if it does you’ll most likely spark a civil war.
“The least bad option is the classic diplomatic off-ramp,” Goldenberg continued. “The U.S. declares that Iran’s military capabilities have been significantly degraded …Iran declares victory for surviving and demonstrating it can still threaten regional actors.”
“This is the inevitable outcome anyway,” he said. “Better to stop now than after five or ten more years of escalating costs.”
Military success, political failure
“Wars are easy to start, difficult to end,” Turkish analyst and journalist Aslı Aydıntaşbaş told a Brookings panel today.
President Trump “has been all over the map in terms of defining an end game,” she said. Instead of the US/Israeli war on Iran and killing of Iran’s 86 year old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei leading to a more pragmatic government in Iran, in fact to date an even more hardline Iranian regime has emerged under the leadership of Khamenei’s 56 year old son Mojtaba Khamenei, who is closely tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, she said.
“So I think this risks being a political failure before we even sort of get to the broader regional picture and the risks of escalation,” she said.
Iran gets a vote
Iran analysts say Iran may not be receptive to de-escalation efforts, and increasingly may see its ability to endanger shipping in the Strait of Hormuz as a bargaining chip to extract concessions.
“We never asked for a cease fire, and we have never asked even for negotiation,” Araghchi’s told CBS’s Margaret Brennan Sunday. “We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes. And this is what we have done so far, and we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point [of realizing] that this is an illegal war with no victory.”
“Iran has again rejected reports of backchannel contacts with the United States,” Hamidreza Azizi, an Iran expert at Berlin’s SWP institute, wrote tonight. “Iranian state media and officials say Washington is signaling openness to negotiations mainly to calm energy markets, while Tehran insists that no credible agreement capable of protecting its long-term interests is currently on the table.”
“Iranian leaders also stress that the region will not return to the pre-war status quo,” he wrote.
“Iranian discourse increasingly frames the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic bargaining tool beyond the war itself,” Azizi wrote. “Pro government commentary suggests the waterway could be used to extract compensation, sanctions relief or broader economic concessions in the post-war order.”
Trump may see Kharg Island as leverage
Some analysts believed Trump may be tempted to try to seize Kharg Island, from which 90% of Iran’s oil exports depart, and where the US attacked military targets on Friday.
“Speculation about a possible US attempt to seize Kharg Island has also triggered a strong response inside Iran,” Azizi wrote. “Volunteers have reportedly offered to defend the island, and members of the Iranian parliament visited the island to emphasize its symbolic and strategic importance.”
The Pentagon on Friday ordered some 2,500 Marines and the amphibious warship the USS Tripoli to the Middle East. Currently based near Japan, it may take about two weeks for the vessel to arrive near the Strait of Hormuz, Fox News reported on Friday.
“I told them openly—I’ll knock the hell out of it,” Trump told PBS’s Liz Landers in a brief phone interview today, referring to Kharg Island’s oil export facilities.
“It’s dead militarily now, totally,” he said of the island. He avoided so far hitting the island’s oil “pipes,” he said. “I didn’t want to hit the pipes because [it took] years of work to put them together.”
“Kharg Island can be appealing to Trump,” Goldenberg wrote. “He’d love to take Iran’s ability to export oil off the map and try to coerce them to end the war. It’s much easier because it’s not in the middle of Iran. But it’s still a potentially costly ground operation. And again, the Iranian government only has to survive to win and they can probably do that even without Kargh.”
But it seems Trump may see seizing it as a way to have leverage to get Iran to back down from threats to oil transit in the Strait of Hormuz, and to try to salvage a semblance of political victory from a war that has damaged his presidency.
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Fossil fuels are the root of so much evil. We need to replace them all with renewables and maybe nuclear.
And we need America’s military corruption complex destroyed. Clearly all this trillions sloshing to rich white men hasn’t made our military actually competent, as Iran’s drones have easily shown.