U.S. President Donald Trump salutes during a dignified transfer of the remains of six U.S. Army service members who were killed in Kuwait, at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on March 7.Nathan Howard/Reuters
The Islamic Republic of Iran is winning the war.
It is winning even though American and Israeli planes fly unopposed in its skies. It is winning even though its air defences are so outclassed that not one crewed U.S. aircraft has been downed by Iranian fire. It is winning even though most of its conventional navy is at the bottom of the sea, and its air force has been rendered into scrap metal.
Iran is winning even though its Supreme Leader was killed on the first day of the war; even though its top officials are in hiding; and even though the designated new Supreme Leader, who has not been seen since his appointment, is believed to be badly injured or dead.
All that, and yet Tehran is winning.
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U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have gone to war assuming that, with the strongest military in the world allied with the strongest military in the Middle East, he held all the cards. But Iran had an ace in the hole – several, in fact.
Ace 1: Iran has largely closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that normally carries 20 per cent of the world’s oil and liquid natural gas. Uncorking this bottle is, for the moment, beyond the capabilities of the U.S. military.
Ace 2: Little oil or gas moving through the Strait means higher global oil and gas prices. Iran’s geography gives it the ability to wage economic war against the U.S., and the entire world.
Ace 3: Iran has asymmetric weapons – missiles and especially cheap drones – to hit the six Arab states on the other side of the Persian Gulf, and their oil and gas infrastructure. That gives Iran a second chokepoint on global energy.
Ace 4: The U.S. public has no patience for a long war, or a war costly in blood and treasure. Mr. Trump is even more impatient. But for Tehran, the longer the conflict lasts, the better.
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When the war started, the White House pulled out a stopwatch. Iran pulled out a multiyear calendar.
None of this is a surprise. Tehran’s aces have been lying face-up on the table since forever. That’s why the Gulf states urged Washington against launching this war.
Now that Iran has begun to play its cards, it is Mr. Trump – and not whoever exactly is in charge in Tehran – who has blinked.
The President said last Saturday that unless Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic within 48 hours, he would destroy Iran’s electric power plants. But on Monday morning, with the Strait still closed, Mr. Trump made a surprise announcement that excellent progress was being made on negotiations for “a complete and total resolution” of the war. And with diplomacy allegedly working, he postponed his ultimatum.
There may be some truth to Mr. Trump’s claim, but it’s not the whole story. Iranian Speaker of Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said on social media on Monday that “no negotiations have been held” and that Mr. Trump was peddling “fake news” to lower oil prices and get himself out of a “quagmire.”
Talks may be able to achieve an end to the war, but that elides the question of what Iran is demanding from the U.S. – and what it will try to get Mr. Trump to impose on Israel – in return.
The U.S. is, implausibly, in the position of asking Iran to stop.
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We are rather far from Mr. Trump’s early boasts about “unconditional surrender.” Instead, the Iranians are using asymmetric tools and economic costs to try to force the U.S. into concessions. To keep oil prices down, the U.S. has even unsanctioned Iranian oil, as Iran continues to block Gulf oil. It shows who’s in the driver’s seat.
Over the past few days, Washington and Tehran each escalated to push the other to de-escalate. They played a game of mutually assured destruction, or MAD.
U.S. to Iran: Open the Strait, or we’ll annihilate your power plants, so that Iran is without electricity. Iran to U.S.: If you bomb our power plants, we’ll hit Gulf oil and gas facilities, and de-salination plants, wrecking Gulf economies and driving up energy prices around the world.
Mr. Trump blinked, and in one respect that’s a good thing. His threat, if carried through, would have immiserated millions of innocent Iranian citizens, while ensuring an Iranian retaliation that would have devastated the Gulf countries, and locked in higher oil and gas prices for months if not years.
Starting the war was a mistake, but having started it, the landscape has been forever changed. Simply downing tools now would compound the initial error.
To achieve a positive outcome, Washington needs to show patience and wisdom. Both are unfortunately in short supply in that town.
The danger of a wider and more devastating war is very real. But so is the danger that Mr. Trump, having encountered a rigid obstacle, will simply declare victory and walk away, leaving the regime in Tehran, despite the pummelling it has taken, empowered to bully its Gulf neighbours and hold them to ransom, and encouraged to entrench itself by making a dash for nuclear weapons.