U.S. President Donald Trump waves to reporters as he walks on the South Lawn upon his arrival to the White House, on April 17.Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press
They’re close to a deal to end the Iran war. They’re not. The Strait of Hormuz is open. It’s not. The uranium required to create a nuclear weapon is about to be shipped out of Iran. It’s not.
The two sides that have opposed each other in the war are issuing opposite assessments of the negotiations that are either moving toward a broad settlement or are not – and could be followed by higher-level meetings in Pakistan as soon as Monday night that might bring a conclusive end to the weeks-long crisis but might not.
The fog of war has been followed by the smog of negotiations.
The former is the natural characteristic of military conflict, the fog sweeping in and out as the climate of battle shifts. The latter is completely man-made, the smog the outgrowth of principals who believe they are leaders of destiny and providence.
That’s the result of both sides having mobilized great forces of military might their countries have built for years. They have done so in anticipation of a dramatic final battle that’s been brewing for nearly five decades in a region that’s been the source of political, religious, economic and cultural conflict for a century, probably more if you consider that it might properly be regarded as the battleground of empires for millennia.
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This conflict isn’t a world war but it has global implications, arguably nearly as great as those in the First World War, a far lengthier conflict where battle was largely confined to Europe but which touched the destiny of four established empires that had collapsed by war’s end.
This war, though generally confined to the Middle East, holds in the balance the shape of vital fertilizer and fossil-fuels trade patterns that affect the economies of countries far from the landscape of battle. Indeed, the implications touch every continent; over the weekend, for example, the non-combatant country of India, which depends on shipments through the Strait of Hormuz for half its crude oil, protested a “serious incident” involving two ships fired upon in the waterway.
War always alters international geopolitics. This one is no different. It has in part changed the conflict’s emphasis on physics to a new stress on geography. In the past week, the war’s early emphasis on nuclear weaponry – president Harry Truman, speaking just after the 1945 atomic-bomb attack on Hiroshima, called it “the force from which the sun draws its power” – has been supplanted at least in part by the fresh emphasis on the strait. The turn of events has redeemed the old aphorism that “war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
Meanwhile, the complexities and contradictions of this conflict are mutinying, some of them demonstrating that while the truth may be the first casualty of warfare, logic may well be the second.
Donald Trump, whom critics charge has broken international law by undertaking this conflict in the first place, has cited international law in demanding the free flow of ship traffic in the strait but arguably has broken international law by imposing a blockade on the waterway that is the exit ramp for a fifth of the world’s energy supply.
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Wars seldom involve duelling claims of triumph; there was no ambiguity about who was the victor in the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the two World Wars, even the Vietnam War. Early this month, Mr. Trump claimed “total and complete victory. 100 per cent. No question about it.” Not so, according to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the chief Iranian negotiator, who said over the weekend, “When the enemy fails to achieve its objectives, it means it has been defeated.”
Indeed, measuring victory in this case may be a fool’s errand, defying the metrics that sometimes are employed in such situations.
What, for instance, to make of the indications that Iran has lost 60 per cent of its drone arsenal, considering that it reportedly has the capacity to produce 10,000 low-cost drones a month? Then again, what to make of separate indications that the U.S. may have lost roughly a fifth of its Tomahawk missiles, considering its bulging arsenal of other seaborne and airborne military assets?
Nor is it easy to assess the domestic tolerance for continued warfare – or, conversely, the domestic demands for a swift and decisive settlement – in the two competing countries.
Three-fifths of Americans disapprove of the Iran war, according to the latest Ipsos poll. The lack of reliable public-opinion surveys of Iranian sentiment makes it difficult to assess the popularity of a war where citizens are occupying both the front lines and the home front of battle. But the damage to infrastructure, homes, the economy and lives in the country has been substantial, likely leading to two contradictory yet complementary views: a profound hunger to end the conflict and a deep determination not to be bombarded into submission and surrender.
In the hearts-and-minds front of the war, both sides are issuing assessments that amount to propaganda. Mr. Trump is so desperate for good news that he employed all-caps messaging Friday by saying, on his Truth Social platform, that “IRAN HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN.” A day later, Iran announced that “control of the Strait of Hormuz has returned to its previous state” and was “under strict management and control of the armed forces.”
Thus in a war with so many moving parts, there are moving parts inside the moving parts.