The Iran war is over.
That confident assertion was first made by President Donald Trump just 10 days after the war had begun with a relentless U.S. bombing and missile campaign in unprecedented military coordination with America’s closest Middle East ally, Israel.
And this week, it became clear that Mr. Trump’s claim turned out to be right.
Why We Wrote This
The aims of the U.S. and Iran have changed dramatically since the war started in February. It has now morphed into Iran war 2.0, with different priorities for those involved.
Only not at all as he had intended. Not as he had hoped.
For as he sat down in the White House for his first face-to-face talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since they launched the first airstrikes five months ago, the conflict had changed beyond recognition.
The war, which they began with the jointly declared hope of toppling the authoritarian Islamic regime in Tehran and permanently closing off Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, is indeed over.
But it has morphed into a very different conflict – an Iran war 2.0 – in which the policy aims and political interests of the U.S. president and an increasingly sidelined Israeli prime minister no longer mesh.
It has become a bilateral struggle between the United States and an emboldened Iran over an issue that was not even on Mr. Trump’s radar when he ordered the initial strikes: reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf corridor through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies, as well as about one-third of its fertilizer products, usually pass.
Persistent Iranian strikes against shipping, launched in response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks in February, have all but shut the waterway, driving up commodity prices and inflation around the world.
That has included a sharp hike in what American motorists are paying for gas, which is an additional reason for the president to want to find a credible way out of a deeply unpopular war ahead of November’s midterm elections.
His meeting Tuesday with Mr. Netanyahu underscored his focus on that goal, and clashed with the Israeli leader’s interest in further military action to weaken Iran as he approaches elections of his own this October.
Mr. Netanyahu came to Washington hoping to persuade the president to revert to their initial war aims and to resume all-out attacks on Iran until they are achieved.
He was reportedly planning to bolster his argument with new Israeli intelligence about the deep-underground Iranian nuclear facility known as “Pickaxe Mountain.”
David Zalubowski/AP
Mr. Trump preempted the Israeli leader, however, telling Fox News: “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.” And, he added, “I know exactly what’s going on at Pickaxe. It’s not a big problem.”
What is a big problem for Mr. Trump, though, is the Strait of Hormuz, getting Iran to agree on a formula for reopening it, and getting the U.S. out of what’s beginning to look like an open-ended war.
For a few days at the beginning of this week, it appeared that the White House’s latest show of military force – 13 days of bombardment – might have provided space for renewed diplomacy. When Mr. Trump paused those attacks late last week, also opting against acting on his threat of further escalation, Iran reciprocated.
But by midweek, an attempted “surprise attack” against a U.S. military facility in Jordan prompted Mr. Trump to deliver an expletive-laden pledge, via Fox News, to hit back hard at Iran.
The main frustration for the president is that the Iranians appear to feel that they now hold the upper hand: that he needs an early end to hostilities far more than they do.
And just as his focus has shifted during Iran war 2.0, theirs has as well.
Planet Labs PBC/AP
Having long viewed their nuclear program as leverage against pressure from the U.S. or other international rivals, Tehran now sees control of the strait as an easier, more effective tool.
The balance of military power still heavily favors the U.S., and Mr. Trump’s latest comments appear to suggest that he still hasn’t ruled out a major new escalation of attacks.
But beyond the pressure that might put on U.S. munitions stockpiles, a specific military operation aimed at securing free passage for shipping in the strait would take time. It might still not end Iranian attacks completely – and it could risk American casualties.
That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The president could conclude that, for all the potential pitfalls, it’s his best option for providing an end to the conflict on terms he can credibly portray as in line with the aims of the war.
His ally in launching the war, Mr. Netanyahu, would certainly favor that course. Having long sustained political support as Israel’s “Mr. Security,” he would benefit from carrying that message into elections this October.
Still, President Trump appears to prefer some kind of negotiated exit from the war if that’s achievable.
Even as he was denouncing Iran’s latest attack to Fox News, and angrily vowing to hit back hard, he was careful not to rule out the prospect that negotiations with Iran, through the mediation of Oman and Pakistan, might yet bear fruit.
“We’re going to let them keep talking,” he said.