Faced with his own deadline to double down or stand down against Iran Tuesday night, President Donald Trump blinked.
Announcing a two-week ceasefire subject to Iran’s “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump posted on social media that “we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
There’s a fundamental obstacle to an enduring end to this conflict.
On the one hand, it’s great that Trump’s threatened military operations against Iranian power plants and other infrastructure have been at least temporarily halted. And the president’s claim to have received a 10-point proposal from Iran that he called a “workable basis on which to negotiate” is a positive step. But there’s a fundamental obstacle to an enduring end to this conflict: Trust is nonexistent, and none of the major disputes powering hostilities has been resolved yet.
Block out the noise and it’s clear that Trump had three options with respect to Iran: escalate, pull back or negotiate. But for a variety of reasons, the president who prides himself on being a dealmaker had no viable path to a comprehensive agreement in a short time frame. The U.S. and Iran have spent the past 24 hours swapping proposals through intermediaries with the goal of establishing a short-term ceasefire that partially reopens the Strait of Hormuz and establishes more time for a full settlement.
Although a temporary agreement was reached, no one should forget: The Iranian regime, fighting for its life, has good reason to be skeptical of any Trump promise. Twice in the past year, the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran (first last June, then in February) while the diplomatic process was underway. That’s why Iran is pushing for security guarantees that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t return to conflict at some future point. This issue is unlikely to disappear over the next two weeks. Other Iranian demands, such as an end to Israeli attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the establishment of a joint Iranian-Omani tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz, suggest the regime believes it retains the upper hand.
When Trump was asked Monday whether he envisioned the conflict winding down or escalating, the president’s answer was telling: “I can’t tell you. I don’t know.” Trump’s shifting objectives — preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, degrading Iran’s military capacity or getting more oil and gas into the global market — have narrowed his options by making it harder to point to one repeated talking point and declare victory.
Despite the latest pause, U.S. escalation — not just Trump threats to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges but also the possibility of deploying U.S. ground forces — can’t be ruled out. Escalation, however, comes with high risks for both the U.S. and the broader Middle East. Bombing Iranian power plants and other infrastructure would not merely plunge the Iranian people into darkness but would also make later reconstruction efforts harder. On top of contradicting U.S. officials’ professed concern for the Iranian people’s welfare, it would also undercut any support for the conflict that remains among the Iranian population, which only stands to benefit the regime.
Doubling down on the war would also stoke further Iranian retaliation. To date, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ war strategy has centered on shuttering the Strait of Hormuz and striking oil and gas facilities in the Gulf states. The objective is to increase international fuel prices to such an extent that the Trump administration concludes that a longer war is not worth the economic costs. The Iranian plan is working on the economic front — crude oil is up 42% since Trump and Israel began strikes six weeks ago, and gas prices in the U.S. have increased by an average of 88 cents a gallon from this time last year. The economic squeeze, however, will get a lot worse for American consumers if Iran expands its own target set in the Gulf states and enlists support from the Houthis in Yemen, who could bottle up the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where Saudi oil has been flowing to the global market.
Trump might hope that threats to bomb Iran back to the “stone ages” will coerce the regime to agree to American terms — no enrichment, no nuclear fuel, no support to regional proxies and a cap on ballistic missiles. But hope isn’t a strategy, and this rosy outcome isn’t guaranteed either. The regime believes it’s in an existential war with its greatest adversary; it has no reason to capitulate if doing so means complete surrender. After more than 13,000 U.S. airstrikes since February, the Iranians aren’t any closer to giving up. Escalation, then, is likely to lead to even more escalation, possibly including to the introduction of U.S. troops onto Iranian territory.
Trump would have been better off declaring victory and extricating the U.S. from a war he chose to wage. Politically, this would be a tough sell. Democratic lawmakers and other Trump critics would do everything they could to convince Americans that Trump backed out when the going got tough and left the U.S. worse off (rising prices on gas, groceries and other products would seemingly bolster their case). Conservative commentators such as Mark Levin, whom Trump apparently listens to, would likely do the same. But many Americans would support such a move; recent polls have found that Trump’s war against Iran is one of the most unpopular military actions in modern U.S. history and three out four Americans would oppose Trump sending in ground troops. Cutting short this unpopular conflict short might cause an uproar in Washington and on cable TV, but the average American would be better off for it.
More important, declaring victory and going home would avert further loss of life and other damage in the Middle East and prevent the possibility of a more perilous U.S. ground campaign whose benefits are not at all clear.
But for now, a cessation of hostilities is at least a start.
Daniel R. DePetris
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.