Donald Trump has finally found what he was desperately looking for: not “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program, but of a first way out of a war that was supposed to be lightning quick but turned into a swamp.
But it is only a mini-exit, an emergency exit, as what Donald Trump has achieved is not unconditional surrender, but a two-week truce.
There is a long way to go until a peace agreement, and in the uncertainty in these two weeks of fragile pause, anything can happen – given that each side is irreconcilable and the lack of trust between the parties and the weaknesses the US has exposed during the hostilities, and the strengths that Iran has (re)discovered. Maybe it will last, just a few days, not two weeks, but we’ll see.
At the moment, both Washington and Tehran are both proclaiming outright victory over the other.
Both are plainly lying because that’s what happens because any war has an informational-psychological dimension as important as the military one.
But beyond the specific propaganda narratives we are flooded with, the objective reality is the following:
- The combatants needed a break – more for political reasons, in the case of America, or more for military reasons (in the case of Iran). Both sides are happy they got it.
- Trump blinked first, the fact that he accepted a working document as a truce was actually the ten-point proposal put forward by the Iranians, full of their maximalist demands. This does not mean that Tehran could have blinked as well, but it does mean that Washington didn’t have the time to let the enemy go first while the enemy had time.
- Donald Trump blinked at a crucial moment: the deadline had come for him to send in ground troops on the contrary, to make the humiliating decision and obtain a tactical break. For the first time since February 28, President Trump has shown maturity and wisdom, choosing the more embarrassing but definitely better option. Of course, the prospect of American ground troops has not disappeared definitively and depends on the political-military developments in the immediate future.
- Trump’s America has understood something that was otherwise well-known to all previous American presidents: a major war cannot be fought effectively without allies, no matter how big and strong America is. Even if you are wise and co-opt allies on your side first, things can still go wrong (Afghanistan and Iraq), when the political objectives are incoherent from the start or when they become so later on.
- Finally, on the day it accepted the ceasefire, America has less leverage than it had on the eve of the outbreak of war. And Iran has acquired more levers to pressure the US, its neighbors, and the international community. The core of the problem has a name that has become well-known in recent weeks: the Strait of Hormuz.
- After almost six weeks of fighting at maximum intensity, the criminal regime in Tehran has indeed taken heavy blows.
Human resources were strongly shaken, the theocratic nature of the dictatorship slipped towards a military one, its arsenal and infrastructure took a big hit as did the military-industrial complex.
The nuclear program has obviously been significantly backtracked, although there is no question of having been brought to the stage of zero potential and zero risk of proliferation, as President Donald Trump or the head of the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, struggle to convince us.
But where the Iranians lost by a hand, but they still seem to have won by two.
Why?
Because they have just discovered, as has rest of the world, that they can keep the planet in check, through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump and Netanyahu “froze” the Iranians’ nuclear program, but the Iranians discovered the “nuclear” control they have over the Strait of Hormuz; as well as the “nuclear” ability they have to strike with conventional, often low-cost, weapons, the Gulf states, US allies.
Never in the almost half-century history of the Tehran regime has the strait and its neighbors been exploited as levers through which Iran practically controlled world energy trade and therefore global economics.
But it does now, “thanks” to the chronic imbecility of the Trump administration and Netanyahu administration’s chronic indifference to the rest of the world.
In other words, for the moment Iran sees its nuclear program buried under the rubble but perhaps it can now forever take advantage of what the sea and the desert expanses in the vicinity offer it.
From lake to well – this is how America’s president fell following the inept war that began on February 28, “generously” pulling after him the rest of the world.
Donald Trump obsessively pushes the idea that he is a great businessman and only a businessman. Nothing could be more ridiculous than that, since even in business terms, the criminal regime in Tehran has outclassed Trump. Because, after all, it is more profitable to control the Strait of Hormuz and hit your neighbors in the Gulf with drones and missiles than to build a nuclear program which is ultra-expensive by nature.
Investments are absolutely minimal, the result is quick and above all, it is extraordinarily efficient.
Basically, if Tehran manages to keep total control of transit through the strait, it can:
- Wait, in perfect safety and for as long as necessary, to revive its nuclear program.
- Make a lot of money – even tens of billions of dollars annually – from the protection fee to facilitate the transit of ships through the straits. One part of this money can go towards the consolidation of the criminal regime and another towards the restoration of the conventional fighting capacity. And another, when conditions allow, can be directed directly to the huge investments that nuclear weapons requires.
Donald Trump immediately saw the opportunity to monetize the Strait of Hormuz by stating with the utmost shamelessness and flouting international rules on navigation, that there could be an American-Iranian joint-venture in the criminal exercise of extorting countries to transport their goods through the strait.
I would not be surprised if Tehran is receptive to such a maneuver. Because what business could be more profitable than one where you make a lot of money, but you also buy peace of mind by getting your biggest enemy on board? And thus Trump can fix the price of fuel at a global level. On the other hand, the Iranians have enough reasons to do this business without the Americans.
The American-Iranian negotiations, which are announced at the dawn of this ceasefire may bring major surprises, such as resetting the map of the Middle East, making America a little smaller, and Iran, perversely, great.
- PS: Netanyahu seems determined to put Trump in impossible situations, and the misfortune that the Israeli army committed in Lebanon on Wednesday bears this out.
