ALERT: The United States sees an agreement with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within reach | International
International Briefing:
Governments, analysts, and media outlets are continuing to follow this situation closely as additional details become available.
The crack for peace between the United States and Iran is open. When three months are about to pass since the attack that killed the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, and marked the beginning of a campaign of uncertain results, Washington assumes that in the coming days it will be able to announce an agreement with Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. This is, since the beginning of the war, one of the thorniest points. The step has become a plug that threatens to suffocate the global economy. Iran, very aware of having this important negotiating asset, has used it to its advantage. Despite messages of optimism from Washington, which assume that the official announcement is a matter of days, the agreement is not yet closed. The semi-official Iranian agency Tasnim assures that there are some pending issues, such as the frozen Iranian assets, which could ruin all the talks. The version that the teams aware of the talks are giving revolves around a two-stage negotiation: immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz while granting some extra time – some sources speak of 60 days – to Tehran to agree on the details around its nuclear program. According to a senior official cited by US media, the agreement would also include a commitment by the Iranians to get rid of the enriched uranium they have, although it is not clear when or how they would do so. For a second moment, such important issues as Tehran’s deadline for suspending its nuclear program and the fate of its missile arsenal would remain, issues that would be addressed in future talks. A senior White House official confessed to Axios that he believes the pact to unblock Hormuz will arrive in the coming days. According to this version, the Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the man assassinated by the United States three months ago, has given the green light to the general scheme, but there are still details to be finalized and decision-making in the Islamic regime is a slow process. Contradictory signals While all this is happening, President Donald Trump is sending contradictory signals. If on Saturday he practically took the agreement for granted – “the details will be announced soon” – on Sunday he cooled expectations of an imminent end to the war. “I have informed my representatives not to rush to sign an agreement in which time is on our side,” the Republican wrote on his social network, Truth. Already on Saturday it was clear that not everything was cooked. The American announced that the pact included the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz – through which 20% of the world’s oil passes – a point that was denied by the authorities in Tehran within a few minutes. That idea that things are going well, but that they will need some time is what Marco Rubio, head of United States diplomacy, handles. “You cannot close a nuclear agreement in 72 hours on a napkin,” summarized the Secretary of State in an interview he gave in New Delhi. If this plan finally goes ahead, it would be the culmination of months of constant contradictory messages from Trump, in which one day he assured that the negotiations with Iranian leaders supposedly eager to please him were going wonderfully and the next he said things like that “an entire civilization” was about to die, only to go to the starting block the next moment. The details remain unknown and there are doubts about compliance on the part of two sides in which mistrust reigns. But, if it goes ahead, the pact will provide a considerable respite for both Washington and Tehran. The big loser would be the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made no effort to hide his discomfort with an agreement between his main supporter and his archenemy, a pact that does not cover the main concerns of the Jewish State and which had served as an argument to launch the attack on February 28. Throughout these days, the Pakistani negotiators, led by the Chief of the General Staff, Asim Munir, and the leaders of the Arab world, who watched with concern how a large-scale conflict in Iran could drag them in as well. For a long time now, Trump himself seemed impatient to turn the page on a war that was conceived as if it were going to last a few days and that, as it became entrenched, boosted oil prices and, what is worse, took away the Republican’s popularity. The rush to reach an agreement is also explained by the American internal calendar: Trump has less than six months left until the legislative elections in November, which will mark the second half of his stay in the White House. The President of Iran, Masud Pezeshkián, right, received the Chief of the General Staff of Pakistan and negotiator of the peace agreement, Asim Munir, in Tehran on Saturday. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (via REUTERS) It is worth asking what Trump has gained from this campaign, which has caused him considerable internal wear and tear and has put him at odds with part of his party’s base. They are the conservatives who voted for him with the argument of focusing on the problems of their citizens and not getting involved in endless wars in distant places about which the average American knows practically nothing. But an agreement with Iran in which the objectives set at the beginning of the campaign are not met – neither the dismantling of the nuclear plan nor the elimination of Tehran’s military capacity – also threatens to inflame the hawks who wanted to put an end to its great enemy in the Middle East. Some of these are already talking. Like Senator Thom Tillis, who has criticized the ceasefire plans. “Now we are talking about that we could accept that nuclear material remains in Iran? What sense does that make? There are many things that need to be clarified,” the conservative senator told CNN. Democrat Chris Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, believes the details coming to light closely resemble the situation in Iran before February 28. Despite everything, he justified what was agreed by considering that the mistake was going to war in the first instance. “When you’re digging a hole, you should stop digging. It seems like that’s what we’re doing,” he said on Fox News. After months of contradictory versions and circle negotiations, there remains, above all, the doubt of the objectives achieved by the United States in a campaign that has cost, at least, 29 billion dollars. [unos 25.000 millones de euros]. Because the great achievement that the Trump Administration now displays is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. But the paradox is that Hormuz functioned, before the war, completely normally.
What Happens Next:
Officials and international observers are expected to continue monitoring the story closely over the coming days.
Observers believe further developments could significantly shape the direction of this story in the near future.
More details may emerge as official sources continue releasing new information.
Source: This article was originally published by Internacional en EL PAÍS and adapted for our international English-speaking audience.
Read the original article here.