ALERT: Trump’s new lurch in Iran: mysterious mediators, preliminary contacts and undetailed agreements | International
New information reveals that the following story has emerged from the international scene.
On Sunday night, Donald Trump was about to attack Iran’s power plants, threatening if Tehran did not open the Strait of Hormuz. This Monday, that strategic maritime passage remained, in practice, as closed as before. But the president of the United States announced that he was going to bet on diplomacy and conversations with a mysterious Iranian politician.
“They want to reach an agreement, and we are going to do it,” he promised, after proclaiming a five-day extension to his ultimatum. “There is a very real possibility.”
The pressure from his allies in the Gulf, and the fear of a rout in the markets, had led him to the latest in a succession of lurches on the war—now bellicose, now predicting an imminent peace—in 24 days of offensive. But his new change of position does not necessarily imply better prospects for the end of the conflict.
“We are in a very complicated position, and I cannot identify great options, although a group of ships, with about 2,500 Marines on board, are on their way to the Gulf,” to join the fleet already deployed there, declared Trump’s former Secretary of Defense, retired General Jim Mattis.
“If we had three rational agents, we could say that we are at a stalemate or that there is going to be an escalation, because none of those involved right now have the ability to move the other from their current position,” he analyzed this Monday at the CERAWeek conference on energy in Houston.
What Trump describes as conversations seems to be, clearly, mere preliminary contacts: exchanges of messages through intermediaries, with a result on which few—apart from the tenant of the White House—dare to bet on success.
Time trial
But it is the first tangible way that the Republican opens to end a conflict that, with the Strait of Hormuz closed, is becoming very complicated. Several countries—Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, one of the few countries in the Indo-Pacific with good relations with Washington and Tehran—are trying to bring closer positions between the two adversaries.
Pakistani Chief of Staff Asim Munir spoke with Trump this Sunday. In turn, the prime minister of the South Asian country spoke with the Iranian president, Masud Pezeshkián, this Monday. Vice President JD Vance spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the components of a possible agreement, according to the Axios website. Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have been in contact since Saturday, according to the president, with this unknown Iranian figure.
American media maintain that the interlocutor is the president of the Iranian Parliament, Mohamed Bager Qalibaf, something that this leader has denied on social networks.
In search of a new leader
Washington, according to the online Politico, examines Qalibaf as a possible new Iranian leader, with the hope of finally finding a figure who can fulfill in the Islamic Republic the same role that Delcy Rodríguez has assumed in Venezuela: a representative of the regime who accepts the diktat of the United States in exchange for occupying power, while the rest of the command structures remain intact.
For Trump, finding a way out of the alley he has walked into by threatening an escalation of the war is starting to look very attractive. The costs are accumulating, forcing the Pentagon to ask Congress for an additional budget of 200 billion dollars: the military cost was 16.5 billion dollars in the first twelve days of the war, and with each passing day, it accumulates 500 million more, according to calculations by the CSIS think tank.
The war is very unpopular among Americans, and comments such as those of Senator Lindsey Graham, an ally of Trump, do not help to improve the opinion of voters. This Sunday, he compared on television the possibility of taking the strategic Iranian island of Jarg with the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, in which some 6,800 American soldiers died and another 20,000 were injured.
Despite the positive effects of Monday’s announcement, the markets remain nervous, and gasoline prices remain high—something that can cost the Republican Party dearly in the November midterm elections, when control of Congress will be at stake.
His Arab allies in the Middle East warn him about the serious damage that an escalation of the conflict could cause. An Iran with its basic infrastructure decimated could take years to return to normal, cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild, and permanently become a factor of instability in the region.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, this Monday at Graceland, Elvis Presley’s mansion converted into a museum (The White House/EFE)
“There is enormous discontent among the Gulf states, that have been dragged into this without prior consultation, without time to better prepare, and the idea that they had before them a stable future—that their societies and investments would flourish—has been left in doubt in the wake of the conflict,” Mattis declared at the energy congress in Houston.
Trump cannot declare a unilateral victory and withdrawal from the conflict because Iran can continue hostilities, or maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz. That prospect would leave his allies in the Persian Gulf with enormous problems, according to Mattis.
“For Trump to gather sail, he has to be able to say he has won, and he has to believe it. But as this war progresses, and it becomes clear that it is a disaster, his ability to declare victory and withdraw diminishes. There is a very short window of time for Trump to find a way out of this war, and that means he has to be willing not only to say that he has spoken to the Iranians, but also to put things on the table, such as the withdrawal of sanctions,” explains Trita Parsi, co-founder of the think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
What Trump has in mind in contacts with Iran, as he himself pointed out on Monday, is a 15-point agreement, similar in format to the 20-point agreement agreed on Gaza last October. Among them, Iran “has agreed not to have nuclear weapons,” the president declared this Monday.
The draft of that proposal has already been delivered through mediators to Tehran, according to CBS. It is not clear what the reception of the American proposal will be. Iran, at the moment, does not have great incentives to give in if it does not obtain major concessions. It knows that by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, it has a poker of aces in its hands.
And it has already begun to see benefits: last Friday, the United States partially lifted some of the sanctions on its offshore oil.
“Of course, there is a risk that the Iranians are going to be too smart and not recognize the time to cash in their chips in this game and call it a day. Neither side can hope to humiliate the other in this war. If they do, they will be digging themselves into an even bigger hole. Both sides must be able to construct some kind of narrative that allows them to call it a day. This war. In this sense, as unlikely as it may sound, Iran and the United States are in a way in the same boat: either they sink together, or they row together to safety,” says Parsi.
What This Means:
Our editorial team will continue to monitor this situation as new details emerge.
World leaders are expected to respond to these developments in the coming days.
Stay tuned for more updates as this story continues to unfold.
Source: This article was originally published in another language by Internacional en EL PAÍS and has been translated and adapted for our global English-speaking audience. Read the original article here.