Desperation Trumps Reality

Vessels at anchor in the Strait of Hormuz. (Reuters)

Yesterday to celebrate his birthday, Trump declared that his war with Iran is over and that peace prevails. While details of an agreement are unclear — all of the parties involved have stated different conditions and no transcript yet exists — it appears that we have a “concept of a plan” in place that the Trump administration is calling a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). It is not finalized as the MOU will not be signed until Friday. Everything stays in place at least until then. As the U.S. military command in charge — Central Command or CENTCOM — stated today, the U.S. naval blockade remains in place until the MOU is officially signed. This, despite Trump posting that “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz.” Of course, the Iranians might have a say in its reopening.

For insiders, look at insurance rates for ships in the Persian Gulf transiting the strait as an indicator of how things are proceeding. Businesses and insurance underwriters are not going to send their ships through without the knowledge that it is safe. Extravagant insurance rates means the strait is not safe. The more the rates approach pre-war costs — it will be a long time before they are the same — the more traffic will transit the strait.

As with most things involving Trump, he took a bad situation, put some Home Depot gold gilding on it, and sold it as a huge success. We have a long way to go before the situation is resolved. Supposedly, the MOU signed next Friday will lead to a renewed ceasefire that will open a sixty day window of negotiations. It is always a promising start when the shooting stops and people are not dying or getting maimed, but peace is hardly ensured. I suspect that most of the process involves Trump getting fed up with the war and just walking away while trying to put a happy face of victory on the debacle.

Clearly Trump failed to achieve any of the goals he set at the start of the war. Indeed, we are worse off now than we were at the start of the war. There is new leadership in charge in Iran that is more hardline than the one we killed off. Now the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) appears to be calling the shots and they are more confident in their ability to survive the U.S. military’s best efforts. Trump promised the people of Iran that he would help them throw off their oppressive government. In fact, they are under a more repressive regime and have suffered thousands of civilian casualties in the process. The elimination of Iranian missile and drone production is not mentioned in the MOU. Trump finally settled on dismantling the Iranian nuclear program as the basis of the war but the program remains. The Strait of Hormuz was open to free navigation and now it is not. Notice that Trump declared the “toll free” opening of the strait. Look for Iran to impose a tax, or a processing fee, or an administration fee or an environmental fee or some other fig leaf otherwise known as a toll. Even if they do not charge anything, Iran now knows that they can close the strait or restrict traffic or prohibit ships from designated countries from using it or control it in any way that they care to do so, with significant impact on the world economy. The U.S. did not reopen the strait and the Iranians are betting that the U.S. will not come back to do it in the future. At least not in the next two and a half years.

The mere fact that the administration is talking in vague generalities is a clue to how little has been achieved. Rather, it seems Trump was desperate to get out from under the quagmire he created in the Persian Gulf. I have seen nothing addressing Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism. It appears that sanctions against Iran will be lifted as part of the deal and that billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets will be released. That unfortunate development is one that Trump is trying desperately to gloss over. He accused President Obama of giving the Iranians “pallets” of money under the JCPOA. It is expected that Trump’s deal will give the Iranians billions more. It is widely reported that Trump will free up twenty billion dollars in Iranian funds, dwarfing the roughly 400 million in frozen assets released under Obama in 2015 (with accrued interest since 1979 the total was about 1.5 billion dollars). Probably, three billion dollars has already been released through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as Trump is desperate to keep his finger prints off of the cash. There is also talk of the U.S. paying reparations to Iran to help rebuild the infrastructure destroyed during the war. Notably, nowhere to date has there been any talk of inspectors monitoring or restricting the Iranian nuclear program. Without inspections, any paper agreement is meaningless.

Looking at the big picture, Iran achieved its strategic goals and the U.S. achieved none. Yes, Iran is battered and our military is significantly more powerful than Iran is, but as I have written many times in this space, that is not all there is to warfare. Strategy matters. Clear objectives matter. Matching ends, ways and means matters. Despite Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s belief that blowing stuff up is fun and is all that matters, there is more to warfare than bombs. There is a reason that military strategists, including in senior U.S. war colleges, still study On War by Carl von Clausewitz. It is not just a cliche to repeat his fundamental precept that “war is the continuation of policy [politics] by other means.” Nations do not, or at least should not, go to war for the fun of it. The military is one tool to support diplomacy to achieve specific objectives. I dare say that Trump and Hegseth and the rest of Trump’s civilian advisors are too vain to believe that they have anything to learn from those that are professionals in the art of war. This is the result.

Iran’s power, finances and stature on the world stage are significantly enhanced. The U.S. is significantly diminished.

We will have to wait and see what actually takes place on Friday and what is accomplished during the negotiations. The wild card is Israel. Iran insists that Hezbollah in Lebanon is part of the agreement and that Iran will not abide by any agreement if Lebanon is not part of the settlement. Israel insists that their actions in Lebanon are distinct from those in Iran. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is adamantly opposed to any agreement with Iran before their nuclear program is eliminated. Speculation is that he launched an attack into Lebanon just before the MOU was announced for one of two purposes. The benign explanation is that he wanted to emphasize that Israeli actions in Lebanon are not part of the agreement. The less kind explanation is that the attacks were an attempt to get Iran to withdraw from the agreement with the U.S. Netanyahu is in a political bind. He needs to exert his independence and maintain his sovereign responsibilities but Trump is publicly acting like he controls Netanyahu. Time will tell.)

Iran is a bad actor. They are the leading sponsors of terrorism around the world. The leaders of Iran are fanatics and there is every incentive to hold them in check and accountable. Reckless military actions were not the way to reel them in. I think that the waste of lives and treasure will haunt us well into the future. The Trump administration will try and paint a picture of total victory. It is not. We will soon see if this group of third rate actors in the administration have any ability to learn from their mistakes as there is already talk of going into Cuba. Maybe the spineless members of Congress that let Trump do whatever he wants will finally step up. I am not holding my breath waiting for them to get a backbone.