Donald Trump has constructed a trap for himself and the rest of the world from which there is no escape. Despite signing a ceasefire with Iran a month ago in Versailles, the “memorandum of understanding” has now collapsed.
Mr Trump may have, for now, reversed his threat to impose a 20 per cent toll upon all maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, as the US prepares to resume its blockade of Iran’s ports. But peace is off the table.
Poorly drafted in an atmosphere of deep mutual mistrust, it has, in fact, degenerated into a memorandum of misunderstandings. Mr Trump has denounced it and called his Iranian interlocutors, previously the recipients of backhanded compliments, “scum”.
Meanwhile, Iran has terrorised neutral shipping in the strait, America’s retaliatory attacks have escalated, Israel is ready to redouble its efforts to strategically destabilise the region, and the Gulf states and Jordan have once again been assaulted by Iranian drones.
Having declared victory against Iran some 32 times, including five in one 13-second clip in mid-March, the president has now, de facto, gone to war again, with a carefully pre-announced television address to the nation promised for Thursday – clearly intending to convey the impression that a de jure announcement that more war will follow.
Every time Mr Trump declares the war “won”, the Iranians use their leverage to win more concessions. Every time he reacts by launching fresh attacks, he tanks the markets and pushes both the price of a barrel of oil and world inflation higher, damaging America in the process. He cannot win. To borrow a phrase so beloved by the Trump administration, he doesn’t have the cards.
His appetite for a protracted conflict is limited. The US targeting has been clearly military, for example, and it may not be sustained. It is hardly the first time that Mr Trump has threatened to “bomb the hell out of them” or destroy their “whole civilisation”, only to pull back. At times, he’s even hinted at using a nuclear weapon (later withdrawn). He has always retreated. A thermonuclear disaster isn’t on his agenda.
But what is? Iran’s supreme leader has been assassinated, its antiquated navy and air force all but destroyed, and its people subjected to extreme sanctions, but the Strait of Hormuz remains in Iranian control, in a way it did not before the US began Operation Epic Fury. What’s more, the regime is still functioning. By surviving and retaining its asymmetrical advantages in drone warfare and geography, the Islamic Republic has defied America and achieved a kind of victory. There’s nothing obvious Mr Trump can do to break this pattern.
Part of the president’s problem is that in trying to strike fear into an apparently indefatigable Iranian leadership, he is drawn into making ever more extreme pledges of destruction and control. So he is doing now. It will certainly be difficult, and likely impossible, for the US to be the “guardian of the Strait of Hormuz”, as he insists it will be, without a full-scale invasion and regime change in Tehran – which would, on past experience, end up in a never-ending conflict, civil war, regime collapse, regional chaos and an unprecedented energy crisis.
There are still two grounds for optimism. First is that pressure from the financial markets and domestic politics could force Mr Trump to call off his manoeuvres and return to the negotiating table, where some kind of deal, including on the nuclear issue, is essential to longer-term stability. He has already retreated from his almost random imposition of a 20 per cent “tariff” on goods leaving the strait, one which would have enraged allies and rivals alike, especially in East Asia. It is hard to believe that even Mr Trump would want to antagonise China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia and Taiwan simultaneously. The Pacific is supposed to be his focus these days, or so he says.
Second, this fossil fuel crisis, like previous ones, is having the effect of reminding governments, businesses and consumers of the extreme risks of over-reliance on a finite, volatile, expensive source of energy that is subject to the whims of irrational regimes. “Demand destruction” is what the economists call it, and it would not be the first time that a Middle East fuel crisis has reduced the energy intensity of the global economy.
Mr Trump likes to deride renewables in the most lurid and unscientific terms, but at the moment, he is doing more than anyone to wean the rest of us off oil and gas and embrace solar, nuclear and wind power. The Iran war is thus an unlikely but effective spur to net zero. That’s a victory – for common sense and the future of the planet – that Mr Trump never had in mind.
