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Notes -
Third Gulf War Negotiations Thread
As we approach the end of the 5 day pause(?) before the USA ramps up attacks again, reports are coming in that the Trump team has sent Iran a 15 point plan for peace. I don’t think the full text has been credibly made public at this time, as should be expected, but from what I’ve gathered the points can be reduced from redundant and detail points, Iran gives:
— Iran stops funding proxies abroad, especially Hamas and Hezbollah
— Iran pinky promises to never get a nuclear weapon, surrenders nuclear material, agrees to various future restrictions/inspections
— Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz
In exchange Iran gets:
— Full sanctions relief, including removal of the snapback provisions that removed sanctions would go back on Iran immediately if Iran violated the agreement
— American assistance with their civilian nuclear program.
Iran, after denying that negotiations were happening at all, has come back with the following demands:
— Bombing of Iran ends, assassination of Iranian officials ends, guarantees that it won’t start again
— Reparations
— Recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the strait of Hormuz
— They won’t negotiate with Steve and Jared, only with JD Vance
Trump has delayed bombing Iranian civilian infrastructure for this week, while Iran has let some ships through the strait as a gesture of good faith, or as Trump put it a “very expensive present.”
Now none of this is being reported clearly, and this all might be bullshit, and maybe one or both sides is engaging in distractionism.
But I’m filled with a deep sense of disquiet and defeat. The Iranian regime is rebuilt, reinforced, made more powerful. The Iranian regime is given new credibility, where before my diasporic friends could claim that with a push the rotten structure would collapse, now they know it will not. Iran gets effective, if not formal, sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran gets sanctions relief. Iran gives up more or less nothing, just some fissionable material that is easily enough replaced and a few proxies that have already been degraded. I don’t really credit the promises Iran is making here for much, especially if the snapback provision is removed.
Giving Iran anything after they close the Strait is tantamount to recognizing their sovereignty over it, de facto if not legally. Simply by asking for it, and then making a deal, Iran is going to be perceived as getting sovereignty over the strait. The USA, by accepting Iran's "gift" of letting ships through the strait, is already acknowledging that Iran has control of the strait! And this would be disastrous.
The flip side is that there’s little guarantee that the US would keep its promises in the future, but that doesn’t feel very good to me either. I’m not sure where I see the off-ramp at this point that isn’t a full invasion of Iran.
Another view is that given the conditions, this isn't really the Iran war, it's the Lebanon war and the Iran war is a sideshow and a distraction. The casualties are higher in Lebanon, there are troops on the ground in Lebanon, Israel is considering expanding its territory into Lebanon, occupation will inevitably result in settlements which will not be removed, etc. Perhaps the purpose of the Iran war never had anything to do with Iran herself, which is why the goals against Iran never seemed achievable, but were instead more local to protecting the Israeli homefront against Hezbollah. The USA distracts Iran and forces it to accept Hezbollah's defeat.
I suppose at least we’ll get good pistachios and saffron now? I’d love to see sanctions relief on a personal level, and I think sanctions are a wildly ineffective method of international relations, but on a geopolitical level this seems like the US admitting defeat.
We completely destroyed the base of their military and they can no longer project power throughout the Middle East. They cannot even fully block traffic in the straits.
If America’s reported demands are true it’s a very good deal. Iran ceases all aspirations to project military power in the Middle East, and in exchange normal economic relations and development can resume. This is basically getting Iran to abide by the Abraham Accords and would set the Middle East up for a generation of peace.
Iran has not really closed the straits. Despite what’s been reported some vessels have never stopped making the crossing. Risks are higher and costs have adjusted but Iran has failed to actually project its will.
America destroyed Iran’s military capabilities to the point we are now willing to reintegrate them into the normal affairs of the Middle East. In exchange we suffered a scant dozen casualties.
Look I understand that many people are blackpilled or have been consuming a lot of different views about the war. But America totally decimated Iran. Every power in the world with more information than Twitter jockeys understands what happened. Iran had no meaningful way of retaliating. America has total air superiority. America has total space superiority. America has total naval superiority. Over the span of a few years we have shown that we can e.g.: blow up the secret pagers of every commander across a wide and dispersed military network; drop bombs that tunnel into the sides of mountains; turn off the electrical grids; track missiles from space and intercept them before they leave the launch site; decapitate the leadership of an entire country, over and over and over again whenever we want.
Everybody in the world saw it. Despite what propaganda claims nobody is really in denial about what happened. America is stronger than ever before.
The combination of what Trump has done in Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba will be studied for generations. It will inaugurate a new playbook of how to use American military power. When our war aims aren’t to spend a trillion dollars on NGOs while telling soldiers they cant shoot anybody, we can basically do whatever we want.
Now, what do we actually want? Despite a lot of commentary American aims are fairly modest. Contrary to the isolationists we do have an interest in the Middle East. Contrary to the imperialists and neocons we don’t need total regime change in Iran to achieve our aims. (The phrase “regime change” is a little misleading because by killing Iran’s leadership we already effected regime change: it might simply be an Ayatollah willing to make a deal with America instead of the Shah or a new democratic movement.)
What America wants is a stable global order made up of partners willing to trade and do business in peace. What America wants is for the oil and money to flow. What America wants is for everyone to prosper. That’s the basis of American prosperity.
So as Iran wakes up to the new reality and cuts a deal I will say without a scintilla of irony or doubt: Mission Accomplished!
The Twitterverse is full of denial of these basic facts or doom and gloom clowning on Trump himself. (Trump is right, by the way, when he declares the war both essentially over and that it will last a while yet. We destroyed Iran’s military and it’s through our good grace that we didn’t also bomb them back to the Stone Age. The discrepancy is caused by the lag in time for the mullahs to process what happened, and start negotiating.)
The alternative view, that Trump had no plan whatsoever, that Israel dog-walked the Americans, that Iran bravely resisted and stood up to the American bully, that everyone in the world is laughing at America, that the Straits will never be reopened without conceding an Iranian victory, etc. etc. etc. — the alternative view is not only ridiculous given everything that has already happened but will look even more ridiculous as time passes.
Maybe it will take some time to sink in. It took a few decades for all the Japanese holdouts to accept what had happened after we dropped the bomb.
I’m also sure though that we’ll keep having this argument forever, because that’s in the nature of history.
Couldn't the same be said of the US military situation in Afghanistan across 20 years (modulo the lack of AFG Navy)? All of that can be true, as it's been before (Iraq too), yet the US military can still be in a position where it can't realize its objectives. Fielded Armies, Navies and Air Forces? US quickly wins hands down every time. Terrorists, militias, splinter groups? It takes a lot longer and at an unacceptable level of blood and treasure.
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I don't think America can take credit for that... if you mean "America and its allies" as "we", then yes, absolutely.
Yes, Mossad's HUMINT and infiltration/clandestine operations ability is just insane.
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If I understand what you're implying that's not true. In the early days of the war several carriers risked it, and a few were hit for their trouble. Since Iran claimed to have closed the strait, only ships given permission by Iran have made the trip (since at least the last week). Iran has been fairly generous with its "permission" so that has resulted in some decent traffic -- but at least at the moment Iran has been projecting their will on the strait.
It should be noted that traffic through the strait is a small fraction of its pre-war throughput even with recent 'upticks.' Whether or not Iran can properly close the strait, shippers clearly think the risk is high enough that they're not willing to risk it.
"Shippers" meaning the London insurance cartel.
I don't think the counterfactual of a more distributed insurance market (or no insurers) changes things. Any way you imagine slicing it, someone is on the financial hook for these ships.
In a non-cartel market, the insurers can't refuse to insure in order to pressure the US to restore the situation where they were getting war risk premiums when there was no war risk.
Yes but they also still don't insure any ships sailing through the straights as the insurance math simply doesn't work. There's no premium you can charge to offset this risk.
So says the cartel.
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...according to Iran. Conveniently, Iran has graciously extended its permission to every ship that has tried the crossing and succeeded. On the ground there are many ships that have made the crossing, such as some Greek oil tankers. Everything is down from where it was a month ago but the strait is not entirely closed because Iran's capacity to project its will is no longer there. It can harass ships and increase the risk, and that only temporarily.
The major question is not whether America will guarantee the straits but how they will do it. Right now it seems likeliest that they will negotiate a deal with Iran's remaining leadership simultaneous with an international fleet as a show of force. But if we wanted to we could always go back to bombing Iran into the stone age etc.
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I'm assuming by "carriers" you mean bulk and/or oil, not aircraft carriers?
For reasons that never occurred to me to question until this moment, we refer ships carrying oil as "tankers" and ships carrying gas (lng) as "carriers". Oil has gotten the spotlight in the war but I think LNG has been equally as important. The US exports quite a bit of LNG but it's all on the east coast. Africa exports on its west coast. If you want LNG and you're east of Africa, without the strait Australia is about your only option.
But yeah, to your point, not aircraft carriers.
I was actually looking at ONI's analysis of Iran's Navy from 2017 today, and I believe it said the percentage of the world's LNG that passes through the Strait is higher than oil. So yes, definitely important... the US and Europe are probably fortunate it's after the cold weather.
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