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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.
This seems one of the worst covered parts of a war that is generally poorly covered. Lebanon is currently in constitutional crisis. The government ordered the disarming of Hezbollah and the lebanese army refused to carry out the order. As a result Israel is invading to stop the rockets. It's not complicated, and I'm surprised that Hezbollah wasn't weak enough + the lebanese tired of being dragged into war with Israel to put Hezbollah down but here we are.
Israel is attempting to create agreements with the Sunni/Christians against the Shia but it's unclear if that will work. My guess is they kill a bunch of civilians, nonsense like plans to take territory (any evidence of this?) crops up and lots of horrible images and Lebanon rallies around the flag plus international pressure causes Israel to leave with nothing gained. Their best and perhaps only chance was to convince the lebanese military to take out Hezbollah on their own, and they were either too weak or too cowardly to do it. Supposedly the French are still attempting to negotiate a deal like this but I give it poor odds. Polymarket odds of Hezbollah disarming peaked at 59% at the beginning of the war and are now down to 30%.
The Israelis have announced plans for a buffer zone:
The occupation, and inevitable settlement, is conjecture at this point.
East Jerusalem has much more religious significance than most of Southern Lebanon. Arguably even Syria has more. All Israel has ever wanted in Southern Lebanon is some kind of Maronite ethnostate, but the reality is that Lebanese Christian elites are low tfr, far too comfortable and all have foreign passports and so don’t care to fight and die for their homeland really. This was the reality in the civil war and is the problem today. The Shias are poor and have nowhere to go.
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They've done the buffer zone thing at least twice before and never made a settlement. I don't think this time will be different -- no settlement but also no victory or much gained.
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