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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.
Yes, this war has not gone well for America, but that was hardly unexpected, there’s a reason no previous American president was dumb enough to do this, including HW and Jr. Disarming Hezbollah is equally flawed, Shias in Lebanon are loyal to it and will reform and rebuild it in whatever guise, whatever the case, and the country is too divided by sectarianism to stop them. I hesitate to say it’s over for Israel, it’s faced poor odds before, but the future certainly isn’t bright for it.
America has destroyed Iran's military and leadership and experienced a scant dozen casualties. In what sense has this war gone poorly?
Wars are not a tally of losses on either side. The US inflicted incredibly lopsided casualties in Afghanistan and Vietnam and still failed, because confusing tactical brilliance for strategic success is a perennial failure of American military thinking.
Also, the US hasn't destroyed the Iranian military.
We sank the vast majority of Iran’s navy, which is itself a strategic goal. It is in fact one of the strategic goals outlined by Trump in his speech when the war began
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A perennial failure of all military thinking, mind you. Sad as it is, we are not uniquely unable to see the forest for the trees.
It's certainly not unique to the United States, e.g. there's a good argument that Prussia and its successors had the same basic problem, though there it was more that Prussia overestimated the ability of tactical prowess to paper over fundamental material disadvantages. Thus getting into deep shit and having to be bailed out. The same could be levied against Japan during WW2. The distinction I would draw is that these people generally had straightforward strategic goals, but their egos were writing checks their armies couldn't cash.
By contrast, I think where the US stands out is the combination of conventional dominance and confused, facile, or overly ambitious strategic thinking. America, like Prussia, keeps convincing itself it's going to get a quick decisive war. But Prussia's problem was biting off more than it could chew, while America's problem is that we have no idea what we're doing. And I don't mean that in the sense of 'incompetent'. I mean it in the sense that we think we're doing one thing when we're actually doing another.
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