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Notes -
Deal reached to end Iran war
Details of the deal are not publicly available right now. However, Trump has authorised an end to the US naval blockade, and Iran has agreed to reopen the Strait.
Not surprisingly though, Israel continues to bomb Lebanon and refuses to cede lands seized in southern Lebanon.
But MORE surprisingly, Trump actually reprimanded Bibi.
So it seems we were lucky to return to the pre-war status quo, even Trump had to tepidly admit that he bit off more than he can chew and Iran's regional dominance is not going anywhere.
So nobody knows what really happened, but at least we're having fun.
Does anybody else remember our discussions from a few months ago? Because what's been reported so far looks nothing like what many confidently predicted back then. Iran closing the strait would lead to massive energy spikes that would cripple the global economy and America would rush to surrender. And Iran would win on all points. Iran's nuclear program would continue uninterrupted. Iran's neighbors would be cowed into submission. Many people speculated that Iran would soon sink American ships, or innocent oil tankers, and that nobody would be able to stop them.
In fact, Iran's power was so strong that they would be able to toll the straits of Hormuz. Iran would be stronger than ever.
That seems to not have happened.
Likewise, the global energy crisis has not materialized. Where I live gas is about a buck-and-a-quarter more expensive than it was before the war. Plane tickets are more expensive and fertilizer costs have gone up. But, otherwise, nothing continues to happen. And America did not rush to surrender.
In fact, curiously, Iran is apparently giving up their greatest leverage by opening the straits. Why would they do that? We have heard that nobody can take the straits back from them, so why are they ceding it?
The terms now called losing terms were winning terms a few months ago: America bombed Iran, decapitated its leadership, destroyed the bulk of its capacity to manufacture missiles and drones, and will suffer no lasting consequences. The Straits, apparently, will be opened and a ceasefire will be maintained.
The questions now are whether this can be turned into a longer-lasting and more regional peace, and what will become of Iran's nuclear dust. (Not that they can do much with it, because we destroyed the nuclear facilities they would need to use it.) Trump, at least, is pushing to expand the Abraham Accords and lock the entire region into a broader framework for peace. Which doesn't sound like a loss of American prestige to me.
Of course it's possible that fighting will break out again or that the deal will not be as reported.
But wasn't America supposed to have lost?
One of the curious assertions I saw from both the right and the left is that Trump would fold due to pressures from the midterm elections looming. Which, sure that is absolutely on his mind, but the timing of the actual attack very deliberately gave him a LOT of runway with which to bring the plane in for a landing. Like, a ton.
We're still 4 months out from the actual elections. An eternity.
An armed man literally rushed into the White House Correspondent's Dinner a month and a half ago. He was specifically trying to murder Trump, its on video. He's still alive. Nobody talks about him. Maybe it gave Trump a short boost, but the news cycle is simply unforgiving.
Yes a massive energy crisis or recession induced by same that lasted for months would hurt the GOP in the midterms.
Since that didn't materialize, you should be considering your priors as to how heavily this whole thing has been gamed out. Add in the fact that the DoD has had access to Frontier AI models in the months leading up to it.
Whatever actually impacts the Midterms will probably be events in the month or so leading up to it. Making confident predictions about those results is premature, trying to tie the uncertain outcomes of the Iran situation into it is double folly. And now we've got the whole summer of America's 250's birthday celebrations to goose the patriotism.
Arguably THAT was the bigger, more immediate pressure on Trump, to bring down gas prices for summer travel and to ensure the war wasn't going to present a distraction from festivities.
I'm kind of betting against it now that I've seen just how entrenched the Iranian leadership structure is, and committed to their ideological aims. And how Culturally they apparently can't ever, ever, ever present as having lost face.
But now that I know we can decapitate their leadership structure on a whim, this causes me less concern.
Trump is also, I think, uniquely willing to withstand electoral pressure. He has not caved just because the war is unpopular and the midterms are looming. He even says the midterms don't matter. Surely that's a negotiating signal (to convince Iran that they can't just wait him out). But I think any other president, at this point, would have picked a vastly different strategy out of political concern.
I'm currently thinking that the Abraham Accords will be expanded, but a broader regional peace will happen in steps and not one big all-encompassing deal. It might look like North Korea, where we have never really reached a true accord with them after Trump's handshake with Kim Jong Un, but we have a working relationship now and are slowly understanding each other.
As for nuclear dust, I'm not sure if Iran will give it up and consent to lose face. But given that we destroyed the bulk of their nuclear facilities it might be fine if this lingers for years, as Iran doesn't have the capacity to do anything with it anyways.
Yes, the North Korea model (maybe sans nuclear capability) is a semi-likely outcome in my outlook. Very minimal force projection capabilities, but fanatically committed to defense of its internal autonomy.
Which, interestingly, was probably one of the under-recognized dynamics of Iran that the war changed. Iran was in the middle of a multi-decade effort to develop power projection capabilities, from blue water naval elements to drone carrier concepts. It sank, and the US sank it so quickly I've gotten the sense people felt it didn't matter, but there's a difference between nascant and insignificant.
Iran hadn't gotten any sort of reputation as a naval power because there wasn't exactly a 'opportunity' to test the emerging capability, but it was a capability that was progressing and could have, hypothetically, had things like an Iranian naval detachment inconveniently escorting Iranian tankers to China during a US-Taiwan scenario and any attempted US blockade. Among other more direct things in regional proxy or not-so-proxy conflicts with Israel.
If Iran does revert back to a North Korea model of minimal power projection capability for the next decade or three, still just limited to drones or missiles from its own territory or proxies, that would be a non-trivial divergence to what Iran was trying to move towards. It's not the sort of difference most people would notice / acknowledge / credit, because there's no real weight to an alternative not seen, but such is the nature of growth trajectories denied.
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