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The UAE paid Iran $10-20bil to stop its attacks, according to Reuters, which probably accounts for their 85% return to oil shipping prior to the signing of the MOU, if that figure is accurate. As this is very embarrassing to everyone but Iran, I doubt we will be hearing much about it. Just this week, Iran struck three UAE oil vessels, and UAE (along with Qatar and KSA) petitioned Trump to stay his attack on Iran because they can’t afford the blowback on their infrastructure. This reads to me like Iran retains a robust ability to influence the region. If Trump flees from the war, then Iran will have more regional influence than it started with, as Iran would have proof that they can sustain attacks from a hawkish American military (imagine if it’s a Dem!) and continue pressuring the region for their own purposes.
Iran is only 9mo away from nukes, per a May Reuters report, whereas before the war they were six months away from nukes. This doesn’t seem like a big deal. I imagine the killing of Khamenei and his family will persuade the Iranians that a nuke is more desirable, and they now have information about what American buster bunkers are actually able to accomplish. It’s quite possible that Iran is now closer to a nuke than ever before, given the aforementioned, because the limiting factor on a nuke was the fatwah of the ayatollah whose family was killed during negotiations by Israel. Oops.
Are the other points you mention serious? You don’t mention the Houthis closing Bab al-Mandab Strait, but you mention random strikes on Shia militants in Iraq. But those strikes didn’t actually succeed in “pushing out” Iranian-backed forces, right? Isn’t the fact that there are still Iranian militias in Iraq embarrassing to us? And Iran’s economy is hurting, but we’re not at war with the Iranian people, so this doesn’t really matter. Their leverage over the strait remains. Trade is interrupted and tankers are being struck. Trump causing America to lose the Iran war — succeeding in none of the original mission objectives while cementing Iran’s influence over the strait — will certainly have repurcussions for Republicans in elections. Americans are worse off, in every way, and the legacy of the children we killed may inspire attacks on us decades hence, making us all less safe. Our international reputation is worse off, we have less money, our soldiers were wounded and killed, and we may lose Arab partners in the future.
If the US won this war, then it has to go down as the first war in history that required Op-eds to convince anyone that we had won. I don't think the Civil War or WWII required any explaining. Hell, Iraq was a more clear-cut victory, and I don't know that that's a favorable comparison.
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So this idea that UAE is paying massive bribes to escape Iranian attacks is flatly not true, or at least not verified in anything you have shown here.
The argument here is that Iran can still produce a nuclear weapon because the unfinished nuclear material is sitting buried underneath the rubble American bombs entombed it in.
This is a silly precis. If the Iranians dig up those tunnels, we can bomb them again. They are at our mercy. "He might have broken my arm, but he didn't really hurt me at all because bones heal."
Traffic is still passing Bab al-Mandab, although at reduced levels because of the threats. We will see what the US does.
"random strikes"
The Iraqi government is disarming Iranian-backed militias in its territory in concert with Saudi and American forces. What is "random" about that? Do I need to explain why this implies that Iran's influence is shrinking, not growing?
Your position is that Iran's ability to wage war doesn't depend on its economy?
What are we even doing here?
The article says that we don’t know whether the 10-20bil were frozen assets: “Reuters could not establish whether the funds earmarked for the transfers belong to the UAE or originate in long-blocked Iranian accounts in the UAE banking system”. Actually, there’s no confirmation afaik that the UAE ever froze Iranian assets during the war. There are some articles claiming they were exploring this, but they never actually announced or confirmed that they had done this. You would expect that there would be some journalistic confirmation floating around if UAE actually froze 10-20bil in Iranian assets. This is probably why Reuters mentions “long-blocked Iranian accounts”, because the funds could be coming from accounts blocked years ago (assets were frozen in 2010, 2018, 2019), whereas recent blocks would not be called long-blocked (not by Reuters).
Reuters is a serious organization; the UAE is an absolute monarchy trying not to have their industry destroyed or lose their American partner. If there are four sources telling Reuters about this, I would trust them. I wouldn’t trust what UAE says, because they have every reason to lie about this.
It’s more verified than it is unverified, if you trust Reuters more than an absolute monarch in a precarious geopolitical situation.
I’m not the expert on their missile cities so I’m deferring to the Intel guys on this. How would we know? It would require a pretty serious understanding of how their tunnels work. I would assume that they could tunnel underground to the tunnel, to take the uranium, which would be out of our sight. But of course it’s definitely more complicated than that.
Because the disarmament push is the follow-up of a 2024 decision, it has a September 30th deadline and there are a number of articles speculating that the Iraqi government will not succeed in disarming the major Iran-backed groups. It’s possible that we get a situation where America leaves Iraq entirely and the Iran-backed groups stay.
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Read the article again please.
Sources can say a lot of things, but they do seem to be saying the thing. Is the issue here with the word 'paid' rather than 'released'?
I think that's a pretty crucial difference, yeah.
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That means they didn't release it yet. And given that Iran kept blowing stuff up, I think it's highly likely that Iran never got to smell it at all.
This is deliberately vague but the most straightforward interpretation is that these accounts were unfrozen, giving Iran the on-paper ability to spend those funds, but they would still remain within the UAE banking system. Hard to say though, as the other source says "delivered".
If the UAE already sent/released 3bn, like is alleged in the article, I'd consider it safe to presume that they intend to follow through with the rest.
I'm not sure on the timeline here. According to the article Iran has not attacked the UAE since May 4th. Talks allegedly began in June. The only attacks my google and AI can find are the recent strikes from last week on ships belonging to Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the SoH. Maybe that's enough for the UAE to pull the cord, but maybe not, as the focus of this deal might be to guarantee that Iran will not strike the mainland.
If we were trying to tighten our language down to be more accurate then the UAE intends to release up to 10-20bn Iranian assets to Iran in deal designed to 'ease regional tensions'. 3bn has already been released, according to sources. They also intend to 'revive economic ties'.
Whilst that might not be as sensational as 'paid 10-20 billion' I'd argue it's undeniably on that side of the equation.
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