Trump’s pushback on the Hormuz tolls raises the specter of an end to the Iran war
Now Trump, along with the Iranians, find themselves in a familiar predicament. The latter have also faced US military attacks throughout their territory, underscoring their inability to defend their territorial sovereignty. With the new embargo, their oil revenue – the lifeline of the Iranian regime – is cut off again.
Meanwhile, Trump also faces a choice between escalation, which comes with domestic economic and political costs, and some kind of resolution that leaves a hostile Iranian regime in power.
“We’re back to where we were at the beginning, where the question was: who has more patience?” said Elliot Abrams, senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The Iranians, will not be able to export oil, or the US and other countries that use Persian gulf oil?”
After months of worrying that the war in Iran was starting a new round of popular inflation, Trump got good news on Tuesday that consumer prices were falling.
A resumption of full-scale conflict, or an escalation of conflict, would inevitably send oil prices back to previous highs, endangering that good trend and putting Republicans in a difficult position heading into November’s midterm congressional elections.
On Monday, after Trump posted Truth Social, the price of a barrel of oil jumped almost 10% – the biggest one-day increase in six years.
For the first time, Trump’s blockade helped push the Iranian people to the negotiating table and set the table for a memorandum of understanding and a framework for lasting peace.
Now, according to Kelanid, the president’s power over Iran may be waning.
“He has tried things that he can do easily, he can do,” he said. “He can attack military targets, state targets. He’s done that before, and it didn’t cause Iran to surrender.”
The latest target Trump has raised is Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified nuclear research site south of Tehran. But there is conflicting evidence of the site’s value – or whether US airstrikes would cause significant damage to the tunnels deep beneath the granite rock.
If Trump’s latest moves finally end in yet another cease-fire and face-to-face talks, the fundamental, hard-to-fix disagreements — over Hormuz, over Iran’s nuclear program, over Iran’s influence in the Middle East — remain.
“I think there is room for negotiation here on the Strait of Hormuz agreement,” Abrams said. “But not going back to the MOU.”
As the war approaches its fifth month, Trump also noted on Monday that other US conflicts – including the Vietnam War – have dragged on for years.
However, that frenzy backfired and eventually ended the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson and damaged the global standing of the US for at least a decade. That’s the fate Trump hopes to avoid.
His supporters are also tired of repeating the kind of Middle East “forever wars” that Trump condemned in previous presidential campaigns.
But with the memorandum of understanding in tatters, the cease-fire ended and the prospect of further conflict to come, the end of the Iran War does not seem as close to a decision as it was in the weeks after it began.
