Iran: will Trump resume the war?

Donald Trump has pursued “the most idiosyncratic and unsuccessful” US foreign policy in living memory, said Max Boot in The Washington Post.

“Even among Republicans, there is little support for annexing Greenland, seizing Venezuela’s oil, waging a cold war with Canada, cutting off Ukraine, insulting and indiscriminately tariffing allies, buying diesel from Russia” and “launching a war on Iran”. But most senior Republicans have been “too cowed” to protest, until now.

After last week’s “shellacking” in the midterms, Vice President J.D. Vance baldly stated on X that “the reason we lost is the war”. Trump himself had to admit that this is “largely true”; and this week, he said the war was “effectively over”, that negotiations to end it were under way, and that more attacks on Iran were “highly unlikely”.

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War or peace

Well, maybe, said Arta Moeini and Brett Erickson on UnHerd. But the president has been known to change his mind, and the danger of renewed conflict remains high. Trump is under “immense pressure to prove he is still in control”, and whatever constraints he now faces domestically, he retains considerable freedom to conduct foreign policy. A third aircraft carrier strike group is on course to reach the Middle East by the end of this month, building up the strength of US forces in the region to the level they were at at the start of the war.

Trump could attack Iran again, said Barak Ravid on Axios. But it would be “highly unpopular” – because it would drive oil prices up – and would probably not yield “a better military result”. The alternative is the peace negotiations. The difficulty is that Trump is making big demands: the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the end of Iran’s nuclear programme. The Iranians are in no mood to make concessions. Tehran, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is asking not just for an end to the naval blockade and sanctions, but for billions in frozen assets, and reparations from the US.

‘Only path’ forward

There is a third option, said William Hague in The Times – for the US to carry on strangling Iran’s economy. With the last of the oil revenues from shipments sent out before the US blockade petering out, and inflation soaring, this is likely to be the most effective way of forcing Tehran to seek terms.

Trump will have to be patient, which does not come easily to him. He’ll also need to show that he can be trusted to honour any agreement; and he’ll probably have to accept some limited, independently verified Iranian nuclear activity. “Yes, that would look remarkably like the 2015 agreement that Trump hated so much.” But it is likely to be “the only path” out of the trap he has created for himself.