Another day, another hairpin turn in the world of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The weekend was all about war, with Trump insisting Iran had not yet “paid a big enough price.” Tuesday brought Project Freedom, styled as a grand “humanitarian gesture” to allow trapped ships and their crews to escape the Gulf, but also aimed at weakening Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. By the early hours of Wednesday, the tone shifted back to peace. The president announced: “Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement,” so Project Freedom would be paused to give negotiations a chance.
A Trap of Trump’s Own Making
The three approaches on three consecutive days share a common thread: they are all attempts to wrestle with the same set of hard facts. The regime in Iran is unlikely to collapse or surrender the right to enrich uranium, no matter how many bombs are dropped. Tehran has demonstrated its capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz, and a total blockade of the Gulf hurts the US economy as well as Iran. Together, these realities form a steel box in which the Trump administration, largely through its own actions, finds itself trapped. The repeated policy changes in recent days show him flailing inside this trap, pinging off the walls and searching for an exit other than humiliation or a forever war.
Terms on the Table
It remains too early to say whether Trump has found a way out. His accompanying threat of bombardment “at a much higher level and intensity” if Iran does not accept the initial terms betrays his nervousness that it will not work. The terms became clearer over Wednesday. Axios and Reuters reported that the US, Iran, and Pakistani mediators were nearing an agreement on a one-page “memorandum of understanding” to declare an end to the war and begin a 30-day negotiating period for resolving disputes over Iran’s nuclear programme, US sanctions, and Iran’s frozen assets. Both sides would lift their parallel blockades of the Strait of Hormuz during this month of talks.
Trump’s announcement brought down the oil price and boosted stock markets, as his upbeat messages are designed to do. But it all remained tenuous. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz could be possible, but did not give a straight reply on the reported proposal. Tehran has stated it wants the blockade to end first, before discussing anything else. The foreign ministry said the proposal was under review, while Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesperson for the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, rejected it as an “American wishlist, not a reality.”
Testing Iran’s Unity
There has been much speculation over whether the various centres of power in Iran can agree on a shared position when it comes to serious talks. This proposal could put that conjecture to the test. Even if the parties reach the negotiating table, 30 days is a very short time to resolve such entrenched disputes as Iran’s nuclear programme and US-led sanctions, all while unravelling the dual blockade.
Details of the Potential Deal
Before the war, Iran offered a moratorium on uranium enrichment of five years, while the US demanded 20. The reported new proposal suggests a compromise of 12 or 15 years. Iran’s prewar offer involved addressing its stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) – either diluting or exporting it, or both. The reported framework points toward export, possibly even to the US. Under the deal, Iran would also accept the permanent return of inspectors from the UN watchdog, the IAEA, essential for international confidence. In return, Iran’s billions of frozen assets would be released in stages (a concession for which Trump spent years lambasting his predecessors), and sanctions would be lifted progressively.
It is a very ambitious agenda. There are countless ways it could fall apart. While neither side wants to go back to war, both apparently believe that more fighting could improve their position at the negotiating table – an unstable set of circumstances for hammering out peace. Israel would also likely oppose any settlement that does not address Iran’s missile arsenal or the actions of its regional proxies.
A Costly Path
In the best-case scenario for the US, the terms agreed would be somewhat better than those on the table in Geneva on 26 February, two days before the war started with a surprise US-Israeli attack. The enrichment moratorium would be longer, and there would be greater certainty that HEU would be shipped out of the country. However, we will never know if the same improvements could have been achieved through more negotiations instead of bombing.
Any agreement should ultimately be assessed against the benchmark of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal that Trump torpedoed in 2018. Under its terms, Iran had no HEU but would have maintained a closely monitored and strictly limited nuclear programme. If Trump wants to declare victory, he could point to the fact that even the 2015 deal lacked the lengthy moratorium on enrichment that his will provide. But any such gains will have come at an awful price. There are more than 5,000 people dead, including 120 primary school children killed on the first day in Minab, plus casualties in Lebanon. Then there are indirect global costs – economic and environmental – that will take years to play out. The UN estimates that 32 million people could be plunged into poverty as a result of the war, largely through its impact on energy and fertiliser supplies. The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, has said that the $2bn (£1.5bn) a day spent on the war could have saved about 87 million lives if spent on humanitarian relief.
Harder to calculate is whether the relentless bombing has shortened or lengthened the life of Iran’s regime. For now, it appears to have entrenched the military and hardliners. As things stand, there are more unknowns than knowns surrounding this possible breakthrough, and any progress will remain extremely fragile. But even if the war ends and Trump gets the peace plan sketched out in the latest reports, this war seems certain to rank high on the list of history’s most pointless conflicts.
