Trump’s Reversal on Escalation Shows Iran Has the Upper Hand

In what is becoming a familiar pattern, the Felon has again backed down from threats launch new attacks against Iran and claims I ran is negotiating towards a peace deal.  The Felon had made such threats before and oil prices surged - driving up US gasoline prices higher - only to have the Felon back down and claim negotiations have restarted and have oil prices subside somewhat.  Currently, Iran denies that negotiations are again underway and seems happy to allow the Felon to twist on the rope he put around his own neck. Indeed, Reuters reports that "Iran is betting it can outlast Washington by turning the Middle East's trade routes, shipping lanes and energy infrastructure into pressure points that steadily raise the cost of confrontation, according to Gulf officials and analysts." The reality is that the USA remains in a position where no good off-ramps exist and the war's continuation is creating a drag for Republicans as the mid-term elections approach.  This very scenario is what the Felon was warned about by experts but chose to ignore and instead listen to Benjamin Netanyahu rosy picture of how the war would be quickly over. A piece in the New York Times looks at where we find ourselves currently:

When [the Felon] President Trump appeared to back down once again from a threatened military escalation against Tehran, he offered fresh fodder to the narrative Iranian officials are eager to promote: They are not the ones who fear war — Mr. Trump is.

Iran’s leadership believes it has found the world’s Achilles’ heel. With the help of regional militia allies, Tehran spent the past week underscoring its ability to threaten several of the world’s most critical energy facilities and waterways.

It has continued to up the ante in its face-off with Washington over when and how to stop their renewed hostilities and return to a short-lived deal to start peace negotiations, which fell apart last month.

When Mr. Trump signaled in recent days that a major escalation was imminent if no concessions were made, two former Iranian officials said Tehran’s leadership told him to go right ahead.

“They are ready for the war, and they won’t back down,” said Amir al-Mousawi, a former Iranian diplomat, who said he had met over the weekend with the team surrounding Iran’s head negotiator and speaker of Parliament, . . . The Iranians refused, he said, unless Washington returned to the previously agreed “memorandum of understanding,” which many experts say was in Iran’s favor.

“‘We have no problem with war at all, and we are ready for the big confrontation,’” Mr. al-Mousawi said the Iranians told the Americans. “Trump told the Iranians: ‘I will hit the power in Iran.’ So, the Iranians said: ‘If you strike, we strike.’”

Iranian officials have spotted a pattern in Mr. Trump’s attempts to shape negotiations . . . . Mr. Trump starts to pressurize the situation by threatening Iran, so he can try to get further concessions,” he said. “But Iran is not so easily manipulated.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said he had relented from his planned escalation after Iran and other Middle Eastern countries requested a delay because the “perimeters of a deal” had been agreed to.

Yet, there are no outward signs of any return to U.S.-Iranian negotiations. What does appear to have happened is that Saudi Arabia and Qatar expressed concerns over their ability to adequately defend their oil and gas facilities, according to two regional diplomats.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, had recently spoken with Mr. Trump to stress “the necessity of prioritizing dialogue to de-escalate tensions” and “prevent a wider conflict.”  Recent strikes in the region reflect the severity of those concerns.

Two weeks ago, the Houthis, an Iran-aligned militia force in Yemen, blockaded Riyadh’s use of the Bab al-Mandab waterway in the Red Sea. The Saudis had been piping oil to their west coast port on the Red Sea in order to circumvent Iran’s stranglehold on global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the primary route for oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf.

At its heart, the current struggle “is about redesigning the regional security architecture,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.  The core of that struggle is the issue of who controls the Strait of Hormuz, he said. “The Iranians are very, very serious about not giving up control, and they’re willing to bomb things to make sure that’s the case.”

Beyond that dynamic, there was also the startling July 17 attack on U.S. military sites in Jordan that killed three American soldiers. “The strike in Jordan was the game changer,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. It not only showed that Iran’s missile arsenal remained well stocked, he said, but also that Tehran’s intelligence capabilities were higher than previously believed.

“The entire Iranian strategy in this period has been aimed at making the United States understand that if there is another round of escalation, the scope and scale of Iranian response would be so much more devastating for the region and the global economy,” Mr. Vaez said.

Mr. Trump, he added, has never fully grasped the motivations of the Iranians, how they refuse to be bullied or cowed. Throughout both his current and previous term, Mr. Trump “is reluctant to learn the lesson” that aggressive tactics toward Iran have only hardened its position, Mr. Vaez said.

At the same time, Washington is grappling with depleted stores of munitions. Some military officials say their abilities to fight future conflicts — such as a so-called great-power war against China — could be hobbled by shortages that might take years to reverse, particularly of defensive weapons like Patriot missiles.

“The U.S. military options aren’t great, and it’s not simply reported munitions shortages,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.

“One, it’s not clear that the limited and time-bound military escalation Trump is willing to undertake at this point will be enough to change Iran’s calculus,” he said. “Two, it’s hard to imagine these options can degrade Iran’s missile and drone capacity, such that it cannot effectively close the Strait of Hormuz or further damage the Gulf’s critical and energy infrastructure.”

Emboldened, some well-known Iranian hard-liners mocked the dilemma the Trump administration seems to find itself in.

“If a strike is made on Iran,” Mr. Rezaei wrote in a response on X to Mr. Trump’s renewed threats in recent days, “we will return the entire region and its facilities to the Stone Age.”

When Mr. Trump said he was postponing an escalation, a prominent hard-line commentator, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, posted a picture of chicken tacos on his X account. It was a reference to a sarcastic acronym used by Mr. Trump’s critics: TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

“Iran has not budged,” he wrote above it. Far from being closer to talks, some regional experts feel the two sides are further away than ever.