President Donald Trump’s peace ultimatum to Iran, aimed at breaking the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and reopening safe passage for cargo vessels, smacks of a stagemanaged outcome of backchannel diplomacy, with Pakistan the lead mediator.
The US president’s 15-point peace deal coincided with preparations for a ground operation involving large-scale troop mobilisation, thought to be directed at overrunning Iran’s offshore energy infrastructure.
While Iran’s fractured regime has issued a public disclaimer of Trump's peace plan, the diplomatic push has resulted in a pause in the conflict.
If the lull holds, it will mark an inflection point in the four-week-long crisis that plunged the region into turmoil after the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran that triggered retaliatory missile and drone attacks by Tehran on neighbouring Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states, upending global oil prices.
What was pitched as a short-term joint military operation by the United States and Israel to decapitate the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran has morphed into a wider regional conflict with runaway consequences to the global economy.
The US-Israeli mission of degrading and destroying Iran’s military capability on the ground, the air and the sea can reasonably be deemed to have been decisive in achieving its military objectives.
But Iran’s tactical manoeuvre of expanding the war to the GCC states, coupled with its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping lane through which a fifth of the world’s oil cargo passes, is posing a dilemma in the aftermath.
For one thing, Israel’s war against Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy based in Lebanon, is ongoing. What started as a provocative incursion by the militia across the Israeli border, resulted in the reciprocal bombing of Lebanon's capital, Beirut.
For another, a weakened Iran will likely not impact the pro-Iran Houthi rebel militia in Yemen, who may be emboldened to reignite hostilities against Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognised regime that runs Yemen.
The Houthis see themselves as Iran’s partner, rather than its proxy, signalling that the group is not a puppet of the Iranian regime.
There are also the overarching questions of what Trump’s terms of the current peace deal with Iran are, and how the lifting of the Strait of Hormuz blockade will pan out. When asked by the media who will manage the waterway in the future, Trump joked: “Me and the Ayatollah.”
On a less frivolous note, the Trump administration is now having to manage the economic fallout of its display of hubris (the absence of an “imminent threat” to justify a pre-emptive strike on Iran arguably qualifies as an act of aggression under international law), with the surge in oil prices hitting the back pockets of consumers worldwide.
With the Iran war having metamorphosed from a localised military operation into a global economic crisis with open-ended consequences, Trump is now plotting peace, instead of war, with Iran.
The Trump administration may find that de-escalation comes with challenges.
For instance, Washington must cope with the burden of expectation foisted on its shoulders by the Iranian public, as well as the diaspora, that it will initiate steps to defang the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s stormtroopers widely linked to the deadly crackdown on protestors on the streets of Iran in recent months.
The war on Iran has sorely tested equations within the Transatlantic Alliance. Nato member states, such as the UK, France and Germany, were less than enthusiastic to deploy their navies to the Strait of Hormuz in response to Trump’s clarion call.
Trump is also facing blowback from his Republican base back home with concerns over US servicemen deaths and soaring military expenditure.
Venu Menon is a senior journalist based in Wellington. He was Consulting Editor of The Hindu in India prior to moving to New Zealand