The Donald Trump administration looks desperate for a deal to end the war with Iran.
This is a bad negotiating posture in any circumstances, let alone when dealing with the famously difficult envoys of the Islamic Republic. And yet on Tuesday evening, in return for no detectable concessions, President Trump suspended efforts to restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—the “Project Freedom” that had been announced so dramatically only two days prior, and then defended by cabinet officials throughout Monday and Tuesday.
The shocking nature of this climbdown was enhanced by the fact that, entirely predictably, the American operation had provoked an intense Iranian military response targeting the U.S. Navy, shipping in the strait, and targets on land in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The American response was to sink some Iranian small boats that were attempting to interdict shipping but to otherwise claim that the ceasefire held. The administration did not even condemn Iran’s attacks on the UAE, one of America’s most important allies in this war.
Reasonable people could disagree over how exactly to characterize this pattern of recent administration decisions—to which we might add the original sin of the current ceasefire, which is that it was offered in return for an Iranian opening of the strait, which did not happen and for which Iran suffered no consequences—but it would be a challenge to characterize it as “resolute.” Indeed, Iran’s now repeated dangling of the opening of the strait as an early concession begins to look like Lucy offering to hold the football for Charlie Brown to kick.
