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US, Iran Dig in Over Strait of Hormuz 07/21 06:22
The U.S. and Iran are back to bombing every day in a bid to control the
Strait of Hormuz. And neither is backing down, showing the limitations of
President Donald Trump's reliance on escalating airstrikes to bend Tehran to
his will.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. and Iran are back to bombing every day in a bid
to control the Strait of Hormuz. And neither is backing down, showing the
limitations of President Donald Trump's reliance on escalating airstrikes to
bend Tehran to his will.
While the Trump administration says it is open to diplomacy, Iran so far has
refused to loosen its grip over the crucial oil shipping corridor in the
Persian Gulf. It is raising questions about the strategy for the next phase of
the conflict as intensifying attacks have collapsed an interim ceasefire deal,
left additional American troops dead and sent U.S. gasoline prices back up --
posing new problems for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.
Even with glimmers of hope for talks, the sides could be headed back to
all-out war, with Trump warning that "every time Iran kills an American
Soldier" going forward, "they will pay for that killing many times over."
The renewed escalations reflect "a fundamental misreading of the Iranian
psyche and a lack of learning" from previous fighting, said Mona Yacoubian,
director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
"I think it's driven by a calculus on either side that they can double down
on military escalation as a way of breaking the impasse and getting the other
side to relent," Yacoubian said. "The danger, of course, is that the more
escalatory it becomes, the harder it will be to seize any potential opening
back to diplomacy."
The Trump administration says the door to diplomacy is open
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. is still open to negotiating,
telling reporters Sunday night that Iran continues "to send signals that they
want to talk, that they want to negotiate, but their behavior is what we're
responding to. And their behavior is they're launching missiles and drones at
ships" in the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world's oil normally
passes.
"The United States always remains open to a diplomatic solution, and we've
tried multiple times with Iran, and we'll continue to try," he said. "If that
door opens, we'll be happy to see it open."
Trump is focused on making Iran pay for the recent deaths of U.S. troops,
violations of the interim deal reached last month and attacks on ships in the
strait, according to a U.S. official, who was not authorized to comment
publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said that military strikes on Iran would continue until Trump
decides otherwise, but that talks between the countries also would go on.
For some outside observers, the administration appears to be struggling to
find an off-ramp, both militarily and diplomatically.
"This administration currently is flustered," said Alan Eyre, a former U.S.
diplomat once involved in past nuclear negotiations with Tehran and now a
fellow at the Middle East Institute. "It really doesn't have a coherent and
consistent strategy as to how to extricate itself from this quagmire."
There are some limitations to Trump's air war
The U.S. military can only accomplish so much as it ramps up attacks on
Iran, experts say.
The conflict has demonstrated the limits of relying solely on air power,
said Christopher Preble, a scholar at the Stimson Center think tank focused on
U.S. foreign policy. But he noted that sending in ground troops would be
unpopular with many Americans and members of Congress.
"It seems that President Trump certainly has the capability to continue to
bomb, and Iran will have the capability to continue to keep the strait closed
-- or closed well enough," Preble said.
David Schenker, a former official in the first Trump administration who is
now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the renewed
strikes on Iranian infrastructure are a repeat of attacks during the early
weeks of the war. And those did not result in Iran's capitulation.
"The U.S. hit 13,000 targets in the first 6 weeks of the war, and this
didn't sway Iran to take a knee," he said.
Retired Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who served under President Joe
Biden, said previous wars such as Vietnam showed the limitations of air power
alone.
"Generally, you have to couple air power with ground operations, sometimes
naval operations as well, and certainly space today," he said.
When launching the war on Feb. 28, the U.S. and Israel struck many fixed
targets identified before the conflict began. But Iran had a long time to
prepare for the attacks by concealing and dispersing weapons.
"So the easy targets are pretty much gone," Kendall said. "They can hide
ballistic missiles and cruise missiles and small air vehicles pretty easily. So
it's a very hard job to try to suppress that kind of a threat over a period of
time. And that's why they're still able to attack not just ships in the
Straits, but also our bases in the region and so on."
Diplomacy has struggled with a lack of trust between the US and Iran
A diplomatic solution also could prove elusive.
Eyre, of the Middle East Institute, said the Trump administration has shown
no preference for "actual diplomacy," relying instead on close advisers with
little international relations experience while outsourcing some of the work to
mediators such as Qatar, Pakistan and Egypt.
"We've got a tough road ahead of us, but it theoretically could be done,"
Eyre said of potential negotiations to end the conflict. "Unfortunately, there
is so little mutual confidence in the other side. There's so little bilateral
trust between the U.S. and Iran that it makes everything so much harder."
Both Schenker and Yacoubian said recent comments from Trump, Rubio and their
Iranian counterparts reflect some openness to diplomacy.
Yacoubian pointed to the "measured" response from Trump and Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth to the recent killing of U.S. service members in Jordan,
indicating a possibility for an off-ramp. Iran's release last week of an
Iranian-American woman who had not been allowed to leave the country also
showed a sign of goodwill from Tehran, she said.
But these small, positive signals could quickly become moot if the decision
by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels Monday to announce a maritime embargo
against Saudi Arabia expands to a complete shutdown of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
That, Yacoubian says, could constitute "a perfect storm of disruption" for
the already precarious global economy.
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