Etienne Berchtold

There’s stalemate in the Strait, with the global economy held hostage. The US is considering new options to break the jam: 1. Oil today hit a four-year high. Across the world, inflation is up and growth down. The U.S. is blockading Iranian ports and Iran is blockading the globe. And there is no end in sight. 2. Some are claiming that Iran must cave soon. Its economy, weak before the war, is in shambles. President Trump says Iran is running out of oil storage, and that the backup will “explode” its infrastructure in about three days. He said that four days ago. 3. Betting on Iran’s spontaneous combustion seems like a suboptimal approach to ending the war, to say nothing of reducing energy prices. Tehran has instead proposed a narrow deal to end the blockades. 4. Trump has rejected the approach, rightly worrying that ending the U.S blockade will remove key leverage over Iran, and that future talks on other issues will never bear fruit. So the current approach is to close its ports until Iran submits. 5. But the Iranians retain leverage too, and that’s the problem. Its conventional navy was destroyed but it can still block the Strait of Hormuz. The DIA director recently said that Iran retains thousands of missiles and drones. It is absorbing economic pain but inflicting it as well. 6. A battle of blockades is a bet on the clock: we can hold out longer than they can. Expecting Iran to submit is, however, more questionable than before. From all indications, Iran is now a thinly-veiled military dictatorship. With the IRGC in charge, Iranian agreement on the nuclear file, missiles, support for proxies, and more is virtually unthinkable. 7. Hence the focus on new options, including bombing Iran back to the negotiating table. That, however, poses the same problems as before – attacks on civilian infrastructure harm Iranians but may not move their oppressors. Tehran might retaliate against energy facilities in the Gulf. And there’s no guarantee it’ll work. 8. Some allies are getting testy. The Germany chancellor said that America is being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership, which is not terribly friendly. Trump reacted by threatening (once again) to pull U.S. troops from Germany. He’d do better to elicit a firm German commitment to join a postwar coalition that will secure the Strait. 9. Ensuring that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon is a necessary goal. Stopping its support for proxies, capping its missiles, and ending its domestic repression are very desirable ones. But reopening the Strait should be the immediate aim. That probably requires an interim agreement to lift the twin blockades, leaving other issues to be resolved and, critically, keeping in place all the other forms of pressure. Otherwise, the U.S. has simply bet on the clock, and the clock is ticking.