Why is President Donald Trump so tolerant of Iran’s diplomatic intransigence and military escalations?
The question bears asking. After all, recent days have seen Iran both reject the latest U.S. negotiating position to end the conflict and successive Iranian attacks on U.S. and allied interests. The United Arab Emirates has suffered Iranian attacks, as have U.S. destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. These attacks were plainly designed not just to harass, but to destroy equipment and lives.
In responding to Iran’s intransigence and these attacks, however, the U.S. military did little beyond taking defensive action and conducting limited follow-on strikes against Iranian forces. There is an obvious caution on Trump’s part against avoiding escalation. Why? Why hasn’t Trump ordered a resumption of military action or more robust retaliatory strikes?
The likely answer: Trump believes that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is slowly moving toward the acceptance of a reasonable peace deal. Or that he will soon move in that direction.
Media reporting and the president’s own comments make clear that Iran is increasingly fractured between a hard-line faction associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a more moderate faction associated with President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The Guard faction wants to continue the stalemate/war in the belief that it can endure any economic pain and even a domestic uprising. It believes that time and economic/political pressure will force Trump into a more concessionary negotiating stance. In contrast, the more moderate faction fears a coming economic implosion born of the U.S. Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports, and the increasing risk that the regime collapses. It wants a deal that trades concessions on Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
To be sure, the hardliners appear to have the upper hand as of now. The refusal in Iran’s latest counteroffer to make substantive nuclear concessions evinces as much.
Still, the president seems to believe that the more moderate faction is gaining momentum and influence. His assessment here is likely supported by intelligence reporting. As I noted in late April, there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that Trump has been briefed on U.S. intelligence analysis, which suggests Iran’s economic difficulties are more severe than commonly understood. Each week, that situation gets worse with mass layoffs now occurring across the Iranian economy. Trump also knows that China, Iran’s critical export partner, is exerting ever-increasing pressure on Tehran to cut a deal and end the war. Trump will travel to China for a three-day visit beginning Wednesday.
Yes, some might say Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing and simply fears that if he resumes military action, the conflict will only drag on further. And it’s true that Trump likes to fire from the hip. That penchant is underlined in Trump’s decision to start the war. He did so because he was convinced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it would lead to a quick, decisive victory at limited cost. Put simply, that the war would serve as a grander version of the operation that removed former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
That didn’t happen, of course.
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Yet, it would be wrong to assume that Trump’s reluctance to escalate the conflict represents his desperate weakness. While Trump absolutely wants a deal to end the fighting as soon as possible, even as U.S. economic and political pressure has grown and the midterm elections have drawn closer, the president has shown patience in refusing to settle the war on bad terms.
This suggests that he has good reasons to believe that, alongside the continuing naval blockade, his patience will sooner rather than later be rewarded with a reasonable deal.