David E. Sanger
In the days before President Donald Trump signed his initial agreement with Iran after dinner in Versailles – where the First World War ended – he and his aides outlined their strategy: The Strait of Hormuz would be opened to traffic, and the United States would open the spigot so that Iran could sell billions of dollars in oil.
The theory, Trump said, is that after years of sanctions, Iran would quickly become addicted to the revenue stream, and get dollars in Western banks. It was “a very good plan for Iran,” the president said in a call to a New York Times three days before signing the agreement on June 17.
“They are really proud,” he said of the Iranian negotiators. “I think they were tired of being beaten.”
It seems not. Less than a month into the deal, sabotage against three ships passing through the strait, in a route outside Iran’s control, prompted Trump to revoke an amnesty that allowed Iran to sell oil.
The United States has bombed more than 170 Iranian military targets in two days. And there are no talks planned, at least for now, on a bigger, tougher, more permanent deal that the two sides agreed to negotiate within 60 days.
Whether or not Trump and his aides now have a Plan C — after the previous deal blew up — they haven’t explained. Instead, it appears that they are returning to the oil embargoes and bombing operations that Trump describes as evil, but have so far only caused the current impasse.
“So, the plan is very simple,” US Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday. “If they shoot at the ship, we will take them out,” added the vice president, who he resisted the initial attack on February 28 but since then he has been tasked with defending the war and negotiating a way out.
In other words, the carrots are out. The sticks are back. But the administration has yet to answer why it believes this combination of economic warfare and bombing will produce different results this time.
“We are at a strategic dead end,” said Richard N. Haass, a longtime diplomat who served at the State Department and the National Security Council under several administrations, including George W. Bush during the early days of the Iraq War.
“The problem here is that the more we attack, the more the Iranians attack the oil and energy infrastructure of the Gulf,” he said. “And the administration still hasn’t figured out how to defend those sites.”
Trump, he said, “first he hoped he could bomb them in a change of government, then he hoped he could bomb them – and it didn’t work”.
Nor, it seems, is the decision to let Iran reap the benefits of oil sales, which for Trump was a complete reversal: In his first term, and until a month or so ago, he seemed more interested in the sticks. The release of oil exports was based on the belief – which permeated talks on the Gaza Strip last year – that even the revolutionaries have a vision of a modern, well-run economy that will benefit their people.
Trump also faces a sharp division in Iran. That was clearly shown this week, during the funeral service of Ayatollah Ali Khameneia senior leader killed in the opening hours of the attack on Tehran.
One of the main negotiators, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, had a rock thrown at one of the funeral processions and was accused of appeasement. The attackers cursed him, and called for his death. President Masoud Pezeshkian fared no better, and had to be rescued from an angry mob by his security detail.
But when Trump speaks publicly about Iran, he rarely talks about the divisions running through society. Instead, he speaks as if it is organized as a top-down government, led by Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the slain supreme leader and one of a group of emerging leaders whom Trump a few weeks ago was calling more “sensible” than their predecessors. (On Wednesday, in Ankara, Turkey, for NATO meetinghe called them “dirty”.)
On Thursday, shortly after the meeting, Trump and his aides said little publicly about their next steps. A US official, who did not want to be named, said the administration remains committed to finding a peaceful resolution, and expects what the administration called “technical talks” to continue.
But even that phrase is fraught with ambiguity, because the divisions facing Iran and the United States are not “technical” – they are political, and grassroots negotiators will not be empowered to resolve them.
One example concerns the future of the nuclear program. The June ceasefire agreement is unclear on all major issues, including whether Iran will retain control of its nuclear fuel stockpile. Under the 2015 deal that President Barack Obama signed, but Trump later withdrew, Iran turned over more than 97 percent of its then-existing reserves. Trump is very concerned about any suggestion that he can get under Obama.
But the first political conflict may be over the question of who controls the channel, with the administration paying the price for a poorly understood clause in the accord Trump signed in Versailles. It’s a prime example of what happens when Iranian and US officials take a different view of a negotiated document, then interpret it in very different ways.
Paragraph 5 of the agreement reads: “After the signing of the agreement, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial ships, free of charge for a period of 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa.”
Trump and his aides thought that this was the key to opening up the shipping traffic, and that it put the onus on the Iranians. The Iranians saw it as an opportunity to control the main oil shipping route, insisting that ships travel along the route close to its shores. Finally, Iran has indicated that it plans to charge money for passage through the strait.
When the US Navy began escorting ships very secretly through different channels, near Oman, Iran’s response was to open fire on some of the ships. Now, according to Lloyd’s of London, there is very little movement through the strait. That is what has disappointed Trump, and led him to declare that the agreement is “over”.
Trump’s aides insist that they are not violating the agreement; The accord, they say, is the basis of performance, and Iran’s actions failed that test.
All of which brings Trump back to where he was in April, when he realized that military force would not solve the problem — and that many in Iran see any diplomatic solution as nothing more than a holdover model until the next Israeli-American attack.
This article originally appeared in New York Times.
