The incumbent Trump Cabinet started its mandate asserting they would seek peace with the Islamic Republic, and that would be safely achieved due to the extraordinary negotiating abilities of one of its members. They got a bite of the reality sandwich, and that was unpalatable.
Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. Trump (as a famous Economist’s cover brilliantly exposed) is a new-1897 President. He seeks a relative isolation and needs peace to restore American primacy. But forces beneath the surface, the “war party”, are prevailing. America stroke but inferring much less damage than they waved. Was that a message to Teheran, to say they were forced to pass to action, but that they are still seeking a solution? Was that an invitation to respond moderately, to communicate there is no need to escalate? Iran now must answer. It has now no other choice than either release all its (not yet used) missile capacity, wait patiently hoping for the attacks to end soon after their main nuclear facilities are destroyed, or close the Strait of Hormuz. The first solution may call for a further military intervention, at the call of Israel, and prolong attacks that could have been conceived not to last too much. The second one could show incapacity of the Iranian regime to defend its country and totally lose credibility from within. But the third solution could trigger a mayor energy crisis at a world level and provoke China’s intervention. The Supreme Leader is unreachable, and he is probably now organizing a resistance cabinet somewhere, trying to unify the Pasdaran still with him and all the social forces he can gather. Let us analyze how we got here, the reason of Trump’s envisaged “two weeks” waiting period and the three possible scenarios.
Some days ago, Trump said he would decide to either join Israel or not “in two weeks”. This period of time could be explained as a wait-and-see tactic: had Israel ended its job in that timeframe, Trump could take note of the end of the hostilities, show up as the non-interventionist, re-sit at the negotiation table and try to obtain something. Israel had another objective, and that may be explained once we look at a broader map: Israel is not looking for the elimination of Iran’s military nuclear programme only – even if it exists, it would take time to be effective – but to wipe out Iran’s possibilities to compete with Israel as a commercial and scientific competitor in the next decades, once admitted again in the world market. In this sense, even Iranian civilian nuclear energy would be a threat to Tel Aviv. Israel needs to target and weaken Persia as a nation, not (only) its bloody régime whose extremism has rather helped Tel Aviv to isolate it.
For making its job effective, Tel Aviv could not but pass to action, despite a possible American inaction. Tel Aviv’s government, already on a collision course with Washington, sabotaged American plans and bring its formal ally in front of the fait accompli. Attacking and make a phone call: “we just bombed. Are you with or against us?”
There could be no other answer than joining or – at most – waiting. Washington tried the second option, which did not work. Now, American attacks (not wanted, rather imposed) are not meant to be long, but heavily destructive and fulminous: Trump now tweets: “it is time for PEACE” (“PEACE” goes all in capital letters, exactly like “BOMBS” – a term used two lines above). The truth is that American attacks have been everything except heavily destructive: they inferred – as the American press underline – minor damages. The reason can be that the USA were obliged to bomb, but they still want a non-military solution to the Iranian Israeli confrontation. These heavily waved but not so imponent bombing may be therefore a message to Iran: do not retaliate too much, that is something we had to do, we will find a solution.
Some hopes Iran will now formally acknowledge the defeat ant surrender fast. End the game. End the crisis. Hardly that will happen. Hardly Iranians will rise against their government: they will unify. And the true, sincere protests arose after the death of Mahsa Amini have no possibility to be repeated now. They are two completely different cases: in the first one the Iranian nation is attacked from within, in the second by an external power. The consequences will be exactly the opposite. Isreal knows it as nobody else does, and acts this way to push a longer military confrontation. Tel Aviv caught Washington in its own tramp.
The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has made himself untraceable even to the Cabinet members, and that happened one day before talks organized by the Turkish government in Istanbul: the day America attacked. Evidently, the Leader was convinced that they would move on to facts. He knew, somehow.
The only speculation that can be made now is that the Leader is organizing his own war and resistance government. This is explicable through the dictate of the Persian Constitution and knowing the doctrine of the Velayat-e Faqih, based on Shi’ite idea of resistance and resilience.
Ali Khmenei can now decide to:
- Release all its missile capacity, to saturate all Israeli defense and inflict the heaviest damage to a small territory such as the Israeli one. This tactic, despite its actual possibility to succeed, would be mortally wrong: that would generate a massive response from the West, unable to be resisted, and bring to a much longer and destructive war that could really bring Iran to the breaking point: let Samson die with all the Philistines.
- Keep the current pace, not wasting the missile capacity, in order to be able to resist the time needed to have Israel-American attacks exhausted and then re-elaborate a tactic, still having a certain offensive capacity. That would bring to a loss of confidence from within, and give the impression the régime is unable to act – despite 45 years of high-sounding statements on the Revolutionary immense power,
Close the Strait of Hormuz. That would really be the most effective response, at least in the merely arithmetic calculation. A huge energy crisis would interest the whole world and damage greatly the economy, bringing to the abyss both the West and main Iranian allies, namely Russia – and especially – China, whose 38% of the internal energy consumption crosses that strait daily. Consequences, behind the economic and energy crisis, may be incalculable and paradoxically retaliate against Iran. The world will join to re-open the strait, and that would mean the end.
