For the people who didn’t read the article - apparently everyone in this thread - the reason for the postponement is not Trump’s comments, despite how the headline makes it sound.
Iran are smart enough to let Trump mouth off. What killed the talks is that Israel killed a bunch more people in Lebanon today.
This was inevitable. Iran wants a muzzled Israel as a condition of the war ending. Israel doesn’t want the war to end with anything less than the total destruction of Iran (they certainly don’t want a capitulation that actually leaves Iran stronger). So Israel are going to deliberately break the ceasefire until one of three things happens;
- Iran stops calling them on it (there is zero evidence that this will happen).
- Trump gives up on peace and commits to a full scale invasion.
- Trump finds a way to make Israel do what he tells them.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, this war isn’t remotely close to over. US vs Iran was the pre-show. Defeating AIPAC’s iron grip on US politics is the main event.
Stupid headlines
Annoyingly, it’s technically accurate, but extremely misleading.
If I say my friend died after eating at Arby’s, while neglecting to mention the part where he went to a bar, got stinking drunk and wrapped his car around a tree, the entire statement is technically true. Those events did happen, in that order. He certainly didn’t die before eating at Arby’s. But there’s an implied cause and effect that has nothing to do with the reality.
My bet is on 1. I don’t see a way for 3 to happen and 1 is a better outcome for Iran than 2.
It makes sense for Iran to sacrifice Lebanon now and use their control over the strait to pressure other countries to stop supporting Israel. They will not defeat Israel now but if this deal is implemented they have a chance to do it in the future.
Hard disagree. Right now I give 1 less than about a 5% chance. Iran have repeatedly demonstrated that they fully believe they have the US by the balls (they’re right). And Iran stakes a lot of their regional power on their control over groups like Hezbollah. Abandoning one of them would be a huge blow. They’re not going to resort to that unless they get desperate, and currently they’re as far from desperate as they could possibly be. They have no reason to back down on this and plenty to lose by doing so. The only way that math changes is if Trump pulls out some crazy left field move to radically reshape the power balance. I don’t think he’s capable of that.
So what do you think will happen? The strait is closed permanently?
Not the OP, but I think this issue will continue to rise in temperature until it is more heavily influential on US domestic politics. I believe at some point, support of Israel on these recent events will become politically suicidal, and slowly the compromised politicians rendered unable to break with Israel will get drummed out of office by primary or normal election.
Then, US will officially drop support and the math in the middle east gets a lot less complex for them.
This would take many years. I don’t think Trump or Lebanon can wait that long, he seams pretty desperate. We already know he’s unable to pressure Israel so his only option is to pressure Iran by doing something stupid. I really home Iran will take the huge win they already got and pass on Lebanon for now. The other options are pretty terrible for everyone.
