Amid the on-off, stop-start torture of the US-Iran negotiations, the disastrous closure of the world’s premier shipping route for oil and fertiliser, and the threat of widening conflict across the region, there is one piece of good news.
The American mid-term elections will take place in November, and with his poll ratings continuing to drop, President Trump will be obliged to bring the conflict to a halt at some point, perhaps sooner rather than later.
Right now, with the US and Iran locked in standoff, the president declares he’s under ‘no time pressure’ to end the war.
Maybe. Perhaps he will ignore the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which gives him just 60 days to continue the conflict without seeking congressional approval. That deadline us up shortly.
But the voters will be harder to sidestep. Trump needs the price of oil and the cost of living to ease before he goes to the polls. The American public doesn’t like paying $4 a gallon for fuel and shows growing signs of resenting the billions spent blowing up Iranian infrastructure.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a disaster for world trade
President Trump says he’s in no rush to end the conflict. But his poll ratings are sliding
Taxi drivers and bankers alike will breathe a sigh of relief. But will the 47th president?
Sure, he will declare victory, perhaps after another bout of bombing. There might even be a deal – or the appearance of one – to wave at the American public.
But if he folds his tent and simply walks away, Trump will leave behind a Strait of Hormuz which remains blocked to world trade; a vicious Iranian regime more deeply entrenched than ever; and quantities of enriched uranium – the key component for making a bomb – which the US had explicitly vowed to seize.
Can this be categorized as any sort of victory?
Well, surprising as it might seem, the answer could be yes.
First, the dust has yet to settle on the true scale of the damage inflicted on Iran, which is likely to be a good deal greater than understood so far. It is a mistake to simply accept the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ assessment of the situation and to claim that, simply by surviving, the Mullahs have won.
If nothing else, Trump will be able to say that he has answered Israel’s call for help against a regime bent on wiping it out; that he has severely degraded Iran’s military capabilities; that he has smashed a key ally of China; and that he has destroyed Tehran’s nuclear program or, at least, delayed it for years if not decades.
Ships and small boats ply the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Oman
An Iranian propaganda picture supposedly showing soldiers seizing a container ship
A woman member of the Basij paramilitary, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, holds her gun during a state-organized rally in support of the supreme leader
Moreover, the interruption to oil supplies from the Persian Gulf will benefit American producers, who are net exporters and who, in the case of the frackers, need high world prices to turn a profit.
There is also some context to this: America is starting to lose interest in the Gulf and, in my view, will either withdraw in the next few years or come close to it. If the US no longer has to station the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet in the region, the economic benefit will be considerable.
As the for the US economy, my view is that it will start to ramp up when all this is over, bringing relative prosperity to Trump’s final two years.
These are all messages Trump’s midwestern voters will welcome.
But if, as many believe, Gulf-induced inflation takes some time to clear, a ‘victory’ cannot come soon enough for the GOP.
Time is of the essence. The president says he has plenty to work with: let’s see.
