There may come a day when a ceasefire means that fire has ceased, where all sides remain bound to their commitments in truces, and when signatories to treaties regarding international shipping adhere to those agreements.
Today ... is not that day. Tomorrow's not looking good, either.
In the past 24 hours, Iran has shot down an American drone patrolling over international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. That prompted retaliatory strikes on Iranian missile and drone positions in the area, to which Iran responded by launching an attack on Kuwait. Ho hum, just another day in the Persian Gulf ...
Iran and the United States said they had both carried out strikes on military targets, and each accused the other of acting aggressively as diplomatic efforts to end three months of war drag on.
The U.S. military said it had at the weekend struck Iranian air defences, a ground control station and two drones that were threatening ships after "aggressive Iranian actions", including shooting down a U.S. drone over international waters.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Monday it had targeted an air base used by the U.S. in response to an attack on southern Iran.
It did not identify the base, but Kuwait activated air defences on Monday and denounced Iranian missile and drone attacks, which it said were undermining efforts to reduce tensions in the region.
CENTCOM explained the sequence of events, which has become so rote as to need no explanation:
The U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said American warplanes attacked Iranian radar sites and drone command-and-control facilities on Qeshm Island and Gorik in Iran’s Hormozgan province Saturday and Sunday.
The strikes came after Iran shot down an American MQ-1 drone, Central Command said. U.S. fighters also shot down two Iranian attack drones that posed a threat to ships, it said.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, tasked with protecting the regime and maintaining the country’s chokehold on the strategic Strait of Hormuz, said it had responded to the attack.
Bear in mind, as always, that the current ceasefire required Iran to stop attempting to interfere with commercial shipping in the Strait altogether. Iran has never complied with this ceasefire, not even for a day. The IRGC continues to claim sovereignty over the whole passage and continuously attempts to interdict shipping, demanding "tolls" or environmental fees for free passage in international waters. Ahmad Vahidi has refrained from large-scale missile and drone attacks, but the IRGC has attacked energy production facilities in Kuwait and the UAE at times during this "ceasefire."
This does not bode well for any future agreement, especially given the track record of compliance by Iran and its proxies in prior ceasefires and truces. Hamas had signed onto nine of them before October 7 and had never ceased firing rockets and missiles into Israel from Gaza after any of them. A ceasefire was in effect on October 7, one with which the Israelis were complying, when Hamas launched the worst massacre of Jews since World War II.
This context is important when reading Donald Trump's response to critics of the diplomatic track. He rebuked "chirpers" on his Truth Social platform this morning:
Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us. But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively “chirping,” at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever. Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - It always does! President DJT
All due respect, Mr. President, but literally none of this is accurate. The IRGC does not want to make a deal, especially one that's "good for the U.S.A.," and the diplomatic track has never "work[ed] out well in the end" with this regime. That's basically what Barack Obama and John Kerry claimed in 2015 with the JCPOA, and what every American administration said while forcing Israel into a long series of hudnas with Hamas and Hezbollah over the last couple of decades. Doing deals with the mullahs and the IRGC has always been a path to disaster, especially when those deals bolster their credibility and their financing for terror proxies around the region.
Perhaps it might work out well this time, thanks to Trump's muscular approach to dealing with the threats posed by the IRGC. That will only happen if we get rid of the notion that the IRGC will ever deal honestly or make concessions without their utter destruction as the immediate consequence of perfidy. The two months of this "ceasefire" have made that perfectly clear; Vahidi has stopped fearing Trump and wants to stall him back to the status quo ante, or at least as close as Vahidi can get to it.
What are we to make of the fact that Trump has had the MOU terms from Iran in his hands for several days and still has not announced a decision? Maybe Trump wants to let the blockade squeeze the IRGC harder and break down their internal discipline. If that's happening at all yet, it's going at a slower pace than Trump and Scott Bessent initially projected, and it may take months of this "ceasefire" limbo before Vahidi cracks, assuming he does at all.
In the meantime, we're stuck with a dangerous and poisonous standoff. International coalitions do not survive long in those kinds of situations, another point on which Vahidi is hanging his hope for survival. The American people may support action, but they're not going to support a forever war or a forever stalemate for long.
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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