Iran Proposes Peace & Provokes War

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ran submitted its latest peace proposals to Pakistani mediators last Thursday. Over subsequent days, Iranian officials leaked, signaled, and contradicted their supposed proposals. That gets us to Monday, when Iranian drones and missiles struck a tanker owned by the UAE, an oil terminal in the UAE, and other sites across the country, late into the day.

Confused? Most Iranian officials are likely equally confused and that doesn’t bode well for peace.

Yesterday’s confusion was predictable. When Iran announced new proposals for peace, it didn’t publish them. Since then, various officials have been reporting the proposals but also contradicting each other. Even where they agree, the proposals are insufficient for peace.

On Friday, May 1, two senior Iranian officials told The New York Times the proposals exclude Iran’s prior demand that the United States lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports before further negotiations.

Further, the officials said, Iran dropped a prior caveat that it would continue to charge vessels a toll to transit the Strait.

This sounds like Iran’s earlier claim, made a week earlier, to have opened the Strait as a gesture of good faith. As reported at the time, Iran has repeatedly declared the Strait open; at the same time as Iran bombards or boards ships attempting to pass through.

Iran’s actions in the Strait are illegal. The Strait is an international channel. Iran is taking tolls in territorial waters, having mined the international channel, which it refuses to clear, on the pretext that it has lost the locations of the mines it dropped there.

No state should ever accept Iranian control of the Strait, given everybody’s dependence on global energy supplies and everybody’s interest in the rule of law.

Until Iran drops its interdiction of the Strait, the negotiations cannot succeed; war will return and linger for months to years until either Iran runs out of threats or the US Government runs out of resolve.

The part of the regime which seems most intractable is the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), which seems to control the injured Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. The IRGC was necessary to the appointment of Mojtaba almost two weeks after the death of Mojtaba’s father, Ali, on the first night of this year’s US–Israeli airstrikes, on February 28. Within recent weeks, the power struggle between the IRGC and the parliamentary government appears, from public statements, to have been reconciled in the IRGC’s favor.

On the same day that Iran sent to Pakistan its latest “earnest” proposal for peace, Iranian state media released a typically defiant declaration, in the name of Mojtaba, that Iran will impose “new management” of the Strait, with “economic benefits” for Iran, which I interpret as more tolls on traffic.

On Saturday, IRGC-affiliated media reported that the Iranian Parliament plans to approve a 12-point plan for peace, including a demand for “reparations” from “hostile countries,” before Iran would permit their ships passage through the Strait.

On Sunday, Al Jazeera, citing anonymous sources, reported Iran’s latest proposals include an offer to reopen the Strait if the US ends its blockade.

Not only is this an unfair trade (the Iranian closure of the Strait was always unlawful), but Iran also added conditions that would effectively leave Iran in control of the Strait.

These conditions include US withdrawal from Iran’s “maritime perimeter.” This implies US acceptance of Iran’s shipping channels as alternatives to the channels in international waters.

Further, the same sources claim an Iranian demand for compensation, “in a new and innovative format,” which likely means tolls disguised as war reparations or even both reparations and tolls. And on Sunday, Iran (or at least some rogue element of the IRGC) demonstrated its kinetic threat in the Strait.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations posted multiple small craft attacked a vessel; likely the Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned Minoan Falcon—near Iran, on the eastern side of the Strait, and forced it to flee southwards. The last time the IRGC Navy attacked a vessel and forced it to flee was on April 22.

In each case, the IRGC likely intended to disprove the US claim that it had destroyed Iran’s navy and to keep shipping costs and oil prices high, which adds to the domestic and international pressures on the US to end the conflict.

The Strait is not the only sticking point, or even the most intractable. Iran’s latest proposal reasserts positions that have already proven unacceptable to the US (and should be to the rest of us).

Let’s start with Iran’s intent to continue its enrichment of uranium (a program with no necessary civilian use).

Iran’s latest proposals, like its proposals of the prior weekend, April 26, postpone discussion of nuclear issues to an unspecified time beyond the restart of US–Iranian negotiations.

On Saturday, May 2, anonymous Iranians told Axios Iran is demanding an agreement on the Strait and an end to the war by June, before negotiating its nuclear program.

Meanwhile, other anonymous Iranians told Al Jazeera Iran is offering to export some of its enriched uranium (an offer it has aired before) and to pause enrichment for “up to 15 years” (previous proposals specified five years). Sounds great—except Iran still insists it will not dismantle its enrichment program or any of its nuclear infrastructure.

And Iran repeats its intent to continue to enrich uranium up to 3.6 percent, after the pause ends (that percentage is practically the same as agreed in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action of 2015).

Iran has mentioned no inspection regime. In 2015, it had agreed to a weak inspection regime, with which it failed to comply.

To make Iran seem even less reliable, on Sunday, a spokesperson from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted Iran’s current proposal has 14 points, not 12, and that none of these points address nuclear issues!

Elsewhere, Iran reportedly repeats its other demands for a “complete end to the war” within 30 days and a “guarantee of non-aggression” by all belligerents. Such a guarantee would leave the rest of the world with no leverage.

On May 3, President Donald Trump said Iran’s latest proposals are unsatisfactory and added warnings that war might return unless Iran gets serious about peace. On Saturday, some Iranian officials also expressed pessimism about the prospects for peace.

A resumption of war with the US and Israel is “likely,” an Iranian official told Agence France-Presse, and a staff officer at Iran’s military operational HQ (Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters; Brigadier Mohammad Jafar Asadi) posted publicly. Their motivation appears to have been to signal Iran’s resolve or readiness. They said that Iranian armed forces remain on full alert.

Meanwhile, Defa Press (which speaks for the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff) posted that the war between the US and Iran has shifted from war to the mutual “imposition of costs.”

This sounds like a “war of attrition.” Iran’s regime, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, thinks it can outlast the US. Indeed, Defa Press states “patience” will be one of the “ultimate determinants of victory.”

We have material evidence Iran is preparing to survive the current measures against it. Iran has reduced oil production as its storage tanks fill up on shore and tankers stack up in the Strait (31 of them, carrying 53 million barrels of Iranian oil, worth at least $4.8 billion, says the US Government).

The Iranian regime’s survival is not guaranteed. It cannot close production without damaging its upstream infrastructure. If the US sticks to its blockade, Iran will be forced to close production at some point, causing damage that would last months to years beyond any peace deal. Reduced production means less foreign revenue, fewer foreign arms purchases, and fewer foreign goods to help appease a restless populace.

To hasten Iran’s economic decline, the US has expanded sanctions. The situation seems dire for Iran; however, the success of US blockades and sanctions depends on foreign compliance. Without it, Iran could continue to export on tankers flagged to countries of sufficient clout to deter US boarding—such as China and Russia—operating through Iranian waters.

Note two issues of foreign compliance. More states need to stop taking Iranian exports. More states need to enforce the blockade of Iranian waters, not just the international Strait.

Although the UAE has committed to help the US reopen the Strait militarily, states of more capacity and consequence, led by Britain, continue to insist on peace before they can reopen the Strait!

Count on more war. ✪