Trump loses the battle and Iran gains strategic advantage

BarcelonaHistory's ironies, Donald Trump chose Wednesday the Palace of Versailles to sign the understanding agreement with Iran, precisely the place where the German empire accepted its capitulation in 1919 after the First World War. The analogy is inevitable: the 14-point document that Washington has ended up accepting after almost four months of war is a full-fledged surrender.

Iran maintains its challenges: the nuclear program, its ballistic missile arsenal, and support for its allies in the region. The Tehran regime, which Trump had promised to annihilate, not only continues in power but has also become a legitimate interlocutor, and now –following the analogy of the Treaty of Versailles– it will still receive war reparations: a fund of 300 billion dollars, it will recover its frozen assets abroad, and sanctions will be lifted. Tehran's only concession is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was already open before the joint attack by the United States and Israel on February 28. It should be remembered that Iran had already committed not to develop nuclear weapons in the agreement signed in 2016 with the Obama administration, which had the backing of all the major powers. Another negative point for Trump is the disappointment of the Arab petromonarchies of the Persian Gulf, traditionally allies of Washington, who have realized that this alliance does not guarantee their security and are looking for alternatives.

“Iran has emerged from the conflict battered, but in a stronger strategic position, with its regime and its capacity to threaten the region intact. This outcome, after months of destruction and global economic disruption, is the biggest foreign policy failure of Trump's two terms. And the consequences of this failure will persist long after the war ends and will make the United States' growing strategic challenge in the Middle East even more difficult to confront,” concludes Firas Maksad, a Middle East researcher at Eurasia Group.

A military victory for Iran

The so-called Memorandum of Understanding signed "telematically" by Presidents Trump and Pezeshkian translates on paper the outcome of the battle: the United States and Israel, despite their enormous military capacity, have not been able to win the war against an isolated and sanctioned country. And as happens in all asymmetric wars, the weaker side can claim victory simply by surviving, while the stronger side is humiliated if it does not prevail. "The humiliating Memorandum is merely a manifestation of the inability of the United States and Israel to win this war and the exhaustion of air defenses, which made continuing the physical war very dangerous, something the U.S. military and intelligence community had already warned about," explains Frédéric Schneider of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. One of the big unknowns is how Trump came to believe he could dismantle the Iranian regime in 48 hours, after assassinating its supreme leader,the ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Militarily, Iran's keys to victory are basically three: its missile arsenal, the massive use of drones – a cheap weapon capable of overwhelming anti-aircraft defenses – and above all its ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's gas and oil traffic, as well as other key materials such as fertilizers or food imported by the Gulf countries, passes. This cut off a critical artery and caused a very serious global economic impact. Point 5 of the agreement even recognizes Iran's right to negotiate with the other coastal countries the regime of "maritime services" in the passage of the strait. 

The Islamic Republic managed to absorb the blows from its attackers and maintained the ability to respond with missile and drone attacks against Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf. Iran also attacked energy and other infrastructure in the Arab Gulf states. This undermined the stated goal of the United States to protect its regional allies and overturned its reputation as havens of stability.

It is more difficult to determine the internal situation in Iran after these four months. On the one hand, external aggression has silenced internal protests, and on the other hand, it has consolidated the control of the military apparatus over the political system, with measures such as a total internet blockade. At the same time, the war has aggravated the economic problems that Iran has been dragging for decades, derived from sanctions, attacks on its currency, and also from systemic corruption. The destruction of infrastructure – from bridges to factories or energy plants – has been significant. “But for the Iranian government, economic damage has been secondary during the hottest phase of the war, when the country went into survival mode; but now it will be a key issue,” points out Schneider. Therefore, the reconstruction fund, the lifting of sanctions, or the resumption of oil exports are fundamental for Tehran.

Will the agreement last?

For Eduard Soler, from the academic council of the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, the agreement shows that both the United States and Iran “perceive that it would be more dangerous to return to war, and this makes it resilient, despite mutual distrust or attempts at sabotage”. In the best-case scenario, Trump has understood that this war has been a mistake, and that insisting on it only made things worse. “But this is the rational calculation, and we know that Trump does not always act that way,” he points out.

The weakest point is Lebanon. Taking advantage of its strategic advantage, the Iranian regime has decided not to let its ally, Hezbollah, fall, and has insisted that without a ceasefire in Lebanon there is no agreement. In fact, Israeli attacks on Thursday night derailed the meeting scheduled for Friday in Switzerland to launch the new phase of talks. “Israel has the military capacity to boycott the agreement and knows that ending the war like this is a misstep,” says Soler. The researcher notes that Netanyahu believes that the United States cannot afford to show the world that they have given up on guaranteeing Israel's security.

The United States and Israel have degraded Iran's nuclear program and its military and defense capabilities, but have not achieved any of their strategic objectives. Iran has made them pay a sufficiently high diplomatic, military, political, and economic cost for Trump to have had to look for an exit strategy. Tehran is militarily inferior, but is in a position of political and strategic advantage. It retains the capacity to control Hormuz and also to launch attacks against the entire region again, starting with Israel.

After having abandoned Hamas and Gaza, and having failed to prevent the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Iran has reactivated its structure of regional alliances, with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. These two actors are now seen as pillars of Tehran's defense strategy, as they can directly threaten Israel and maritime traffic through the Red Sea, respectively. This is what Tehran has recently dubbed “the new security belt”. Tehran has given itself 60 days from the signing of the agreement to think about how to leverage this strategic advantage, while the United States, Israel, and the Gulf countries find a way to circumvent the Hormuz bottleneck. Perhaps this battle will be over, but there is still a lot of war left.