Gideon Rachman comments on the current state of the Iran war:
Escalation is likely because both the US and Iran seem to feel that they can force the other side to crack first. US vice-president JD Vance returned home from failed talks with the Iranians in Pakistan on April 12 in an upbeat mood — telling confidants that the US blockade would probably force the Iranians to fold within a few days [bold mine-DL].
But throughout this conflict, the Trump administration has consistently overestimated America’s ability to bend Iran to its will and underestimated the Iranian regime’s resilience. That pattern now threatens to repeat itself.
Escalation is unfortunately quite likely because the president and his allies don’t understand how to do anything else. Whenever they encounter resistance, they assume that the answer is always more pressure, more threats, more attacks. It never occurs to them that they are destroying any incentive that the Iranians might have to compromise.
Like every mindless hawk before them, they believe that they will win if they just inflict more pain. They can’t fathom that other nations might value their dignity and independence highly enough that surrender is not an option. It is the same morally and stategically bankrupt approach that has failed the U.S. many times before, and it will fail again here.
The U.S. blockade is a case in point. Trump thinks that he can keep his blockade in place while Iran permits all other traffic to move through the strait. That isn’t happening, and it isn’t going to happen. The president likes to say that the Iranians “have no cards,” but the reality is that they have him and the rest of us over the proverbial barrel.
If Vance really thought that Iran would yield after just a few days, he must not have been paying attention for the last eight years. Coercion provokes resistance much more often than it forces surrender. Resistance is even more likely when the U.S. has taught Iran that they will be punished no matter what they do.
Iran was complying with the original nuclear deal, but Trump betrayed them and reimposed sanctions anyway. Each time that Iran has been willing to engage when Trump has been president, it has been punished with sanctions or it has been bombed. Folding is the one thing we should assume that the Iranians will not do, because if they do that they know it will just invite more aggression.
