The first round of talks between the U.S. and Iran has failed to achieve any progress.
The U.S. negotiators thoroughly misjudged their positions and tried to set terms (archived):
Mr. Vance said little about what took place during more than 21 hours of negotiations, suggesting he had handed the Iranians a take-it-or-leave-it proposal to forever terminate their nuclear program, and they left it.
“We’ve made very clear what our red lines are,” Mr. Vance told reporters, “what things we’re willing to accommodate them on.” He added, “They have chosen not to accept our terms.”
The U.S. has so far lost the war. None of its war aims has been achieved. Its attempts to steal Iran’s enriched Uranium ended with the biggest air force losses since the Vietnam War era. It is not in a position to set any terms:
In that respect, this negotiation appears to have differed little from the one that ended in deadlock in Geneva in late February, …
Mr. Trump’s chief leverage now comes in his ability to threaten to resume major combat operations. After all, the fragile two-week cease-fire ends on April 21. But while the threat of resuming combat operations may be invoked in coming days, it not a particularly viable political choice for Mr. Trump — and the Iranians know it.
Mr. Trump declared the cease-fire last week in large part to stem the pain from the loss of 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies, which was sending the price of gasoline soaring, creating shortages of fertilizer and, among other critical supplies, helium for the production of semiconductors. Markets rose on the prospect of an agreement, even an incomplete or unsatisfactory one. Should the war resume, the markets would likely decline, the shortages would worsen and inflation — already up to 3.3 percent — would almost inevitably rise.
And that leaves the most urgent issue: the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
After the end of the negotiations a tweet by Donald Trump pointed to a piece which asserts that his best next move to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is to blockade Iran:
The Trump card the president holds if Iran won’t bend: a naval blockade: https://justthenews.com/government/sec…
(TS: 12 Apr 00:16 ET)
The piece in question – The Trump card the president holds if Iran won’t bend: a naval blockade – is by John Solomon, a lawyer, and remarkable for its ignorance:
If Iran refuses to accept the final deal the United States offered Saturday, Trump could bomb Tehran back to the “Stone Ages” as he vowed. Or he might just reprise his successful blockade strategy to choke an already teetering Iranian economy and ratchet up diplomatic pressure on China and India by cutting them off one of their key sources of oil.
Ironically, the massive USS Gerald Ford carrier that led the Venezuelan blockade is now in the Persian Gulf after a brief hiatus for repairs and crew rest after a deadly fire. And now it joins the USS Abraham Lincoln and other major naval assets.
The USS Gerald Ford, with broken toilets and a burned out laundry, is in the Mediterranean. It would have to pass the Suez Canal, the Bab al Mandeb Strait and the Strait of Hormuz to reach the Persian Gulf. Bab al Mandeb is controlled by the Houthi, Hormuz by Iran. Good luck passing either …
The idea of lifting Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz by blockading Iran is not from John Solomon but from the crazed neoconservative Jack Keene:
The idea of a naval blockade was first suggested last week by retired Gen. Jack Keane, one of the nation’s top military strategists.
“If the war resumes and after we degrade Iran’s remaining military assets sufficiently, the US military could choose to occupy Kharg — or to destroy it,” Keane wrote it a New York Post column. “Alternatively, the US Navy could set up a blockade, shutting down Tehran’s export lifeline.”
If we preserve Kharg’s infrastructure but take physical control, we’d have a chokehold over Iran’s oil and its economy,” he added. “That’s the ultimate leverage we’d need to seize its ‘nuclear dust,’ or stores of enriched uranium, and to eliminate its enrichment facilities.”
Kharg does not matter as much for Iranian exports as the DC nutters assume. During the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war Kharg was kept closed while oil exports from Iran continued to flow.
Any attempt to blocked Iran would necessitate the use of force to prevent Indian, Chinese and Russian ships from entering Iranian harbors.
It would also mean less oil supplies for the global markets. Historically sea blockades take many months and even years to show effects. That is more time than Trump has to politically survive.