The U.S. has threatened Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz if it wanted a ceasefire. Iran was not interested and did not agree with it. A ceasefire, it said, would require the U.S. to acknowledge that Iran stays in control of the Strait.
The Trump administration, under immense pressure due to the economic consequences of the Strait closure, acquiesced. But it needed an excuse to do so to calm the hardliners in its own camp. It thus put out a story that gave some reason to keep the Strait closed.
Iran Unable to Find Mines in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Says (archived) – NY Times
Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials.
The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks.
Iran used small boats to mine the strait last month, soon after the United States and Israel began their war against the country. The mines, plus the threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks, slowed the number of oil tankers and other vessels passing through the strait to a trickle, driving up energy prices and providing Iran with its best leverage in the war.
Iran left a path through the strait open, allowing ships that pay a toll to pass through.
This is one of the most laughable stories I have read for some time.
Iran has never said that it had mined the Strait. It has alluded to mines in general to herd ships towards passing the toll booth near its coast. There is no evidence at all that any mine has been dropped in the Strait of Hormuz.
If Iran had dropped mines in the Strait it would know exactly where those have been deployed. It is basic military practice to always document where mines are laid as no one likes to run into one’s own mine fields.
The U.S. has lost control of the Strait and, given that, its war on Iran. Trump has acknowledged that when he characterized Iran’s 10 point plan as “a workable basis on which to negotiate”.
This is a huge defeat which can not be openly admitted. That is why the administration is now trying to put lip stick to that pig.
For lack of a competent secretary of state the U.S. decided to send its vice-president to peace negotiations.
This will be difficult task for JD Vance. Any success in peace talks will amount to a humiliation for the U.S. The war hawks will depicted this as a personal failure (archived) of the peace negotiator:
A longtime skeptic of Middle East wars who reportedly advised Trump against starting this one, Vance “wants to show the president he’s capable of handling big things and now he’s got the ball. We will see if he can close,” the person said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), a prominent GOP hawk whose soaring rhetoric about regime change in Iran has been chastened in recent days by Tehran’s resilience, put Vance on notice, calling him the “architect” of a still-secret U.S. negotiating document he called “troubling.”
“I look forward to the architects of this proposal, the Vice President and others, coming forward to Congress and explaining how a negotiated deal meets our national security objectives in Iran,” Graham said in a statement on social media Wednesday.
Iran’s red lines in the negotiations include:
- Strait of Hormuz must be under Iran’s control.
- Payment of compensation for war damages.
- Release of Iran’s frozen assets.
- Any ceasefire must be implemented sustainably/genuinely on all relevant fronts.
I expect Iran to deal away point 2 for a U.S. acceptance of the Iranian toll booth in the Strait of Hormuz.
The war is unlikely to be over. I expect at least one additional round of fire exchanges. But the outcome of those will hardly differ from previous ones.
Iran has time on its side. Any additional day of closure of the Strait will increase the amount of global economic damage. This while Iran has little to fear beyond what has already happened to it.
It is the U.S. and the Trump administration which need peace in the Middle East. Iran has time to wait for it to deliver.
