It’s been more than five months since U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched their war on Iran, and Israel’s subsequent air assault and ground invasion of Lebanon. As peace talks have broken down and the critical Strait of Hormuz remains closed, Iran has increasingly been able to penetrate the air defenses of U.S. military installations across the region, killing and wounding American soldiers. News reports maintain that the Pentagon is now facing a shortage of sophisticated and expensive interceptor missiles that could alter the course of this sporadic conflict.
In recent weeks Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis launched a series of drone and missile attacks targeting the Yemeni Red Sea port of Mocha, a major Saudi Aramco oil refinery, and commercial ships. The Houthis naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, has raised fears that they could close down the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait further disrupting oil tanker traffic, and maritime trade. Meanwhile Iran announced on Aug. 9 that it’s close to a final pact with Oman to define new shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.
Middle East observers say the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on Aug. 7, is a response to declining confidence in Washington’s ability to effectively protect its regional allies. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jennifer Loewenstein, former associate director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Here she assesses recent development in the war including Iran’s declaration that it will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the U.S. lifts its naval blockade, withdraws regional troops, removes sanctions, pays war reparations, releases Iranian frozen asset, and ends attacks on Iranian allies.
JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: We’re in a kind of game of chicken where each side is waiting for the other one to blink. The truth is the Iranians have got more leverage at this point than the United States does. And of course, they are more than fed up with the way the Trump administration has handled any negotiations that have gone on between them. And all of this was brought on unnecessarily. We started the war. It’s a war of aggression under international law. Aggression is the supreme international war crime. And that’s what the United States and Israel committed on Feb. 28 by attacking Iran when there was absolutely no reason to attack Iran. So we’ve seen bombings and destruction on both sides, obviously more on Iran—although they targeted the Gulf states very heavily, at least in the first phase. Then we saw a temporary ceasefire, then we saw more bombing.
And then the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), which Trump, he claimed it was just perfect and it would be great and everything would go back to normal. But when Trump says something like that, you can’t take his word for it because things were “normal” before we started this war. The Straits of Hormuz were open. Iran was so close to signing a nuclear agreement that was considered better than the 2015 JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or “Iran Nuclear Agreement”). And the Omani negotiator got on American television to try to tell people that this was agreed upon and that this was better and we should take it. And instead, we ended up bombing Iran. So there we are.
And the Iranians are basically now a more hardline government than they were when we started this and are basically making all kinds of demands on the Americans that Trump claims he will have nothing to do with. So that’s where we are.
I mean, like I said at the beginning, this has come down to which side is going to blink first. I suspect it’ll be the Americans and that it’ll be said under some lie about how the Iranians are desperate to speak to us. And so therefore he’s going to start up negotiations again. Or he’ll go back to bombing, which will prove absolutely nothing because we’re not going to defeat Iran militarily.
Now with this new defense pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, I think that’s very important for people to understand. First of all, the most important thing that people have to realize about why this pact was agreed upon in the first place is that the Americans have basically proven themselves unreliable partners in guaranteeing security of these states and others in the Gulf. And these countries got together, signed a defense pact, one that Egypt may join, and there’s some talk that Jordan may join it.
This is not because they suddenly want to gang up and go to war against Iran. We don’t really know what the long-term implication of such a pact will mean. Immediately, it’s more symbolic than anything else. It’s more a hardening of these alliances where they have said an attack on one will be perceived as an attack on all of them. So it is a threatening pact in that sense. But the most important thing to understand is that if the Americans could guarantee the security of these states and others, it would never have come into being.
SCOTT HARRIS: Much of the conflict, Jennifer, now centers on the terms under which the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to tanker and cargo traffic. Tell us about the negotiations going on between Iran and the neighboring nation of Oman, which is located right on the Strait of Hormuz.
JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: Yeah. It makes perfect sense for the Iranians and the Omanis to be negotiating because they are the two countries whose territory borders the Straits of Hormuz. So this week of past negotiations with Oman is supposedly very close. We’ve been told that now every day for a week, but I believe the Iranians and the Omanis are probably very close to announcing something in which both states will be involved in what happens in the straits in terms of registering ships and allowing—there may be two waterways, one in the south that goes into the straits and one in the north that comes out of them. That line is not clear yet because they haven’t given us any details, but I suspect it will be a solid agreement and one that we will have no choice but to accept.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Jennifer Lowenstein (26:16) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack or social media, subscribe here.
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