Putting on my political analyst’s hat again. Here’s what I’m thinking might happen.
Trump’s and Netanyahu’s boneheaded war has shown Iran that it has a nuclear option they can actually use effectively without much cost: Closure of the Straight of Hormuz.
That’s a good thing.
Because now they don’t actually need to pursue a real nuclear weapon, which was Israel’s greatest concern.
So Iran agrees to give up on their nuclear ambitions for some extended period of time, say twenty years (longer than Obama’s deal), and in return the US allows Iran to collect a toll from passing ships for as long as it takes them to cover reparations for the war damage that was inflicted on them.
Other issues that I cannot see being resolved in any case would be Iran’s missile capabilities or funding of proxies. Giving up the means of self defense, which is the right of every sovereign nation, is a non starter for Iran.
But I do think they might consider giving up their enriched uranium to a trusted third party.
Hizbollah will not be part of this deal in any case.
So Israel doesn’t get everything it wants, but crucially it gets a non nuclear Iran for the foreseeable future.
Trump gets out of this quagmire and can declare victory because he gets a longer deal than Obama’s.
Iran has a non-nuclear ‘nuclear’ option providing a sense of regime protection, and reparations.
This to me is a best case scenario at this stage. It sucks because the only party that truly comes out way ahead is Iran, as a revived regional power, but one that will not directly threaten Israel.
And there’s always a chance, in the long run, that the Iranian people will tire of their hated leaders and take them down, in the natural course of events, as they might have before trump and Bibi foolishly tried to hasten the process, and instead set it back a generation.
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