00:00Jamie Shea is a former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General and a Senior Fellow at the Friends of Europe Think
00:06Tank.
00:07Jamie, welcome back. Good to see you. Why has this conflict become so difficult to bring to an end?
00:13Well, good afternoon, Jamie, and thanks for having me back on.
00:17Well, some commentators indeed are calling it now a forever war.
00:20I don't think that it will go on forever. No war actually does.
00:24But certainly no light at the end of the tunnel, no end yet in sight.
00:30Why is it going on? Well, I think essentially because both sides continue to believe, to use this Trumpian expression,
00:36that they hold the decisive cards.
00:40Iran believes, for instance, that it can count on war fatigue in the United States, particularly with the midterm elections
00:46coming up.
00:47It can count on the economic leverage, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the higher oil prices, economic damage,
00:55including in the United States.
00:56It believes that it can soak up U.S. military pressure, thereby sort of undermining Trump's threats to escalate the
01:05military strikes against Iran.
01:07And it can basically simply sort of sit it out until Trump realizes that he's out of options and decides
01:13to retreat.
01:14Conversely, Jamie, the United States still believes in its military supremacy that if it continues to strike, if it keeps
01:22up the military pressure, it can drive Iran back to the negotiating table and to make more concessions.
01:28So it's kind of a game of poker, it's a game of bluff, but both sides still believe that they
01:32have more to gain by continuing the confrontation than by giving in to the other.
01:37President Trump said days after the start of this conflict that Iran's military capability had been taken down.
01:44I mean, what does it say about the respective military capability and ability of both sides that this is still
01:51going on?
01:53Well, it's an asymmetric war, which means that Iran doesn't need very much military capability in order to continue to
02:00inflict serious damage.
02:01A couple of drones lobbed at a few ships like a Norwegian tanker yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz is
02:08enough to frighten off the insurance companies and to stop the shipping traffic.
02:13And therefore, thereby, as I was saying a moment ago, drive up those oil prices and increase the economic pain.
02:20Whereas, conversely, the United States, to up the military ante, needs to spend billions of dollars and use up whole
02:28arsenals of air defense systems and cruise missiles and aircraft sorties and all of the rest.
02:35And, of course, Iran has the advantage of proximity and geography.
02:39The Gulf states are vulnerable just over the waterway.
02:44It can easily reassert control of the Strait of Hormuz.
02:47And, again, it only needs to keep up a very small production capability of drones and missiles in underground tunnels,
02:54which the Americans have not been able to hit, to still have military options to play with.
02:58So, the fact of the matter is, is Iran doesn't need to be a military superpower to inflict pain on
03:03the United States and the rest of the world.
03:05So, given all of that, then, how and when does this conflict end?
03:11Well, there are sort of only sort of two options.
03:15Number one, that the United States managed is to convert the use of force into a worthwhile result, which would
03:22really mean a massive international naval presence, presumably including Europe and other countries as well,
03:28in the strait of Hormuz, to keep it open by the use of force, demining or patrolling ships, allowing safe
03:36passage in and out on a kind of semi-permanent basis,
03:39holding off the Iranian threat to close down the strait.
03:43But President Trump doesn't seem yet to be willing to sort of concede to that very costly, very long-term
03:49presence.
03:49If that's not an option, then the only other way is through getting back to the negotiating table.
03:55But there's a lesson here, Jamie.
03:56Trump declared a month ago that the Memorandum of Understanding, the initial agreement, gave the United States everything it wanted.
04:03But a month later, it's already in tatters, because both sides drafted it in a hurry, in very vague language,
04:10which they've interpreted in radically different ways, like, for example, who controls the strait of Hormuz.
04:15So the United States has to go back to negotiating with Iran, but this time it really has to be
04:20prepared for serious, detailed, prolonged negotiations,
04:25the kind of staying power in diplomacy that President Trump is not exactly famous for.
04:30Jamie, good to see you. Thanks for that.
04:32Jamie Shea, the former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General.
Comments