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Welcome to The Geopolity’s What We’re Watching (3W), our daily look at the interconnected worlds of Geopolitics, Economics and Energy. Curated from the world’s leading sources of information, our analysis and commentary is designed to help you make sense of the events driving the major developments in the world.
Negotiations are continuing between the US and Iran, writes Axios. A Pakistani delegation headed by Army commander Field Marshal Asim Munir was in Tehran on Wednesday for talks with Iranian officials. Meanwhile, US president Trump’s negotiating team — vice president Vance, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser Jared Kushner — continued to make calls and exchanging draft proposals with the Iranians and mediators.
Axios adds that the US is confident its economic blockade of Iran will force it to accept US terms. “Iran has no money. They’re broke. We know it. And they know we know it,” one US official said. “We don’t need to invade Kharg right now. We can just strangle it,” another administration official said.
The Wall Street Journal tries to communicate the same optimistic sentiment. Insiders fear the Iranian government will collapse under its new, additional economic problems caused by the US – Israeli bombings, coupled with the blockade, WSJ says. 3W notes that is, of course, just speculation, and should be taken with a grain of salt. But the facts are indeed that as WSJ notes, the US – Israel Alliance did systematically attack Iran’s economic infrastructure, from its steel industry to its petrochemicals industry, pharmaceuticals, and transportation infrastructure.
The US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is designed to further worsen Iran’s economic situation, The Wall Street Journal writes separately, aimed at inflicting such severe economic pain that Tehran will be compelled to quickly submit to Washington’s demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and abandon its nuclear ambitions, it writes. With crude exports from Iranian ports effectively halted, the country will be deprived of a large chunk of its oil revenues, the thinking in Washington DC goes. It could also be forced to start shutting down oil wells within weeks as it runs out of storage space, a costly and damaging prospect that could impair production for years to come.
CNN rightly doubtful things will develop as the US and Israel expect. The strategy assumes that Iran will respond to the pressure in a way that Washington perceives as logical, it says. Recent history, however, suggests that US adversaries – such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and Libya – often do not act according to Western calculations of their own national interests. But for Iran, this war is existential – even more so after Trump threatened annihilation of Iranian civilization, 3W notes. As such, economic considerations are likely to be less influential in Tehran than they typically are in Washington DC, we note. Foreign Policy also notes that Iran has already shown it can withstand years of harsh sanctions. In the US, meanwhile, a rising price of gasoline sabotages any incumbent’s chances in elections.
CNN rightly doubtful things will develop as the US and Israel expect
Meanwhile, Time Magazine makes the excellent observation that longer term, the US blockade will severely hurt US interests. After having taking this step, will the US ever be able to rally global public opinion behind it if and when China were to blockade Taiwan, it rightly asks.
Back to the blockade and its effectiveness. At least eight vessels have crossed the US blockade line and are heading for Iranian ports or to load Iranian cargo, writes Lloyd’s List. Iran has also claimed that one of its oil tankers managed to pass through fully laden with product, writes CNN. It raises the likelihood that the US navy will have to resort to “a return to Venezuela-style tanker chases”, Loyd’s adds. With this in mind, Bloomberg looks at the Strait of Malacca, an even narrower shipping lane for vessels on their way from the Middle East to East Asia. Malacca is closely controlled by the US, and there Iran does not have the ability to deploy “forward projection of force” via drones or missiles. In this regard it is worthwhile to take note of the fact that the US recently signed a major defence cooperation agreement with Indonesia. A joint statement on the new partnership said the two sides had agreed to work on co-developing “sophisticated asymmetric capabilities, pioneering next-generation defence technologies in the maritime, subsurface and autonomous systems domains”, and improving operational readiness, writes Al Jazeera. In other words, in the 3W view at least, it is an agreement to enable the US to bring the Strait of Malacca even tighter under its control.
In the 3W view, this all indicates the situation remains in deadlock, with Iran maintaining escalation dominance. It should be expected to be more resilient than the US. And the US should be expected to soon face severe domestic and international pressure as its War on Iran is starting to cause severe energy shortages around the world. Europe is running out of jet fuel, writes The New York Times. Australia is close having to resort to fuel rationing as gas stations run dry, writes The Telegraph.
At 3W we suspect this is why Trump is trying to create the narrative that he has already won the war, as The New York Times writes. He will need to compromise to get out of the stalemate, and this he can only “sell” as a win if he first convinces his audiences that he has already won.
At 3W we see the ceasefire announced for Lebanon as an indication of a realization on the US side that compromises are now necessary. Agreed on Thursday between Israel and Lebanon, the ceasefire will last for 10 days, the US State Department which acted as a mediator said, writes The National. 3W notes this agreement contains the same clause that undermined the previous ceasefire agreement, which is that while Lebanon MUST disarm Hezbollah, Israel maintains “the right”: to continue attacking Lebanon. Israel will also continue to occupy southern Lebanon, writes The National. It is not a real ceasefire, in other words. It is a political ploy. But why, one should ask? Especially considering the fact that all of Israel wants to continue fighting in Lebanon, as The New York Times writes. At 3W we believe the most likely explanation is that this is a US – Israel response to the Iranian demand that the ceasefire be applicable to all of the Middle East. Having now given Iran this, the US – Israel Alliance can now demand something from Iran in return.
3W notes this agreement contains the same clause that undermined the previous ceasefire agreement, which is that while Lebanon MUST disarm Hezbollah, Israel maintains “the right”: to continue attacking Lebanon
That demand is likely to be much more substantial and lasting, at 3W we expect. Designed to end Iran escalation dominance. Once achieved, the US – Israel Alliance War against Iran will then restart. That, namely, is the modus operandus of the Alliance. “Our forces are maximally postured to restart combat operations should this new Iranian regime choose poorly and not agree to a deal,” US secretary of defense Hegseth said as recently as Thursday, writes The New York Times.
Lebanon experienced this after the first ceasefire agreement, as Israel continued to attack on a daily basis. As has Gaza, where Israel has carried out 2,400 attacks during the first six months of the “ceasefire”, writes The National. The 2,400 attacks reported by Gaza officials include 1,100 bombings, 920 shootings and hundreds of other blasts and raids. Gaza officials said 754 people had been killed since the October 10 ceasefire, almost half of them women, children or the elderly.
In this context, the US and Hamas recently held direct talks, their first since the start of the ceasefire, writes CNN. The US delegation was led by Aryeh Lightstone, who met chief Hamas negotiator Khalil al Hayya in Cairo last Tuesday. The meeting came days after Lightstone met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, CNN adds. 3W must note here that Lightstone is an ardent Zionist. As a US diplomat, Rabbi Lightstone was one of the key people driving implementation of the US’s Abraham Accords plan. In his book “Let My People Know: The Inside Story of the Abraham Accords” Lightstone explained his experiences using an Israeli perspective, however. We further note that Lightstone continued the “new normal” tradition of US diplomats to visit Israeli prime minister Netanyahu before they go on their diplomatic missions as a US official. This was also the habit of Amos Hochstein. It all makes clear the oversized influence Israel has on US Middle East policy at present. No surprise, then, that US diplomacy in the Middle East appears to serve just a single objective: Israel’s interests. As CNN writes, a senior Hamas source said the group views the US proposals as unbalanced and that “reduces the whole process to a single clause – disarmament – while other first phase obligations are postponed or marginalized.” the source said further, “The proposed paper reflects a major imbalance in the ordering of priorities: Israel’s security first, while Palestinians’ humanitarian, political, and administrative rights are postponed.” The source also said that Nickolay Mladenov, the US-backed Board of Peace’s High Representative for Gaza, has taken to relaying Israel’s demands and warning that Israel will return to war if Hamas does not agree to disarm. “It even reached the point where Mladenov conveyed veiled threats: accept the paper or face a return to war,” the source said.
What this all means is that there is no real diplomatic pathway to peace with the US – Israel Alliance. Diplomacy for the Alliance is just a tool to achieve defeat of the enemy, notes professor Robert Pappe on his substack. If Iran does not realize this, it is destined to make the same mistakes it has made consistently over the past 30 years, since Israel started to push the narrative that Tehran is “irrational, mad and intent on developing a nuclear weapon to threaten the entire world”. As again professor Robert Pappe noted in an interview with Breaking Points, the only correct Iranian response is development of exactly that nuclear weapon.