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• 5 min de lectura
The current ceasefire between Iran and the United States was indefinitely extended in April, but to facilitate negotiations that appear to be at an end. President Trump has himself described the ceasefire now as being on life support, while reports are coming from the region that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been quietly participating in staging attacks against Iran.
After the Iranian counter-proposal to the United States' proposal was rejected by President Trump as "garbage not worth reading" and "TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE," it appears the two sides are even further apart than they may have been before negotiations began in Karachi. It is difficult to interpret the Iranian response as anything other than a demand that the United States surrender on all its war aims, the framing of the Iranian response is very much the thinking of the hardline faction of the IRGC, which has enhanced its hold on the Iranian Velayat-e Faqih political system since the war began on February 28. Whereas so-called "reformists" have had some influence within the Iranian negotiating team over the last decade, the dominant Paydari-IRGC hardline voices in Iran now sense the war as an opportunity to further advance Iran's campaign to strengthen Persian-Shi'ite domination of the region, and show no signs yet of wishing to compromise.
The United States' negotiating position has been more flexible, much to the chagrin of Israel and some of the Gulf States. But in the face of Iranian intransigence and a failure to recognize the damage done to their country, the United States will now find it very difficult to take forward negotiations with a realistic chance of salvaging something which can be described as a victory.
Nonetheless, an initiative to resume the war before the formal end of the ceasefire, as far as the United States is concerned, seems unlikely. The negotiations are in great difficulty, but breaking the ceasefire before it expires without announcing an intent to do so in advance would be regarded internally within Iran as a 'bad faith' bar to a resumption of negotiations for years to come. And at some point, the United States would want to resume negotiations.
Israel and the GCC states have exercised some discipline whilst the negotiations were still active, in the hope that an acceptable deal could be achieved. If this no longer seems likely, then that restraint will be eased. Israeli Defense Minister Katz has already warned that his country is preparing to renew its war on Iran, and that when it does so "the attack will be different and deadly and will add devastating blows in the most painful places that will shake and collapse its foundations, following the enormous blows the Iranian terror regime has already suffered so far". He described Israel's intention to "first and foremost complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty... and additionally to return Iran to the Dark Age and the Stone Age by destroying key energy and electricity facilities, and dismantling its national economic infrastructure." Israel has a record of putting its national security first, even at the cost of upsetting the United States, and if Iran's expansionist strategy, the nuclear and ballistic missile threat, and Iranian support for hostile proxy forces that threaten Israel from neighboring countries all look as if they might continue, then Israel might be tempted to act unilaterally.
If Israel did act unilaterally, it could have support. It now appears that the UAE was responsible for a damaging attack on Iranian oil installations on Lazan Island on April 7 before the ceasefire was announced, and a later attack on the massive Asaluyeh petrochemical complex on May 6. This is consistent with Abu Dhabi's declaration that it has the right to respond to hostile acts, and the UAE has been the focus of far more attacks than on any other GCC state. The Wall Street Journal suggested that the UAE had attacked other targets as well, and has also been reinforced by Israeli Iron Dome and laser Iron Beam air defense systems, essential for the UAE's defense if Iran were then to mount further attacks on the UAE in retaliation. The UAE is motivated not just by the need to defend itself against Iranian attacks, but also to mount reprisals as a deterrent to further attacks. Similar feelings may predominate in Bahrain and Kuwait, possibly in Qatar, but probably not in Oman. Reuters has reported that Saudi Arabia carried out numerous attacks on infrastructure targets in Iran in late March, but appears now to have increased concerns about a widening of the war. The risk is that a coalition wanting to make a forceful response to continuing Iranian attacks will come together, and either take an initiative without US permission, or will manufacture a provocation to justify attacking Iran, and thence to bring the United States back into the fight.
On balance, the United States is likely to intensify its relatively risk-free tactic of tightening its blockade on Iranian ships, ports – and now anyone who cooperates with the Iranian control regime in the Strait of Hormuz, in the expectation that internal economic pressures within Iran will force a change of heart. There are also 155mb of Iranian crude held afloat outside the Gulf, principally off China, in the South China Sea and in the Malacca/Singapore Strait, which is providing Iran with a cushion against the blockage of exports from the Gulf. But if a spark were to re-ignite the war, with or without US political foreknowledge, then Central Command, as one might expect, is well-poised to swing into immediate action, both in terms of naval and air power and with or without allied support. However, a resumption of the war, to be effective, would need to inflict more damage than Iran suffered in the first round of the war, if it were to have a political effect.
Fuente: Maritime Executive
