Missiles fired from Iran towards Israel in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks are seen in the skies over Hebron, West Bank on March 18. Photo / Getty Images
As the conflict in Iran enters its fourth week, with United States operations increasingly focused on global energy flows, Tehran is rebuffing efforts to identify a diplomatic off-ramp from the war launched by the US and Israel, according to officials in the region.
Instead, Tehran is escalating attacks on its neighbours, betting it can ratchet up global economic pain faster than the Trump Administration can relieve it with military force, according to an Iranian diplomat, two European diplomats stationed in the region and a senior Arab official.
Iran’s unwillingness to capitulate is wrapped up in the power it exerts over the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s fuel shipments transit, that Tehran has largely closed, rocking energy markets.
US President Donald Trump gave Iran a 48-hour deadline yesterday to reopen the critical waterway, threatening to “obliterate” the country’s power plants if Tehran doesn’t comply.
By partially closing the strait, Iran is seeking to “make this aggression super expensive for the aggressors”, according to the Iranian diplomat.
“We are alone against the biggest military superpower of the history,” he said.
Iran’s leaders see their ability to control the strait and withstand the US and Israeli onslaught as a short-term victory, the Arab official and European diplomats said.
But as the war expands, with Iran’s critical infrastructure increasingly threatened, the country’s leadership is also deeply concerned about their ability to recover in the long term, they said.
“As long as the regime is there, they can create terror in the region, they terrorise international markets with the oil and gas prices. Yes, that’s what winning is for them,” said one of the European diplomats, who is based in the Gulf. “They don’t feel any pressure to negotiate.”
So far, the conflict’s economic fallout for the US and its European allies has been “moderate”, by the diplomat’s assessment, not reaching the dire level that would increase pressure for talks on the US side. However, rising energy prices are causing concern in Washington.
Before Trump issued the 48-hour deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the Pentagon was intensifying operations around the critical chokepoint, ramping up airstrikes and deploying additional attack helicopters to the area.
Opening the strait by force requires clearing Iranian positions so that US warships can escort tankers through.
The Treasury Department has attempted to ease energy markets by lifting sanctions on Iranian crude already loaded onto vessels.
Qatari and Omani officials began contacting Iran about a possible ceasefire in the past week after they assessed that overwhelming US and Israeli military force would be unable to topple the Iranian Government in the near term, according to the Arab official and the European diplomats.
Iran responded that it would only engage if the US and Israel stopped attacking first.
“Iran is not willing for a premature ceasefire like the 12-day war,” said the Iranian diplomat, referring to the conflict between Israel and Iran last year, during which the US struck Iranian nuclear sites.
Iran would not be willing this time to stop attacks against US interests unless Washington could agree to a number of “nonaggression” guarantees, including monetary compensation for war-related damage, he said - viewed in Tehran as necessary to prevent Israel and the US from attacking again.
The diplomat appealed to Trump to end the war before it escalates further. “This is the very beginning of US getting stuck in a swamp,” he said. “There is no other ramp off.”
The US and Israel have hit more than 15,000 targets across Iran, according to the Pentagon.
The attacks have destroyed military infrastructure, municipal buildings and eliminated senior leadership ranks. Iran’s Health Ministry says more than 1200 civilians have been killed in the conflict, including in an attack on a school that killed more than 160 people, mostly children.
Within the past week alone, Israeli strikes killed four senior Iranian officials including Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, and the spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ali Mohammad Naini.
The conflict has expanded to include strikes on regional energy infrastructure, with Iran retaliating after an attack on the South Pars gas field by launching strikes on Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, which caused billions of dollars in damage to a Qatari natural gas facility, according to local authorities.
“We’re still on an escalatory path,” said Alan Eyre, a fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think-tank, who worked as a US State Department official focused on Iran.
The country’s leaders think that with enough economic pain, they can force Trump to back down, he said. “Iran still hasn’t made their point, they are still trying to up the costs.”
The back-to-back assassinations of senior Iranian officials also appear to have disincentivised Tehran from talks, according to one of the European officials, who was formerly based in Iran.
The official said the killing of Larijani, in particular, damaged the prospect of talks because he was uniquely qualified to engage with the West.
For years, Larijani maintained a back-channel with the US through Europe, and before he was killed, there were reports he was exploring ways through Moscow to speak to the Trump Administration, the official said.
The killings are “a stress test of a system built to outlast specific individuals”, the official said.
In the short term, he said, the assassinations are likely concerning for Iran’s ruling class. “Long term, I think it increases defiance.”
Messages of defiance were central to the raft of communications from Iranian leaders marking the Persian new year, Nowruz. They offered support for those who lost loved ones to the conflict, but also promised that Iran’s enemies would be defeated.
On the eve of the holiday, Iranian state media announced three executions, some of the first acknowledged by the Government since Trump claimed to have prevented hundreds from being carried out, with threats of military force in January. Rights groups condemned the judicial process and executions.
Those put to death included Saleh Mohammadi, 19, a member of the country’s national wrestling team who was accused of attacking police during the protests earlier this year, to which Iran responded with overwhelming violence, killing thousands of people.
“The new year will be a year of delivering a strong blow to Iran’s enemies,” said the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. He promised that the country “will emerge from these storms with pride and stronger than before”.
Iran’s newly appointed Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a written statement. He has not been seen in public since the start of the war and is believed to have been badly wounded in the strike that killed his father, according to US intelligence assessments.
Beneath the public bravado, Iran’s leadership is grappling with deep concerns about the war’s long-term costs, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former US intelligence officer focused on Iran, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a Washington think-tank known for a hawkish stance on Iran.
“They’re always thinking about internal politics, and they know … their disfavour, to put it politely,” he said, referring to the anti-government protests the Iranian regime has weathered in recent years. A long conflict might serve Iran’s interest in the immediate term but would ultimately backfire.
“Eventually, in a long war, almost nothing’s going to really work in Iran,” he said.
The immense damage caused by thousands of US and Israeli airstrikes would leave Iran’s Government less capable of addressing existing grievances and could spark new waves of popular unrest, Gerecht said.
“The most critical moments for them is not during the battle when they hold out against the pummelling, it’s when the pummelling stops,” he said.
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