The declaration of a two-week ceasefire in the US-Israeli war with Iran, announced minutes before Donald Trump’s threat of devastating strikes was due to come into effect, is of course welcome. If it leads to a genuine cessation of hostilities, that will be a relief not just for those in direct danger across the region but also for the wider world, which is feeling the economic aftershocks.
Iran’s infrastructure, military capacity and leadership have been severely damaged by the conflict. But the regime shows no sign of collapse, one of the objectives occasionally asserted by the increasingly erratic US president. Others – the ending of Iran’s nuclear programme, the elimination of its arsenal of ballistic missiles – have clearly not been achieved. Meanwhile, Iran’s demonstrated ability to control shipping through the Strait of Hormuz represents a significant and long-term shift in the balance of power in the Persian Gulf.
Predictably, both sides have made maximalist claims of victory. These should be treated with considerable scepticism.
But the outcome does have precedents in history. Commenting on America’s entanglement in Vietnam in the 1960s, Henry Kissinger observed that the Viet Cong would win if it did not lose, while the US would lose if it failed to win. That is the nature of an asymmetric conflict between the world’s most powerful military, willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rescue a single airman, and an authoritarian regime prepared to deploy civilians, including children, as human shields.
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By that measure the US has suffered a blow to its prestige and influence whose full consequences will take time to assess. The people of Iran will continue to endure economic hardship and state repression. The economies of the Gulf states have had to absorb a severe shock to their confidence and stability. Even Israel, widely regarded as the principal instigator of this war, faces a rising tide of political resentment on both sides of American politics which poses an unprecedented threat to its most important alliance.
Attention now turns to Islamabad, where peace talks are due to begin shortly, although Israel continues to prosecute its war in Lebanon.
Perhaps most disturbing for governments from Beijing and New Delhi to Berlin and London is the grim spectacle unfolding in Washington. Trump’s profanity-laced threats of apocalypse in recent days represent a degradation of the American presidency that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. There is an alarming sense that the leader of the world’s most powerful nation is psychologically untethered, and that the constitutional restraints of the American political system, as well as those of the international order, face a prolonged and serious test.
