Expand<\/a>
\nNo off-ramps seen in fighting<\/p>\nThere\u2019s no immediate end to the war in sight \u2014 nor in the rhetoric coming from both America and Iran, whose bad blood extends back decades to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already won in many ways, but we haven\u2019t won enough,\u201d Trump said in a speech Monday in Doral, Florida. \u201cWe go forward, more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long running danger once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iranian Foreign Ministry official Kazem Gharibabadi offered a mirror image comment from Tehran, boasting that the Islamic Republic had rejected contacts about a ceasefire that he said had come from China, France, Russia and others.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment, we hold the upper hand,\u201d Gharibabadi told Iranian state television late Monday night. \u201cJust look at the state of the global economy and energy markets \u2014 it has been very painful for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it was Iran that \u201cwill determine the end of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iranian strategy remains havoc<\/p>\n
For years before Israel and the U.S. launched the war on Feb. 28, Iran warned that, if attacked, it would retaliate on the entire Middle East, targeting the oil infrastructure that made its Gulf Arab neighbors fantastically wealthy. By contrast, Tehran\u2019s economy has been crippled by international sanctions.<\/p>\n
Iran has now backed up its threat with barrages of missiles and drones. Qatar was forced to halt its production of natural gas, and Bahrain declared its oil operations couldn\u2019t meet their contractual obligations. Other producers like Saudi Aramco are affected, disrupting a key source of energy for Asia \u2014 particularly China, which has sent a top envoy to the region.<\/p>\n
Shipping broadly has stopped in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded passes, and up to 30% of world fertilizer exports. Iran didn\u2019t need to mine the waterway \u2014 its attacks on several ships prompted companies to stop sending their vessels through the strait.<\/p>\n
Trump has suggested U.S. warships providing escorts to tankers, but that has yet to materialize in a way to restart the traffic.<\/p>\n
Early Tuesday morning, he threatened that if Iran stops the oil through the strait, \u201cthey will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again \u2014 Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them \u2014 But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen!\u201d he wrote on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n
Iran, however, only doubled down. The Revolutionary Guard warned on Tuesday that it won\u2019t allow \u201ca single liter of oil\u201d to leave the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n
What is victory?<\/p>\n
For Iran\u2019s theocratic rulers, victory means surviving the campaign still in power, no matter the costs to the country and the region.<\/p>\n
Trump has been vague and contradictory about his aims in the war. At times, he seems to push for overthrowing Iran\u2019s theocracy; other times, he seems to be willing to stop short of that, saying broadly that he wants to ensure Iran is no longer a threat to Israel, the region and the U.S.<\/p>\n
That could give him flexibility in declaring that victory has been achieved, especially if real damage starts to show to the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n
But if the war stopped right now, both the U.S and Israel would be left with major challenges.<\/p>\n
One is Iran\u2019s leadership. After an Israeli airstrike killed 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war, Iranian clerics named his 56-year-old son Mojtaba to the position, elevating him to the rank of an ayatollah.<\/p>\n
Now Iran\u2019s ultimate ruler, the younger Khamenei has long been viewed by analysts as being even more hard-line than his father, with close ties to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Israel already described him as a target in its campaign, while Trump has said he wanted someone else in the role.<\/p>\n
Also, Iran still has its stockpile of highly enriched uranium \u2013 one reason for the war that Israel and the U.S. have both pointed to. Iran had been enriching up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.<\/p>\n
The U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear sites in June during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, likely burying much of the stockpile in the debris. Those sites to this day remain out of the reach of international inspectors.<\/p>\n
Mojtaba Khamenei could issue a religious ruling, or fatwa, reversing his father\u2019s earlier statements and ordering it to be used to make a weapon. That\u2019s something both America and Israel, long believed to be the Mideast\u2019s only nuclear-armed state, don\u2019t want to see.<\/p>\n
EDITOR\u2019S NOTE \u2014 Jon Gambrell<\/a>, news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the Mideast and the wider world since joining AP in 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By JON GAMBRELL DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 The\u00a0war with Iran, for all its complexity and\u00a0global effects,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7868,34,223,69,7867],"class_list":["post-14593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tehran","tag-how-us-iran-war-ends","tag-iran","tag-iran-us-war","tag-tehran","tag-us-iran-war-analysis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116211517012030295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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