How will the Iran war end?

Donald Trump ​has said the decision to end the war ​with Iran will ​be a “mutual” one between himself and Israel’s ​Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We’ve ​been ​talking. ⁠I’ll make a decision at ​the right ​time, ⁠but everything’s going to be taken ⁠into ​account,” Trump said.

The war in the Middle East has entered its second week, having “set new speed records for conflict and destruction”, said Nick Paton Walsh on CNN. Both sides have achieved some of their objectives, but “the question of where” and how “it all ends echoes the loudest”.

What did the commentators say?

A “new phase” of the US-Iran war has highlighted the “limits of their strategies”, said The Economist. In the opening exchanges, Trump would have hoped that rising oil prices from missile strikes would force Iran to “cut a deal”, whereas Iran aimed to cause enough “chaos” in “America’s soft underbelly of the Gulf states” that they would “beg Trump to stop the war”.

However, while both sides could claim to have achieved some of their military objectives, they have been “unable to deliver political ones”. The Iranian regime has “proved resilient thus far. So have America’s Gulf allies.” Investors in the Gulf region may have started “grumbling” at the costs involved, but further escalation from Iran is more “risky” for its regime. “After decades of economic mismanagement”, it “could turn out to be less resilient than it thinks”.

Trump himself is “on the horns of a dilemma” and has two fundamental options, said Robert A. Pape in Foreign Affairs. “One path is doubling down” on the campaign of air strikes, “extending aerial control over the skies and surveillance on the ground”. The other is “ending the military commitment” altogether.

Without a “golden off-ramp”, the president would have to judge whether to “deal with short but limited political costs now or more protracted and more uncertain political costs later”. With Iran intent on pursuing “horizontal escalation” – widening the “geographic and political scope of a conflict rather than intensifying it vertically” – perhaps the “wisest choice” would be for the US to “accept a limited loss now rather than risk compounding losses later”.

Significant changes to the economic landscape could be the deciding factor for both sides to find an “off-ramp”, said Frédéric Schneider on the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. We forget that the first strikes “came at a moment of global economic fragility”. Since missiles were first launched, there has been significant “volatility” in the market, driven by major disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, QatarEnergy’s liquid natural gas production, and flights through Dubai International Airport.

The “most likely scenario” is that “sustained attacks” over a four- to six-week period will cause economic costs to “escalate sharply”. If the situation were to deteriorate beyond that point, however, we could realistically see the removal of “roughly one-fifth of global oil supply”, which would “constitute a shock without modern precedent”.

The US may be motivated to de-escalate by the near-certain “inflationary impulse” of banks, but for the Gulf countries caught in between, prolonged conflict involving “infrastructure damage, collapsing investor confidence and emergency military spending would create genuine fiscal distress”.

What next?

Prolonged conflict could have one of three outcomes, said Roland Oliphant, David Blair and Maryam Mazrooei in The Telegraph. For many Iranians, the most favourable would be a “democratic revolution”. The country differs from others such as Libya and Syria in that it has a “deeply rooted sense of civic and national identity” that transcends divides, and, most significantly, a “vast, highly-educated and pragmatic middle class”.

Second, Trump may try to replicate the US intervention in Venezuela. However, the Iranian institution is “still functioning”, particularly with the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader, and has the “same entrenched, IRGC-aligned elite” in charge.

Finally, a “darker outcome”. The prospect of a “civil war seems very real”. Reports of a “possible US-backed ground incursion by Kurdish militant groups based in northern Iraq” have been dodged by the Trump administration, yet the consequences are “fraught with danger”.