Iran must escape the American chokehold before it becomes fatal
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The most important variable in the current Persian Gulf confrontation is time. The Trump administration wants to play a long game, to draw the sanctions tourniquet ever tighter. Iran needs to play a short game, to escape the U.S. chokehold before it becomes fatal.
This inner dynamic helps explain the past month’s events in the gulf — Iran’s steady escalation of deniable strikes and President Trump’s relatively restrained military response. Each side has a different playbook, dictated by its interests, resources and ability to sustain operations.
But how does this end, if not in conflict? That’s the troubling question for strategists in Washington and abroad. The United States has offered negotiations (but not yet sanctions relief) through Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spurned the offer. In accepting international mediation to end the Iraq-Iran War in 1988, Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, may have drunk what he called “the cup of poison.” But Khamenei refuses, so far.
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