Article from The Times.
I can see both sides getting it wrong through over confidence or stubborness. However I feel that Trump has backed himself into a corner on insisting no reopening of SoH without Iran agreeing to no development of nuclear weapons and him getting his 'dust'. The only way out now is to bomb Iran into submission.
Wrong again: why Trump keeps misreading the Iranian regime
The president insists that his naval blockade will make Tehran capitulate. But the calculations look different on the other side.
One of the enduring questions of the conflict with Iran has been whether President Trump believes what he says.
He claimed that the Iranians were “begging” for a deal even as they refused to send a team to negotiate. Iranian oil pipelines should have exploded by now from the pressure of oil storage reaching capacity under the blockade, he has said, but the infrastructure is humming along.
He now argues that the blockade should force the Iranians to capitulate and that, if it doesn’t, a few more days of military strikes should suffice.
Whether they are sincere or not, those claims are held together by a persistent misunderstanding of the Iranian regime and its capabilities.
Far from begging for a deal, the Iranians appear incapable of taking one even when it would be to their advantage. The pipelines have not exploded because the Iranians have more storage than Trump claimed, and can shut them down gradually when it runs out.
If anything, Tehran believes that it can withstand the economic pain from the blockade, but Trump cannot continue to ignore rising domestic fuel prices as he heads into mid-term elections with the lowest approval ratings of his present term.
The regime also reckons that it may take another round of fighting to impress upon Trump that military action will not open the Strait of
Hormuz or force the hardliners now in control of Iran to capitulate.
Oil prices, which are at their highest since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, will rise further if hostilities resume, adding to the pressure on Trump and on the global economy.
That is Iran’s calculation, and it may or may not be correct. The regime may have been carried away by how it defied expectations and withstood the combined five-week assault by the world’s greatest military and by Israel, with its legendary air forces and intelligence services. It may not be so lucky again; the US and Israel will have worked frantically to improve their performance in the next round
Trump has asked US Central Command (Centcom) to brief him on Thursday on military options, so action may be imminent as even Trump, reported to have been been shielded by his aides from bad news on the war front, sees his claims diverge from reality. A similar exercise was conducted a few days before the war started.
Danny Citrinowicz, an Israeli former intelligence officer who specialised in Iran and is now a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council, said: “Trump inviting the Centcom to the White House shows he won’t wait long, regardless of what happens. He was promised one thing, that the pipelines would blow up and all that nonsense, and now he’s forced to rethink that strategy.”
The likeliest option for Trump may be a series of spectacular strikes at Iranian infrastructure, as he has threatened, and then unilaterally end the war with a declaration of victory. Even then, the Iranians may frustrate that plan.
“We’ll have maybe four days, and it will be very violent because of the Iranian response,” Citrinowicz said. “The Iranians are not going to shut up and not retaliate.”