Iran is now convinced Trump has lost the stomach to fight

 If Donald Trump is to be believed, Iran’s surviving leaders want nothing more than to “make a deal” to end the war. “I don’t think they have a choice,” said the US president on Wednesday. “They’re negotiating on fumes.”

Yet the actions of the Islamic Republic tell a very different story about its intentions. Anyone reading recent statements from US Central Command (CentCom) encounters a litany of Iranian ceasefire violations.

On Monday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz, triggering US air strikes on four fast boats. Then a missile site outside the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas targeted American aircraft, provoking further retaliatory US air strikes.

On Thursday, CentCom said Iran had launched five attack drones “that posed a threat around the Strait” and were promptly shot down, while a sixth was destroyed on the ground. Iran soon claimed to have struck a US air base in the region, without giving a location, although missiles and drones were intercepted en route to Kuwait, where American forces are deployed. CentCom duly condemned the incident as an “egregious ceasefire violation”.

Iranian negotiators, meanwhile, are believed to be insisting on the immediate release of $12bn (£9bn) in frozen assets as a precondition for any agreement to end the war. Back in Tehran, the most hardline figures are denouncing the very idea of talking with the enemy, let alone reaching a settlement.

Does this amount to the behaviour of a regime that just wants to “make a deal” and believes it has no other choice? Far more likely is that Trump is projecting his own fervent wish to end the conflict on to his Iranian enemies. He yearns to be able to declare victory and walk away from an offensive that he started without troubling to define a clear and consistent objective.

All Trump seeks in return is for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was only closed because he launched this campaign, and for the regime to surrender its 440kg of highly enriched uranium, which only exists because Trump destroyed the original nuclear agreement that banned Iran from producing exactly this material.

His war aims, if they exist, have now been reduced to solving two problems of his own making.

But the Iranian regime is in no mood to let the US president escape. Having survived the combined firepower of America and Israel, and thwarted Trump’s first goal, which was to bring down the Islamic Republic, it does not feel under any compulsion to release him from the hook on which he has impaled himself.

True enough, Trump has imposed a blockade on Iranian ports since April 13, halting the country’s seaborne oil exports and severing its economic lifeline. On May 23, CentCom announced that US forces had “redirected” 100 commercial vessels away from Iranian shores and “disabled” four. That means Iran is now losing about 1.8 million barrels of oil exports every day, worth about $180m at current prices.

But, on the other side of the ledger, Iran is making money by charging ships for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Most importantly, its stranglehold on this vital waterway – which has now lasted for three months – has inflicted the greatest supply shock in the history of the global energy industry.

Physical shortages of oil, gas and other necessities, such as agricultural fertiliser, are taking hold across the world, meaning that a crisis may be only weeks away.

The Iranian regime believes it can withstand America’s blockade for longer than the global economy can endure the closure of the Strait. In this bout of competitive strangulation, it thinks it has the advantage, not least because it began choking the Strait six weeks before Trump retaliated with his embargo.

Iran’s actions suggest that its leaders are convinced Trump is feeling the pressure more than they are. They appear to believe he has lost the stomach to fight and needs a deal more than they do.

But they have a long record of overestimating their own strength. The great danger is that the regime misjudges how far it can push Trump without provoking him to restart the war, perhaps with a decisive operation to reopen the Strait. Trump is being tested. So far, his enemies have him where they want him.