5 huge problems with the US-Iran ceasefire

Iran could end up with more leverage over energy markets than it had before the war.

President Trump says it’s a new “Golden Age in the Middle East.” Financial markets are clearly delighted that the shooting in the Persian Gulf may be winding down. Oil prices are plunging and stocks are surging.

But the two-week ceasefire Trump says the Iranian regime has agreed to is fraught with trouble. For starters, there’s no actual agreement. Each side has a list of demands they’ll begin negotiating over on April 11. Iran does not think it lost, and may actually think it won by surviving an intense US-Israeli bombing campaign. The theocratic government is not likely to make steep concessions, and could end up a more malign influence in the future than it was before Trump started the war on February 28.

Here’s a short list of what’s wrong with the ceasefire:

1. Iran has far more control over the Strait of Hormuz now than it did before the war. Tankers passed freely through the strait before the war. Iran now decides which tankers pass, while charging a “toll” of up to $2 million per ship, which it says it will split with Oman, on the southern side of the strait. If this arrangement stands, Iran will suddenly have an alarming degree of control over shipments of oil, natural gas, and many vital industrial products exported by nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE—now Iran’s hostile wartime enemies.

“A failure to demonstrate the will and ability to deny Iran the ability to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz will make it much harder to deter Iran from future disruptions,” the Institute for the Study of War contends. “Stopping the war in current conditions would thus represent a major strategic challenge that the United States or Israel would need to contend with in future rounds of conflict with a regime that will continue to be a committed adversary.”