The world is now facing price rises and perhaps even shortages for energy and food that are already baked in — and that’s if the conflict ended tomorrow.
“The Iran crisis is an epoch-defining event, similar in scale to the fall of the Berlin Wall or 9/11,” believes Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at the University of Oxford. “The cascades coming towards us all are epic in scale, even if peace is agreed today,” he told NBC News in an interview.
The U.S. and Israel launched their assault at 1:15 a.m. ET on Feb. 28, an attack Trump has boasted took even U.S. allies by surprise.
It came even as American negotiators were speaking with their Iranian counterparts over a deal to contain the regime’s nuclear program, in the wake of its deadly crackdown against protesters.
Whatever the initial reasoning, Trump now seems focused on solving a global oil and supply chain crisis that did not exist before the bombing started.
The war has further damaged America’s standing among its European allies, unconvinced by Trump’s rationale and his demands they help resolve the crisis.
At home, the war is unpopular with most Americans, polls show, and it has caused open criticism from elements of Trump’s MAGA movement.
The assault “makes it clear that we are now in an age where might is right,” added Frankopan, author of “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World,” which examines the impact of the pre-Iran Persian Empire. We are used to seeing this from “rogue states,” but Washington’s choice of force over diplomacy, he added, “will rewire how the world sees the West.”
What follows in the days and weeks ahead will depend on an array of diplomatic, military and economic moving parts.
FORSUBSCRIBERS
Trump is claiming that negotiations to end the conflict are ongoing. He has extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz until April 6, pausing his threatened attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure amid talks he says “are going very well.”
That has been denied by Iran, as well as expert observers. The U.S. has attacked Iran during or directly after previous negotiations, meaning trust is thin.
“I’ve been talking with the mediators and there are no negotiations,” said Ali Vaez at the International Crisis Group, a think tank based in Belgium, who was involved in the Obama-era landmark nuclear deal of 2015, from which Trump withdrew. “There have been some exchanges of messages urging the parties to get to the table. But the preconditions of both sides are so far apart that there is no prospect for any kind of high level meeting anytime soon,” said Vaez.
Using Pakistan as a mediator, the Trump administration has sent a 15-point “peace plan” to Iran, which focuses on preventing it from developing nuclear weapons, something Tehran has already denied trying to do. Iran confirmed receipt of the proposal, and immediately countered with maximalist demands of its own.
“The conflict is at a stalemate because the parties are fighting different wars,” Vaez said. “The U.S. and Israel are fighting a war aimed at weakening Iran, while Iran is fighting a war to survive.”
The Iranian view has always been that “although the U.S. and Israel have a higher capacity to inflict pain on them, the Iranians have a higher threshold for absorbing pain,” Vaez said. “As it doesn’t collapse, Iran is winning from its perspective.”
Both sides also believe they have cards left to play.
The U.S. is diverting thousands more marines, sailors and paratroopers to the region, and has refused to rule out a ground invasion in which it could attempt to seize Iran’s vital oil terminal on Kharg Island or to break Iran’s stranglehold over Hormuz.
“The United States Military is meeting or exceeding all of its benchmarks, and the President’s decisive action is quickly eliminating short- and long-term threats to the United States and our allies,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to NBC News.
One way or another, the U.S. seems determined to loosen Iran’s grip on the waterway, with White House officials saying forces are “zeroed in on systematically eliminating the terrorist Iranian regime’s ability to disrupt the free flow of energy.”
