"Is the American strategy working or flailing?" — Iran, the blockade, and China
An interview with Professor Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham, conducted by Trevor Phillips on The Times at One.
Keir Starmer told the Commons that he is not going to yield to pressure from Donald Trump over the Iran war, after the president threatened he could change the terms of the US–UK trade deal. Last night Donald Trump said talks between the United States and Iran could restart in the next two days, following their collapse in Islamabad on Sunday. Yesterday, at Turning Point USA in Georgia, Vice President JD Vance said that the president wants to strike what he called a “grand bargain”. This comes as America enforces its naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — it has seen some ships getting through, including a Chinese-linked tanker, while others have turned back.
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Q. Iranian officials, when asked about these new talks, say they’ve received no new information. Have you any idea what is actually going on? What’s the latest here?
A. Well, I think what’s going on is that we have quite a number of back-channel talks again, mediated by Pakistan. These have apparently been going on since the breakdown of the talks over the weekend, and it seems that at least some of the gaps between what the Americans demanded and the Iranians were willing to accept seem to have been narrowing on this very crucial issue of Iran’s nuclear programme. So I think there is some progress here. But it’s not entirely clear what Donald Trump now has in mind with this so-called grand bargain that JD Vance floated yesterday. Nor is it really clear what the American exit strategy at the moment is.
Q. I read this morning a rather interesting point — that the Iranian government, or the different parts of it, had no opportunity to get together in Tehran, because of course we now know that the Americans and the Israelis seem to be able to target everybody’s kitchen in that city, and therefore they couldn’t bring the top people together in Iran. But they got together in Islamabad because they felt safe there. Do we actually know who’s in charge? I mean, we haven’t seen the Supreme Leader, and so on and so forth.
A. Well, I think from what we can sort of gather — both in terms of how the Iranian regime generally works, and what the intelligence analysis is in relation to how they had envisaged the transition of leadership — it definitely seems we do have the new Supreme Leader. But there’s very strong influence now of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which really seems to have evolved into the key power broker in Iran. So from that perspective, it is in a way a continuation of the old regime — in my view, probably more hardline, more hostile, but potentially also more paranoid. And what you just said about the way in which the Iranians were able to prepare for this is absolutely correct. They arrived with a delegation of approximately 40 people in Islamabad, and I think partly that was so that they could actually properly coordinate and sit down before they got into the talks with the American interlocutors.
“Ceasefires tend to collapse as a result of minor incidents that then spiral out of control.”
Q. The Iranians say the blockade will constitute a prelude to a violation of the ceasefire — i.e., at some point they’re going to get fed up with this. Mr Trump says it means the war is over. Can they both be right?
A. Well, in Trump’s world, everything is possible. So from that perspective, one of the key challenges we have is that the ceasefire at the moment is still in place for another roughly two weeks. From that perspective, there is a potential that a deal could be wrapped up by then. There’s also a possibility that the ceasefire might be extended. But I think the key thing to bear in mind is that ceasefires tend to collapse as a result of minor incidents that then spiral out of control. So I think it’s less the question of whether there is a deal by the time the ceasefire comes to an end — if there is enough momentum in the talks, it would be very easy for the sides to extend the ceasefire. But if one of the enforcement operations that the Americans are currently running in terms of the blockade of Iranian ports spirals out of control, I think that could signal the end of the ceasefire and we could see a full resumption of hostilities.
“In Trump’s world, everything is possible.”
Q. There’s another actor here for whom this matters: China. They’ve condemned the blockade as dangerous and irresponsible. How long are they going to put up with this? If there is a blockade on Iranian oil, roughly 80% of it goes to China — and it constitutes something like 15% of China’s energy imports. How long are they going to put up with it?
A. Well, I think the question is at what point they will actually be able to do anything credible about it. The Chinese are clearly reluctant to be drawn into this — not just militarily, but also in terms of any mediation effort. And I think what this reveals in a broader sense is that China is not the kind of global leader that Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, aspires to be. There simply doesn’t seem to be either the inclination or the capacity on the Chinese side to do anything about either the blockade or the war, or the broader escalation of tensions in the Middle East that we have seen over the past year.
“China is not yet the kind of global leader that Xi Jinping aspires to be.”
Professor Stefan Wolff is co-founder of Navigating the Vortex. This interview was conducted by Trevor Phillips on The Times at One, Times Radio.
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