Trump is stuck in Iran. Here’s one idea that could offer a way out

The US war in Iran is in desperate need of new thinking. Despite new US strikes Wednesday following President Donald Trump’s f-bomb warning that Iran is due another “beating,” he has yet to show he can blast Tehran back to talks. But diplomacy that he hailed as bringing historic peace to the Middle East also failed when a vaguely worded memorandum of understanding collapsed. And his options for changing the equation — risking the lives of hundreds of US troops in a ground war or recognizing Tehran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz — are so unpalatable that the phrase “no good options” has become a cliche. “We are really in a fix,” said Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia Engagement at the US-based Defense Priorities think tank. The costs of the Iran war are not confined to the participants. The political and economic backlash is mounting in the Middle East and Europe — escalating pressure on outside parties to try to jolt diplomacy into life. If the strait remains a no-go zone for most civilian ships, grave reverberations from the war will get worse, as global oil reserves erode, the prices of oil-based products like diesel and fertilizer spike, and a potential liquid natural gas shortage looms in Europe this winter. The emergence of Gulf states as luxury tourist and expatriate havens has been shattered by the war. Weakened European governments are being punished by war-related cost-of-living hikes. In the US, the war is threatening to define Trump’s second term. A new CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday showed public approval of his policies on Iran and gas prices at lower than 30%. Such numbers threaten to be disastrous for Republicans in November’s midterm elections and to repudiate the bargain Trump made with voters in 2024 to make life more affordable. The art of diplomacy, when classically practiced, lies in opening space, offering incentives and spotting the moment when adversaries might be persuaded to step back. As with many conflict situations, the eventual framework needed to quell fighting and open the way for talks on the most fundamental issues, like Iran’s nuclear program, is possible to visualize. Here, it might involve a compromise wherein the United States could avoid admitting it suffered a strategic defeat through Iran’s effective control of the strait, and Iran could argue it preserved its main takeaway from a war that ravaged its leaders and military. But building a political and diplomatic path to that point will be treacherous. And the process to deescalation would require a plan for future management of the strait and likely the involvement of outside powers to guarantee the safety of civilian maritime traffic. At a barren diplomatic moment, there are two flickers of hope. One is an emerging concept for an international institution under which Gulf nations, including Iran, would eventually jointly manage and monetize the trade, but in such a way that would stabilize global oil prices. Ironically, the way forward might be hiding in plain sight in the scrapped MOU, which called on Iran and Oman to “define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussions with other Persian Gulf Littoral States.” The other eventual opening might also come from outside the US. A plan reported this week for an international conference hosted by Britain to discuss safeguarding ships in the strait did not materialize. But the general idea of broadening diplomacy will likely return, not least because third-party nations, especially those in Europe and East Asia, have a lot to lose from the status quo. The only publicly announced diplomacy in recent days has been discussions at the deputy foreign ministry level between Iran and Oman, which also borders the strait, about potential ways to manage sea traffic if it is reopened. CNN reported this week that Oman has resisted the imposition of transit fees for oil tankers in the strait, favored by Tehran, on the grounds that international law stipulates free and safe passage through straits used for international navigation. But the government is touting a compromise that envisages a fee for “maritime services” that may provide a workaround. The idea of a “Hormuz fee” is examined in an article published by the London-based think tank Bourse and Bazaar Foundation. The idea is not for a toll for shipping to use the strait, but for a contribution to the management of the waterway by states with Persian Gulf shorelines. One model would be similar arrangements in the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian Ocean with the Pacific Ocean, and involve Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. The article also cites fees charged by the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands to model the possible scope of revenues. There, the largest tankers are liable for a “sustainability” fee of around $0.08 for each gross metric ton of cargo. If a similar charge was levied in the Persian Gulf, the new institutional body would make around $26 million a year, the authors calculate. The idea might be workable, even if Iran demanded far higher returns since even the addition of a couple of dollars per barrel of oil would be economically preferable to the volatility in oil prices — which spiked nearly 8.0% Wednesday alone to above $90 a barrel. Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, one of the authors of the article, said Tehran may be more flexible about the monetary potential of such a scheme than some outsiders believe. “To the extent that Iran cares about its economic situation, there are much bigger goals than trying to impose a fee in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. Any diplomatic opening with the US could result in the lifting of sanctions, for instance, or the free flow of Iranian oil exports. Batmanghelidj also suggested the arrangement could offer Tehran a strategic boost and “make the point that the strait is not going to go back to the status it had before the war, as a way of underlining that it was not defeated, that it was able to preserve its agency and its power through the conflict with the US.” More broadly, a multinational plan for managing the strait could begin to answer a growing question in the Gulf region: How will states answer the challenge posed by a more confident Iran after the war and shore up any eventual peace? Still, Trump’s return to attacking Iran means meaningful diplomacy will remain on hold. And even a deal to stabilize the strait would only address a new crisis thrown up by the war while not come near meeting US concerns over Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. But Goldstein said Trump’s paucity of options may mean a compromise becomes inevitable despite its considerable downsides. “This is going to be the most painful of all compromises precisely because we as a nation, we in the West, as the leading powers of the world have for a very, very long time insisted that freedom of navigation was one of our signature principles,” he said. Most modern presidents would have turned to US allies for help on Iran already as a way of broadening diplomatic pressure. Europe, for instance, was a vital driver of diplomacy that led to the Obama administration’s nuclear deal. It has diplomatic links that the US severed after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. But Trump has deeply damaged the transatlantic alliance, treating longtime allies like adversaries with his barrages of tariffs and insults. He refused to consult many US allies before launching a war that they regarded as illegal and unwise. But he also berated them for not joining US military action. The result is that political weak European leaders have little incentive to help him now. And there’s a limit to what NATO allies can do. Offers by European powers to deploy their significant mine-clearance assets to the strait, for instance, have been conditioned on an end to all hostilities. But any European initiative in the Middle East would also come up against the same impediment as Oman’s — a fickle and confusing diplomatic strategy from a superpower whose foreign policy seems to change with Trump’s moods. “It’s one thing to ask Europe to help with an agreed strategy, but there is no agreed strategy. Indeed, it’s not clear what American strategy is at this point,” said Ian Lesser, a distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States who is based in Brussels. Similar mistrust over American motives could also hamper diplomacy. “My conversations with stakeholders in Tehran suggest that they’re not rejecting this proposal that Oman has brought forward,” Batmanghelidj said. But he added that Iran was concerned about giving up control of the strait while the US was still escalating. “Iran probably will allow the strait to normalize at some point. It’s in their interest to do so. They’ll probably do so in some regional format, but they are not going to do it until they think the Americans learned their lesson.” Like Oman, the other Gulf States and European powers face a huge price for Trump’s inability to end his war. If Washington and Tehran can’t escape their self-reinforcing destructive cycle soon, others will have no choice but to help them.