Mullahs Losing Leverage in the Persian Gulf

“More oil is now coming out of the Persian Gulf than before the Iran war” is the Wall Street Journal headline that catches our eyes. United States Navy escorts allow tankers to evade Iranian attacks, so more oil can be exported through Hormuz. While crude prices nevertheless keep climbing, a win is a win: The mullahs are losing the leverage they gained by shutting down the vital strait. We’ll take the victory in the battle — but what about the war?Hormuz was meant to be Iran’s trump card against President Trump. The secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, Ali Larijani, who was killed at the war’s outset on February 28, is said to have warned that shutting the strait is a card that “can be played only once.” American naval escorts now free an increasing number of tankers to sail the southern corridor of Hormuz. Meanwhile Iran, already near bankruptcy, is unable to export its own oil. For years Tehran evaded American sanctions by running a “shadow fleet” that exported illicit oil to Communist China. That route is now blocked by American warships. Additionally, Mr. Trump is considering sanction waivers for tankers in that fleet — but only once they’re purchased by owners with no ties to Iran. “Washington should open a gate and let the regime watch its fleet work for someone else,” a former Treasury official, Miad Maleki, writes. Choking the Islamic Republic’s energy revenue and allowing more oil to come out of the Gulf are a major progress in the war. Yet crude prices keep climbing, hovering this week around the $110 a barrel mark. Traders fear an escalation that would again slow Mideast oil exports. Leaders in America and Israel do little to discourage that assessment. While Tehran’s economy and military are severely damaged, the war is widely seen as unfinished. The most immediate explanation for spikes in the oil markets is a growing sense that diplomacy is at a dead end. “Given that the White House has shown no willingness to reach an understanding on the way forward, while also threatening more violence, there is little reason to expect progress now,” Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, writes in an op-ed. Iran prefers diplomacy, he avers, but the regime “does not bend its knee to any power.” Israel was on the verge of launching a “multi day bombing campaign” last week on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Financial Times reported yesterday. Mr. Trump stopped the strikes because he opposes “restarting the conflict before the U.S. midterm elections on November 3,” the report claims. Yet the president is adamant that Iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions “the easy way or the hard way” — and the former increasingly evades diplomats. “Iran is attempting once again to develop the bombs of death,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said while visiting Israel Defense Forces troops today. “There is only one way to remove this threat once and for all: Overthrow the regime in Iran.” That way the nuclear threat will be gone, as will attacks on our Gulf allies. Regime change, ultimately, would also lower prices at gas pumps, much to the relief of America’s drivers, farmers — and voters.

Mullahs Losing Leverage in the Persian Gulf

Mullahs Losing Leverage in the Persian Gulf

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