Well, I’m fairly hopeful about this outcome. Will the Americans violate the ceasefire? Possibly. And if they do? Iran will close the Strait again, bringing everyone back to square one. Will America and Israel use the next two weeks to “rearm?” I don’t see how, given that the standoff munitions they’re running out of are very slow and expensive to produce, and are often subject to production backlogs.
Will the Americans try to invade eventually? Maybe, but it’ll be the last thing they ever do. This breathing space gives Iran time to breathe too, remember, and they still haven’t actually had to deploy their ground forces yet. They’re not going to become an easier target as time goes on. In the meantime, America looks like a fucking loser in front of Russia and China, whom they now have no earthly way of defeating in any conflict without fundamentally changing how their military industrial complex works, and Iran has proven that the US can be brought to heel. The Gulf States also now know that the Americans cannot offer them protection, although whether this will be enough to push them out of America’s orbit, I’m not too sure.
If nothing else, at least Iranian civilians aren’t getting bombed for the next two weeks.
It really seems to me that Trump doesn’t take this whole “war” thing that seriously, or perhaps that he’s unable to understand the significance of it, but likes the spectacle of it. Trump is clearly playing the stock market, and we know that there’s insider trading going on before and after his announcements. I think that Trump believes, in a sense, “The Ramadan War is Not Taking Place,” as though this is something that happens ‘‘over there’’ that he can exploit for money in the same way you’d exploit any other stock, but for which there are no real consequences. However, Iran, Lebanon, and Israel, are fighting this war for real. It will become real for Trump when oil reaches $200 per barrel, and then he might very meekly try to arrange some type of backroom deal with Iran, which Iran will probably refuse. Who knows what happens after that?