DC Edit | For Both US and Iran, Peace The Only Choice

This is a war that the United States cannot win. Nor can Iran escape sustained damage to more of its nation’s infrastructure if it keeps up its dalliance with the notion that it has survived the war already and need not come to the negotiating table with seriousness as it has managed to keep its attackers at bay in asymmetrical warfare with drones.

The Iranians breached the prolonged ceasefire since April 8 with more than one attack as in striking the oil facilities in the UAE’s Fujairah last week and then, alleging that the US had fired on its ships, aimed its drones at US warships on Thursday. This invited what seemed to be the heaviest US attack on Qeshm Island, Bandar Abbas, Strait of Hormuz shipping centres and in Tehran, too, which the Iranians claimed was aimed at military facilities responsible for the attack on the US Navy.

The fragile truce may have come dangerously close to collapsing if not for US President Donald Trump downplaying the latest exchange of hostilities, even comparing drones intercepted over the Persian Gulf to butterflies falling to their death. However, in the same breath, he threatened in his regular bombastic style that he would order more strikes if the Iranians did not sign a deal. This is hardly the language of someone seeking a peace deal, but that is Mr. Trump.

The deal, made concise to the extent that its contours can be expressed in one page of text, was said to be imminent when the US-Iran breaches came about. Original goals like unconditional surrender, regime change, giving up nuclear weapon ambitions by surrendering enriched nuclear material have all been dumped as Mr Trump desperately seeks an end to the war he foolishly started after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked him down a garden path of instant military glory.

The biggest lesson the war taught was that modern warfare is totally different from the battlefields of World War II. When a $2,000 drone, which can virtually be bought from a toy store, can wreak damage by inviting defence with billion-dollar missile systems, military superiority in the air with warplanes and bombers means little. And when Iran’s cheap but offensive missile and drone resources are well hidden from view as in weaponry sitting in tunnels and bunkers, there is little that aggressors can do from the air.

The reality of this war is that the two major combatants need peace more and it is up to the US to rein in Israel in its actions in Lebanon — talks between Israel and Lebanon are scheduled to resume next week. The sooner negotiations can begin over the easing of controls over the traffic in both directions through the Strait of Hormuz the easier will the world, choked by rising crude oil prices and supply chain disruption, breathe.

As the so-called leader of the free world, the US owes it to the world to at least try to restore the status quo in the Strait of Hormuz which was open before it began bombing Iran on Feb. 28. That the strait has become the principal bargaining chip may be an unintended consequence of foolish offensive action halfway across the world. The only hope is negotiations will begin in earnest during another 30-day ceasefire as envisaged in the latest peace plan. The world needs this Persian standoff to end.