Robert Malley

So all of it would make Iran suffer more economically.

It would not bend its political will.

As of the time we speak, the indications are perhaps there's a better chance for diplomacy.

But we know that we've been here before.

Many times the mediators have said we're closed to a deal.

And many times at the last minute, the US has pulled the rug from underneath the feet of the diplomats and said, not good enough.

We're not going to sign.

Well, first, I mean, where we are as of the moment we speak, it's a situation of neither war nor peace, but countless innocent victims.

And those victims are people not just in the Gulf, not just in Iran, certainly not just in the United States.

They are all over the world because they're paying for higher energy costs.

shortages of fertilizers, shortages of food.

And this is going to have a cascading effect.

So many people are paying the price for war that the U.S.

unlawfully started, and that has not ended yet for them because the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.

Yes, it's imposing a cost on Iran, but it believes that by asserting its authority over the strait, it will be able to impose some kind of post-war mechanism

through which it will extract, call it of toll, call it some kind of financial benefit that may be distributed among Gulf Arab countries, but it believes that it will get something out of the Strait of Hormuz that it was not getting before in terms of economic relief.

It certainly won't be enough to make up for the losses that they've incurred, but long term they believe that that's a strategic asset that the war didn't invent, but that the war handed them and they're not about to give up.

There really are only two alternatives here.

Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation, or it's resolved through force, through war.

I think there's every indication, again, if one is to believe what one hears from the mediators and from press reports, that Iran is prepared to put on the table steps that won't guarantee that they can't have a nuclear weapon.