Trita Parsi

He said, this was never about enrichment.

This was about preventing Israel from becoming, let me see, remember exactly how he put it.

He said, Israel will not tolerate the United States making friends with Iran unless Iran first makes friend with Israel.

And it was not gonna allow the United States to resolve its tensions with Iran because the Israeli fear, and this is a very legitimate fear, if the US manages to resolve its tensions with Iran, one of the things that would happen, which is also what the administration is talking about now,

we would potentially start leaving the region, as we should.

The threat of Iran has been a key reason for justifying all of these bases, et cetera, et cetera.

And the Israelis then asked themselves a very valid question.

If the United States reduces its tensions with Iran, does that mean that there will be a proportionate reduction in Israeli-Iranian tensions?

And they conclude, I think erroneously, but nevertheless, they conclude, no, the Iranian-Israeli tension will remain, but now the Israelis will have lost the support of the United States.

And this is what they call the fear of abandonment.

They need to keep the US in the region, prevent it from making friends for these different countries, because if it does make friends with these different countries, it will exit the region, the Israelis will have to deal with them alone.

It's a very important development for them.

And however yet it ends, even if there's no, there's not going to be any toll, but what potentially will be there, I suspect will be there is some sort of a environmental management fee.

And whether that is handled just by Iran and Oman, or if it's regionalized, nevertheless, something will be there.

But the important thing to understand is that their control of the strait is not because they have mine sweepers or that they have a couple of islands there.

That was the case 20 years ago.

In all of the war games that the US did back then, the Iranians would close the strait by mining the strait.

And it would take the US about two weeks to reopen it.

What happened now is because of technology, the Iranians can shoot missiles and drones from anywhere of their 1500 kilometer shoreline at any of these trips.

And just the risk of being hit is enough for no one- You can't insure them.