Trita Parsi

Part of what the Iranians wanted to do with the control of this trade was that they wanted to force other countries who had left the Iranian market because of U.S.

sanctions to now have no option but to trade with Iran again because they would have to pay these fees to get the oil.

Perhaps they're not buying anything from Iran, but they're still buying the oil and the gas and whatnot.

And as a result, they would need to have that transactional relationship with Iran financially.

Well, if Trump, as part of the final deal, lifts all primary sanctions and the banking sanctions, well, then perhaps that control of the strait for that specific purpose of forcing these countries back into trading Iran is no longer necessary.

So I think there's ways to actually resolve this.

But it is a point of leverage that the Iranians are not going to give up in the intermediate stage.

At the last stage, we'll see exactly how it ends up.

But I can see this going in several different directions.

First of all, the first thing we have to note is that this will be an utter strategic defeat for Israel.

It has started two wars with Iran and the end result has been that Iran has restored its deterrence.

It has been revealed that Israel is completely incapable of fighting any war with Iran without massive active American support and involvement.

And even then, it didn't end up well because Iran had escalation dominance because of the use of geography.

On top of that, the Israelis have destroyed what little standing they had left

amongst the American public.

The only demographic that now seems to support them still or be sympathetic to them is boomer Republicans.

And in 10, 15 years, there will not be any such thing as boomer Republicans as a major constituency or demographic.

All of this is happening.

And the Israelis, again, during the next couple of weeks and months are going to be very limited in what they can do to sabotage directly.

Indirectly, they will still do a tremendous amount of things.