Can Trump force open the Strait of Hormuz?
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They said he will start a war. I'm not gonna start a war, I'm gonna stop wars. But war is well and truly back with Iran today. The United States has struck it for the last ten consecutive nights. Tehran is retaliating across the Gulf, killing three American troops and injuring almost a hundred, and is all forcing the US President to consider a major escalation. Dozens of air-to-air refueling planes, plus fresh squadrons of fighter jets, have started to arrive over the last few days. So we find ourselves asking again, how does Trump get out of this? Or is Iran America's next forever war? I'm Tom and welcome to The General and the Journalist. Patrick is away this week, but to help us answer that question for this week only, it's the journalist and the national security advisor.
Because I'm really pleased to say that I'm joined by Kirsten Fontenrose, who is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and formerly a White House advisor in Donald Trump's first administration, where she served as the senior director for the Gulf on his National Security Council. Kirsten, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me.
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Well, you're in DC at the moment. It's kind of early where you are, so I'm even more grateful. A quick thought. Do you wish you were back in the White House right now, all this going on, or are you feeling far better off out of it?
It's a great question because it is tough to sit on the sidelines and watch decisions be made when you have ideas or you think you could make recommendations. But it's also probably good for reputational legacy to be distanced from these tough decisions right now that, you know, we can't predict how they will turn out.
That's a very good thought about reputational legacy. So before we look at the president's options, let's just remind ourselves of why the ceasefire collapsed shall we? And of course it's all because of the blueprint for it, the memorandum of understanding.
Accurate. I think there were reasons that both sides were comfortable with signing an ambiguous MOU, even though they knew it was ambiguous. For Iran, it resulted in lifting of sanctions immediately, not removal, but lifting. And in the removal of the naval blockade, immediately. Again, lifting. Which gave them this economic lifeline they were hankering for. So that was fine with them, regardless of ambiguity of the language on the straight. They really needed that sucking in of of air. And for the US, it calmed markets a bit and it allowed the US to say we're getting, we're inching closer to this deal that we've been talking about and promising. But the market calming was really critical. So what happened in in my assessment is that you have a paragraph in the MOU that calls for a dispute mechanism, but it wasn't stood up.
It talks about using some of the mediator
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