There is a “sad irony” to Donald Trump’s current predicament with Iran, according to a former US ambassador.
Iran effectively closed the major oil shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz, earlier this year in response to the US and Israeli strikes on Tehran in February.
That blockade has caused a global economic shock as oil tankers are bottlenecked around the waterway.
The White House is subsequently under immense pressure find a solution to the war it started so business as usual can resume.
A former US vice-president JD Vance claimed overnight that Washington and Tehran are “very close” to agreeing an extension of their ceasefire, though a deal is “not there yet”.
American officials have suggested the two countries have agreed to a framework for a deal, but they are yet to get the stamp of approval from Trump and Iran’s leaders.
David Satterfield served as the US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues under the Biden administration and as an ambassador to Turkey during Trump’s first term.
He told BBC Radio 4′s Today that the American officials believe they have made some progress towards restoring movement through the Strait back to how it was before the first strikes on Iran on February 28.
That could include a commitment from Iran that it will not build a nuclear weapon – a concern which Trump has, sometimes, cited as the reason for his offensive action in February.
But, as Satterfield said: “This is not a new thing. The Iranian leaderships, plural, over the course of the last 20 years have made that affirmation repeatedly.
“The critical issue here is the Strait. The question could be raised why, if the administration is happy with all of this, hasn’t the agreement been announced as formal?”
He said there’s a chance the president is being “buffeted by those within the MAGA movement, in Congress and outside, who believe that this agreement does not materially advance any of the key goals that the president outlined when this campaign was initiated on February 28”.
“Frankly they’re not wrong,” Satterfield said. “The campaign has produced in terms of strategic gains, nothing.
“It has registered a major strategic loss, not just for the US, but for the Gulf states, for the global community, in that Iran has demonstrated that it can and will close the Strait and the Strait can’t be reopened by kinetic means.”
The former ambassador said: “Iran now has demonstrated that it can do this thing and it can’t be forced to back off it.
“The question will be if at any point Iran wishes to exert pressure on the nuclear negotiations, to the extent that those are ever going to be serious, yes, it can certainly threat to restore some form of control.”
Iran also reportedly wants $24 billion (£17.85 billion) of frozen Iranian assets released from banks around the world.
As Satterfield noted: “The irony here – it’s not humorous, it’s quite sad – is that this is the who president excoriated the previous administration, or administrations, for unfreezing funds for Iran.”
In 2016, Trump slammed Barack Obama and then secretary of state Hillary Cinton over a report that the Democrats gave $400 million to Iran, describing it as a “scandal”.
The money was reportedly part of a scuttled arms accord reached before the Iranian revolution in 1979.
But the diplomat pointed out that Trump described this as “near treasonous activity” and is now in a similar position just in a bid “to restore the conditions that existed” before the war.
“I don’t know how that can be spun as anything other than a strategic reversal for the US, its partners, the global trading community, and a strengthening of Iran,” he concluded.
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