Just hours before Iran claimed to have hit the US military’s early warning radar system in Bahrain on Friday, US President Donald Trump said he had told his country’s top negotiator, Vice President JD Vance, that “we don’t need a deal with Iran.”
Instead, Trump said, he asked Vance to focus on uncovering what the president sees as corruption and crime in Democratic-controlled cities and states — after Democrats surprisingly took power in Congress in the midterm elections.
Vance is a known critic of the US-Israeli war against Iran. He blamed Trump’s military strikes against Iran, and the resulting U.S. energy crisis and inflation, for Republicans’ losses in Congress.
Meanwhile, several commercial ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz have hit naval mines or been struck by the Iranian military over the past week – but Trump continues to assert that Washington nevertheless controls this critical waterway.
So where is the war going – and is Vance being sidelined by Trump?
What did Trump say to Vance?
Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he had asked Vice President Vance “to focus all his attention on the massive corruption and crime taking place in Democratic-led cities and states across the United States.”
“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” he added. “Those days are long gone. We have their money, hundreds of billions of dollars, and we have their straits!”
The Trump administration appears increasingly divided on the arc of the war against Iran since the midterm losses.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington’s economic pressure campaign against Iran has proven effective and therefore a resumption of large-scale military operations is not necessary.
“The economic pressure on Iran will further worsen,” he added.
Trump has given mixed messages on his war plans. Despite threatening to “destroy” Iran last week, Trump said this week that further strikes against Iran were “pretty unlikely.”
What role did Vance play in the negotiations with Iran?
Vance favors a deal with Iran, which Trump says is not currently possible.
Vance led U.S. negotiations in April in Islamabad, where he helped secure the June memorandum of understanding with Iran. However, this quickly fell apart due to glaring discrepancies in each side’s understanding of what had been agreed – particularly regarding control of the Strait of Hormuz.
The US vice president has also held direct negotiations with Iran in Switzerland and is participating in renewed diplomatic efforts, engaging Qatari and Pakistani mediators and seeking to continue negotiations with Iranian officials.
On November 4, after the Republicans’ massive defeat in the midterm elections, Vance publicly questioned whether the war was worth the political and economic costs. In an article on
He added: “If you want to argue that it was worth it, that losing the Senate over the next 6 years was worth it, then do it. »
Political analysts say Vance’s rather blunt assessment is also an attempt to distance himself from Trump’s war on Iran, as the president faces historically low career approval ratings.
On June 17, at the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France – after the two sides had just signed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding – Trump told reporters: “This way, if it works, I’ll take credit for it. If it doesn’t work, I blame JD. You better be careful, JD.”
The next day, Vance told reporters that he thought the president was “joking.”
Where is the war between the United States and Iran going?
This remains unclear.
On Friday morning, Tehran announced that it had attacked and destroyed an early warning radar system belonging to the US military in Bahrain, in what it said was retaliation for an air attack on a telecommunications tower in the southern Iranian port city of Sirik.
Separately, on Thursday, Trump said Washington’s allies in the Middle East had asked him to halt further large-scale attacks on Iran. He added that the United States could destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure, bridges and manufacturing facilities within three days, if it wanted.
“Saudi Arabia has asked me to leave things as they are now for a period of time,” he said at the White House, adding that Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain preferred the current approach.
Asked if he would have launched further attacks without these demands, Trump replied: “Yes, I would.”
Although Trump acknowledged that rising fuel prices caused by the war contributed to the Republicans’ defeat in the midterm elections, he defended his decision to attack Iran.
Separately, Brigadier General Ali Reza Belaili, advisor to the aerospace force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said an order from Iran’s Supreme Leader to strike “enemies” without geographic limits would be implemented “at the appropriate time.”
Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted him as saying that “the more the Americans persist, the deeper they will sink into this swamp that they themselves created.”
What’s the latest on diplomatic efforts?
This week, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament and lead negotiator, told Al Jazeera that the Strait of Hormuz “will never return” to its status before the US-Israeli war with Iran. It was at this time that all commercial ships could freely pass through the strait without having to pay tolls.
Iran in fact closed the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies transited in peacetime, at the beginning of March, following the start of American-Israeli strikes. This has thrown global energy markets into turmoil.
Ghalibaf said Tehran had sent Washington, through Qatari mediators, a clear proposal for a ceasefire and reopening of the strait, setting seven conditions, and added that Iran was now awaiting an official response from the United States.
“The ball is now in the American court,” he said.
The conditions imposed on Iran include ending the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, lifting economic sanctions, releasing frozen Iranian funds, ending fighting on all fronts and explicitly announcing the end of the war.
The United States has previously refused to grant these demands without an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program first being reached. Iran wants to negotiate this separately.
Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, a research associate in the Middle East and North Africa program at think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera: “We are still in a ‘neither war nor peace’ situation, and it is unlikely to budge at the moment.
“Major strikes are unlikely to occur in the coming days, but things are likely to change one way or the other in the coming weeks,” she said. “Gulf countries do not necessarily view this as a new normal, although they prefer it to the prospect of a new war. »
What is the latest news on US strikes and ships hit in Hormuz?
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ghalibaf said this week that “there are no ‘open waters’ (international waters) there, and the 1982 Convention (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) does not apply” to the Strait of Hormuz. The strait only crosses the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
“Regulations in the Strait of Hormuz are governed by the laws of the two coastal states bordering it,” he added, reiterating Iran’s position that it tightly controls the waterway.
Tehran said several “incriminated” vessels – which it said took an “illegal” route, referring to the strait’s southern corridor – caught fire during attempts to transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has previously required approved ships to take a northern route that passes closer to its own coastline.
At least 12 tankers have been hit in the past 12 days, according to Iran.
The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) says it is “working around the clock” to keep the strait open.
On Wednesday, CENTCOM claimed that at least 4,000 ships had passed through the waterway with the help of the U.S. military, carrying more than 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil.
However, all maritime agencies continue to advise against voyages across the strait, and insurers have sharply increased the prices of these voyages, or even refuse all coverage.
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