Iran yesterday refused to change its conditions for a negotiated end to the war after President Donald Trump rejected its proposals submitted last week.
Trump told the media that the proposals involved reopening the Strait of Hormuz and restarting talks over Iran’s nuclear program within seven days.
Trump, however, said he expected more indirect dialogue with Iranian negotiators this week.
On the sidelines of last week’s United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi exchanged messages through Qatari mediators with Trump’s friend Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The indirect negotiations were the first since July, when a memorandum of understanding for ending the war signed separately by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian collapsed after just two weeks.
There was sporadic fighting in July over Iran’s choking of the Strait, the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Gulf through which a fifth of global oil supplies passed before the war. The skirmishes in the Strait triggered Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) missile and drone attacks on US military forces in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan.
Trump in August fully shifted to economic warfare against the Iranian regime centered around a long-distance blockade of Iranian ports by the US Navy.
Tit-for-tat attacks resumed early this month as the US staged calibrated airstrikes in response to IRGC fire on oil tankers and other vessels attempting to pass through the Strait along the Omani shore, opposite the Iranian shore.
The two countries have traded less fire in the past two weeks but the standoff over the Strait continues.
Pezeshkian and Araghchi are known to view a negotiated end to the war as imperative for warding off economic catastrophe in Iran.
They have limited influence over the ultra-hardliners who have come to dominate the Shia fundamentalist regime since Trump launched the war on 28 February.
But the ultra-hardliners at some point may see some sort of agreement with the Trump administration as advantageous.
Trump is under domestic economic pressure over high gasoline and diesel prices linked to the IRGC choking of the Strait and clearly is unwilling to engage in a costly and uncertain ground war to reopen the waterway.
He reportedly has talked privately about resuming heavy aerial bombing of Iran after US midterm Congressional elections on 3 November but what such bombing might achieve is unclear.
Even as it continues to partially block the Strait, the IRGC has levied a credible threat to systematically attack the oil industries of the Gulf Arab countries, which lie perilously close to Iran across the Gulf.
Negotiated peace – or at least a comprehensive ceasefire – could be months away.
The immediate danger is that diplomatic and military jockeying could spin out of control, leading to the re-eruption of full-scale war that would include steady IRGC missile and drone attacks on the Gulf Arab countries and Israel.
Personnel may undertake important business travel to the Arabian Peninsula south of Turkey with the exceptions of Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
Personnel in Saudi Arabia should not visit the southwestern provinces of Najran, Jizan and Asir, the main targets for ongoing missile and drone attacks by the Yemen-based Houthi militia, an ally of Iran.
Personnel traveling to the Gulf Arab countries, Jordan and Israel should monitor Iran-related tensions constantly. They and their employers should be cognizant that commercial flights could be disrupted if US-Iran hostilities escalate and that employers would bear the responsibility of repatriating stranded personnel.
Personnel in the Gulf countries should steer well clear of US diplomatic facilities, oil and gas infrastructure, and military bases – all of which are prime Iranian missile and drone targets. They should monitor the advice of local authorities and their embassies. In the event of an air attack alert, personnel outdoors should seek shelter and those indoors should give wide berth to windows. High-rises are not ideal places to be during air attack alerts, and those in one should keep in mind that underground parking garages are relatively secure from drones but not immune and that stairways rather than elevators should be used in the event of drone attack or fire.
Personnel in Israel should remain well clear of the border with Lebanon, where a fragile truce is in place between Israeli troops and the local Shia militia Hizbollah, an Iranian proxy. They should familiarize themselves with the nearest bomb shelters and be prepared to heed air attack alerts and related instructions from authorities.
Personnel in Jordan should monitor advisories from local authorities and their embassies.
