David Ignatius in The Washington Post:
“There you have it, the meeting went well,” declared the Great Narrator a few hours after Saturday’s marathon, 21-hour negotiation with Iran ended. “Most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not.” So — wham! — President Donald Trump announced that to get a better deal he was blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Some commentators speculated that with the failure to reach a deal in Islamabad, the United States might be marching deeper into another “forever” war — that the talks could have been a prelude to a new and perhaps more dangerous phase of conflict.
After talking Sunday with people close to the negotiations, my sense is that the Islamabad impasse won’t necessarily mean a return to war. The blockade is a pressure tactic, to be sure, but not primarily a military one. Trump has no appetite for further armed conflict. He knows that the upsides are limited and the “tail risk,” as financial traders like to say, is large. His aim instead is to put a severely battered Iran into an economic vise to see if its leaders will set a different course in a big, comprehensive deal. The American side expects that despite last weekend’s standoff in Islamabad, contacts will probably continue, through Pakistani intermediaries. Trump’s destination is still the exit ramp.
More here.
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