Whenever someone tried to draw the finish line, events came and I erased the painting.
Afrasianet - Noureddine Iskandar - Does the current escalation against Iran lead to a return to the war at its previous intensity? What about the chronic crisis in crisis analysis?
The Israeli-American war on Iran quickly turned into a serious, complex, and scalable international crisis to catastrophic borders on the world. The viewer sees how the Ukrainian crisis has expanded over the past four years, and how it is now on the verge of a major Western-Russian confrontation, which could lead to dramatic and unconventional events.
At the same time, the crisis in Iran exploded against the backdrop of an unusual pattern in the contemporary world of American decision-making, and a crazy extremism that is familiar in its kind, and relatively new in Israeli decision-making.
Will the current escalation against Iran lead to a return to the war at its previous intensity? Did Iran make a mistake when it opened the strait? Then what about the direction of the Iranian crisis in its entirety? What about the chronic crisis in crisis analysis?
Since the outbreak of the war on February 28, it has been clear, at least to those who have followed this path away from the noise of the daily headlines, that US President Donald Trump no longer has the luxury of backing away from his original goals. It is one thing to set a fire in a wheat field; it is quite another to control the direction of the wind.
The American president has thrown himself, the United States, Iran, and the entire region into a confrontation where no one knows where it ends, and no one dares to claim to have its complete map. Whenever someone tries to draw the finish line, events come and the painting is erased.
Today, with the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump is trying to summon NATO into the next chapter of the story. He does not want a war that will go unleashed into a global fireball, but at the same time he cannot abandon the policy of maximum pressure, which he sees as the only way to subdue Iran and, more importantly, to convince China that the time for its comfortable expansion is over. This is precisely where the issue comes back to its roots, to the real cause of the war, away from the topics of veneer and screen candy.
From this point on, too, another crisis begins, namely the crisis of war analysis. From the first few months, many people were preoccupied with the missiles and planes, while the biggest question remained at the bottom of the list: Why did the war break out in the first place?
As long as this question is not answered coherently, everyone will continue to be haunted by the shadows of events. They will be preoccupied with contradictory statements, distracted by role-playing plays, and immersed in the details of negotiation, and in a game of "step for step," while regional and international powers continue to spin the contradictions of the conflict on the betting table.
Therefore, it is necessary to return to the first starting point, and to what preceded it in the US strategic planning rooms, which first looks at the global competitor before looking at regional threats to its influence in a particular region.
Many titles and one goal
In the early days of the war, the U.S.-Israeli address was clear: topple the Iranian regime, or at least undermine it from within. Israeli calculations were based on deceptively confident intelligence assessments that the domestic opposition had enough momentum to turn military strikes and assassinations of leaders into a spark for sweeping change. But what works on paper doesn't always work on the ground.
The bet failed in June 2025. Between the two wars, doses of dietary supplements were pumped into the arteries of the process of dismantling Iran from within, through military and intelligence support for the regime's opponents, as if the problem was in the amount of fuel and not in the engine itself. The opposition is not working, and the Iranian debate is elsewhere.
Then came February 28, 2026, and the Americans and Israelis assassinated the Iranian Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei, on the basis that the fall of the head would cause the body to collapse automatically, or at least force those who survived the leadership to surrender or reposition themselves on American terms. No one fell! The bet is dropped.
When the headline of toppling the regime faltered, a new headline slipped out of the drawers: freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, after Iran imposed restrictions on passage. But that in turn was not enough to carry a war of this magnitude on its shoulders. As it began to falter, the speech returned to the most marketable slogan globally: preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
This title would serve as the basis for a viable understanding, if ending the war was really the goal. But the problem is that the headlines are one thing, the drivers are another. What would have triggered events was something completely different. And I think the broader cause of the war is still the same, which is Iran's position in the U.S.-China conflict.
The real American question has never been about the number of centrifuges, nor the percentage of uranium enriched, but has always centered on the identity of the strategic project in which Iran chooses to be a partner. Will it be a partner in the Chinese-led international order reshaping efforts, or can it be pulled, in whole or in part, to the American shore to destroy the Chinese project by cutting off its global reach (waterways, land transport lines, ports, energy sources)?
If it is impossible to take Iran completely, what is the minimum that Trump can take? And what concessions can Tehran make so that it becomes, at least in part, a partner rather than an adversary in the battle for control of global energy and trade corridors? For Tel Aviv, the story is different. Weakening Iran is the big prize you are betting on!
Here's the knot that makes it so difficult for Trump to pull back. But if so, how did the parties arrive at the MoU?
The oil shock is Iran's most dangerous option
The longer the war drags on, the more valuable Iran's most important card, the Strait of Hormuz, becomes. The strait itself was never just a crucial waterway for oil exports from West Asia, but more than that, it was a vital address for the global economy, and today it is like a finger on the warning button of an impending global economic collapse.
The oil shock is the scary weapon for Washington. As soon as you get close to disrupting the strait, the chain effect kicks in, but the secret is not the closure and its direct effect. It's the accumulation. And that's where the time factor comes in, and it's the only charge that triggers the detonator.
Tightening the noose on the strait would have raised oil prices, confused markets, and pushed investors to flee like birds before a certain storm. If this pressure continued for another two or three weeks, the West would find itself facing a very real possibility of a heavy global economic crisis, first of which the countries that are most dependent on imports and foreign energy will be affected.
Before this renewed escalation. Morgan Stanley lowered its oil forecast twice in two weeks. Analysts had expected the average price of Brent crude in the third and fourth quarters to be around $75 per barrel, falling to $70 by the end of 2027.
The rapid recovery of supplies through Hormuz, the rise in U.S. oil exports, and weak Chinese demand were factors pushing the market to gradually return to surplus. Navigation was recovering, but at the expense of Iran's security, and the expected gains from the MoU.
From the perspective of pure Iranian interest, Tehran could have continued to evade two or three weeks before the signing of the memorandum of understanding, and then greet Trump at the negotiating table with more concessions than he actually carries. (But that would have put enormous pressure on the other fronts.).
However, politics is not just a game of chess, it is often like walking on the edge of a mountain on a foggy night.
The Iranians not only showed their ability to push their opponent into the abyss, but also made him see it with his own eyes, and then went with him to the memorandum of understanding, on the basis that everyone can get out of the war without declaring official defeat.
In contrast, Tehran has tried to build a network of safeguards that will prevent a return to ground zero. Almost all of its officials' statements have suggested that they do not trust Trump to abide by what he has signed, and that they expect him to try to buy time, fill up oil reserves, and then return to a policy of maximum pressure.
What future for the crisis?
The Iranians, or at least an influential part of them, were not living the illusions of American goodwill. However, there were those who argued that going ahead with the memo might be less costly than going to war, even though Washington was increasingly signaling its willingness to evade its commitments.
On top of all this, Israel has not stopped trying to torpedo the negotiation entirely, pushing Trump back into the heart of the war, rather than maneuvering on the sidelines. Israel is trying to use Trump for the last time as a match to be thrown after lighting a fire, and then leaving him alone to face the consequences of the adventure, while the US midterm elections are responsible for swallowing up his political project. Where does all this lead?
In practice, Iran has given Trump and the U.S. economy a breathtaking opportunity when it reopened the strait, in exchange for big promises in a memorandum of understanding that it did not have enough guarantees to implement.
It can be said that it saved Trump in the interim, in exchange for expected gains from him, but internally he could not afford what he left to Tehran in the memorandum.
Tehran tried to make up for this lack of guarantees to prevent a recurrence of the war with subtle details related to navigation, the size of the U.S. military presence, and a series of mutual commitments, but it was not long before the signing inks dried up until Trump began to treat the memo like politicians deal with election promises. It is valid only until the evening of polling day. His announcement that Iran would not receive the promised money was not something that could be crossed.
Many have interpreted it as a message to the U.S. domestic to ease pressure ahead of the election, but reading it as the beginning of a de facto rollback also makes sense. He needs time to replenish Western oil reserves, then resume pressure from a more comfortable position, and perhaps return to negotiating under fire rather than under the roof of agreement and commitments, and he is doing so now.
In fact, Trump will likely not be able to fight a large, unproductive, politically risky war before the election. Iran has enough leverage in the strait to force it to respect what has happened, or move toward a broader, more stable agreement.
In most likely the case, the fundamental problem is that the war has not yet achieved the goal for which it began. So it seems very difficult to back down from the current point.
In contrast, continuing the war is like insisting on sailing in the middle of a hurricane while the direction-setting tools are broken; gambling with results that no one knows. Settling for an agreement that does not achieve the original goal of the war would mean a heavy political defeat for Trump at home.
Iran is also not in a comfortable position, as war, sanctions, and blockades have all had profound effects on its economy, making any evasion costly and any defeat fatal. Therefore, the balance will tip in favor of the party that succeeds in maintaining its internal front, and has a greater ability to be patient and absorb pressure.
No one will crush the other, and no one will raise the banner of victory quickly. This is not one of those wars that ends in a commemorative way in front of the cameras. There are two final details that should not be overlooked.
First, Trump's announcement of the end of the MOU seems closer to raising the ceiling of negotiations than it is to a final decision, and therefore should not be treated as the end of the track.
Second, Netanyahu's hand in Lebanon does not seem to be a likely option for Trump at this stage. According to the American calculations, Lebanon is a different file, with different rules of engagement, and the possibility that the current escalation will turn into a dramatic explosion on the Lebanese scene is still limited.
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