As the US-Israeli war with Iran and Lebanon drags on, trying to figure out how it will end becomes harder. Trying to predict where wars will head is bad enough at the best of times, given their chaotic nature, but doing so with reckless leaders like Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, who seem to be willing to do anything for their own short-term benefit, can be seen as an exercise in futility.

On the surface, it would appear that since Iran is in a much weaker position militarily, it will be forced at some point to sue for peace under unfavorable conditions. At least that is what Trump’s rhetoric seems to indicate that he believes. He keeps saying that the US has already won or that the Iranians want to make a deal. But Iran has steadfastly refuted that latter claim. This may be because for the Iranian regime, this is an existential threat and hence they have no interest in agreeing to anything that does not keep them in power. So for them, dragging this thing out indefinitely, and inflicting any damage they can on the global economy by (say) attacking the oil infrastructure and closing the Strait of Hormuz is an acceptable price to pay and they will hold out until Trump offers them something that they can accept.

I found this interview by the New Yorker‘s Isaac Chotiner with Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group,. about what the various parties are seeking and what they might accede to, quite enlightening.

Look, the primary objective in any negotiation would be a deal that would insure the Islamic Republic’s survival. That has several requirements. One is, of course, that the hostilities against Iran would stop and that they would not start again—because Iran doesn’t want to end up being another country, like Lebanon or Gaza or Syria, that Israel or the United States can decide to bomb at will. This concept of the U.S. or Israel scheduling a Google Calendar reminder to bomb Iran every six months is not a situation that the Islamic Republic can tolerate, or believes that it would be able to survive, in the medium to long run. So the primary objective is to basically create the conditions under which Israel and the United States are deterred from committing an act of aggression against Iran ever again.

But, at this point, just that is not enough, because Iran has been living with economic warfare against it for several decades. And, after this war, it would have to reconstruct in order to survive. And this is why it would need economic incentives that are real, not just promised and never delivered. So it also needs some sort of arrangement in which it would be able to secure economic reprieve. And that means that if the hot war ends, but Iran ends up in another cold war, that would be as fatal to the regime as the continuation of the hot war. And this is why Iran will impose difficult conditions for accepting a ceasefire.
…

[T]his war has basically rendered Iran ungovernable unless it can undergo serious reconstruction. This isn’t just about sanctions relief. The Iranian regime needs money for reconstruction. It’s really as simple as that. There is no agreement in which it would accept American promises because it’s been burned by the U.S. too many times. And, in the absence of sanctions relief, the regime knows it would die on the vine.
…

If it were up to Trump, I think he would accept a less-than-ideal agreement, but he has repeatedly demonstrated, and this is not a new phenomenon, that he lets negotiations be conducted by people who believe in those maximum estimates. What Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have reportedly put on the table is almost a mirror image of Mike Pompeo’s twelve demands in Trump’s first term in office. And these are basically Israeli demands. So I don’t think Trump is acting independently here. These are a set of demands that have been in the circles that are close to him for many years, and they have become a kind of orthodoxy that I don’t think he can abandon, even if he doesn’t personally believe in them. So he’s stuck with them.

And now the problem, even if Trump wants to step aside from the maximalism of the current demands—the Iranians have demands that will be very difficult for him to meet. So I have a hard time really seeing how we can get to a diplomatic agreement anytime soon.
…

Trump, at this point, even if he wants to come down off the high horse and put aside some of the maximalist demands of Israel, would still have to make concessions to the Iranians that would be very uncomfortable for him, I think, at a personal level. And this is why I think that, although Israel did start this war and dragged the U.S. into it, ending it is really no longer dependent on Israel. It’s dependent on Iran and Trump. And, as I said, those two have positions that are totally incompatible at this moment.
…

I think Trump believed some of the things that we now know Bibi told him before the war, including the idea that the regime was so brittle that killing the Supreme Leader would result in people coming to the streets again and taking over government institutions. And, yes, Trump made the decision to go in. Israel didn’t make that decision for him, but I don’t think we can ignore that Israel created a context for him to believe this would be an easy undertaking.

As I said, I do not think that anyone has a really good handle on how things will play out but at least this was a thoughtful analysis of the possibilities.