Early Friday morning, hours before Iran claimed to have hit a U.S. military early warning radar system in Bahrain, U.S. President Donald Trump said he told the country’s chief negotiator, Vice President J.D. Vance, “We don’t need a deal with Iran.”
Instead, Trump said he told Vance to focus on unearthing what the president called corruption and crime in Democratic-held cities and states after Democrats took control of Congress in the midterm elections.
Mr. Vance is known for his criticism of the United States and Israel’s war against Iran. He blamed the Republican Party’s defeat in Congress on President Trump’s military attack on Iran and the ensuing U.S. energy crisis and inflation.
Meanwhile, several commercial ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz have been hit by mines or attacked by Iranian forces over the past week, even as President Trump continues to insist that the US government controls the vital waterway.
So where will the war go and will Vance be sidelined by Trump?
What did Trump say to Vance?
President Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he asked Vice President Vance to “focus his full and complete attention on the massive corruption and crime occurring in Democratic-run cities and states across the country.”
“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!”
Since the midterm defeat, the Trump administration appears increasingly divided over the future arc of the war against Iran.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. economic pressure campaign against Iran is working and there is no need to resume large-scale military operations.
“Economic pressure on Iran will get even worse,” he added.
President Trump has given mixed messages about his war plans. Despite threatening last week that he could “destroy” Iran, President Trump said this week that further attacks against Iran are “pretty unlikely.”
What role did Vance play in negotiations with Iran?
Mr. Vance supports a deal with Iran, but Mr. Trump believes it is not possible at this time.
Mr. Vance led U.S. negotiations in Islamabad in April and was instrumental in signing a memorandum of understanding with Iran in June. However, the agreement quickly unraveled as there were clear gaps in both sides’ understanding of the agreement, particularly regarding the management of the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. vice president has also led direct negotiations with Iran in Switzerland, engaged intermediaries from Qatar and Pakistan as part of a new diplomatic effort, and called for continued negotiations with Iranian officials.
On November 4, following the Republican Party’s crushing defeat in the midterm elections, Vance publicly questioned whether the war was worth the political and economic cost. “The reason we lost is the war. The President himself said it last night,” he said in a post on X, endorsing a diplomatic solution as sound advice.
He added: “If you want to argue that it was worth losing the Senate for the next six years, so be it.”
Political analysts say Vance’s fairly frank assessment is also an effort to distance himself from President Trump’s war on Iran at a time when the president faces the lowest approval ratings of his career.
On June 17, at the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, shortly after the two countries signed the Islamabad memorandum, President Trump told reporters, “If this works, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to blame JD. JD, you better watch out.”
The next day, Vance told reporters he believed the president was “joking.”
What will happen in the future of the war between the US and Iran?
It remains unknown.
The Iranian government announced Friday morning that it had attacked and destroyed a U.S. military early warning radar system in Bahrain in retaliation for an airstrike on a communications tower in the southern Iranian port city of Sirik.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, President Trump said he urged US allies in the Middle East to refrain from another major attack on Iran. He added that the US could destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure, bridges and manufacturing facilities within three days if it wanted to.
“Saudi Arabia has asked us to leave things as they are for a while,” he told the White House, adding that Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain preferred the current approach.
Asked if he would have launched more attacks without such a request, Trump said: “Yes, I would.”
President Trump acknowledged that the war’s rise in fuel prices contributed to Republicans’ defeat in the midterm elections, but defended his decision to attack Iran.
Meanwhile, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces Advisor Brigadier General Ali Reza Belairi said the order by Iran’s Supreme Leader to attack the “enemy” without geographical restrictions would be carried out “at the appropriate time”.
“The more the Americans persist, the further they will sink into this quagmire of their own making,” Iran’s Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.
What’s the latest on diplomatic efforts?
This week, Iranian parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told Al Jazeera that the Strait of Hormuz “will never return” to the state it was in before the US-Israel war. At this time, all commercial ships could freely pass through the strait without paying tolls.
Iran effectively closed the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies were transported in peacetime, in early March after the United States and Israel launched attacks. This threw the world energy market into turmoil.
Ghalibaf said Iran had sent Washington, through Qatari intermediaries, a clear proposal with seven conditions for a ceasefire and reopening of the strait, adding that Iran was currently awaiting an official response from the United States.
“The ball is now in America’s court,” he said.
Iran’s conditions include lifting the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, lifting economic sanctions, releasing frozen Iranian funds, a cessation of fighting on all fronts, and a clear announcement of an end to the war.
The United States has previously refused to accede to these demands unless a deal on Iran’s nuclear program is first reached. Iran wants to negotiate that separately.
“We are still in a ‘no war, no peace’ situation and are unlikely to move any time soon,” Aniseh Basili Tabrizi, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Program at think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.
“While a major strike is unlikely in the immediate days, things are likely to change in some way in the coming weeks,” she said. “The Gulf states do not necessarily support this as the new normal, even if they prefer this to the possibility of another war.”
What is the latest information on the US attack and ship collision in Hormuz?
Ghalibaf told Al Jazeera this week that in the Strait of Hormuz, “there is no ‘free zone’ (high seas) and the 1982[United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea]does not apply there.” In fact, the strait passes only through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
“Regulations within the Strait of Hormuz are governed by the laws of the two coastal states that border the Strait,” he added, reiterating Iran’s position that it strictly controls the waterway.
The Iranian government said several “violating” vessels – referring to the strait’s southern corridor, which it said were using “illegal” shipping routes – caught fire while attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had previously instructed authorized vessels to use the northern route, which passes close to its coastline.
According to Iran, at least 12 tankers have collided in the past 12 days.
The U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said it was “working around the clock” to keep the strait open.
On Wednesday, Centcom claimed at least 4,000 ships had crossed the waterway carrying more than 1.7 billion barrels of crude oil with the help of the U.S. military.
However, all maritime agencies continue to advise against transiting the strait, and insurance companies are either significantly increasing prices for such passages or refusing to cover them at all.
