Iran's Forever Leverage

Edited by Sam Thielman

"LET THE OIL FLOW," said the man who did not, does not, and will not control the spigot. 

As all but the most MAGA and/or Zionist observers expected, Iran is not playing around when it comes to Israeli assaults on Lebanon. This morning, the day after the long-awaited Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was supposed to be signed in Switzerland, the new and harder-line leadership in Teheran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Prepare for a lot more of this, for long after Donald Trump leaves office. 

Iran has correctly ascertained that Israel's goals in the Iran War are not the United States' goals. That's all the more the case now that Trump is actively seeking an accord with Teheran. Trump needs to end the war before its economic disaster dooms his movement politically. Israel seeks to continue its territorial expansion into Lebanon. Iran is eagerly exploiting the divide. The Israelis and their American supporters, fully aware that Trump is out for a separate peace, have entered a deeply satisfying season of lamentation now that the war they have for so long sought to manufacture is the fiasco I told them for decades it would be. For the first time that I can remember, the Israelis are widely understood as an obstacle to a peace that the right in America desires. 

It's just going to get worse for them from here on out. 

At the risk of stating the obvious—worth doing, since Trump is out to obscure the obvious, lest it cause a sustained market reaction he can't afford—the Memorandum of Understanding does not end the war. It inaugurates a 60-day period of negotiations, scheduled to begin tomorrow (we'll see), for which every difficult question deferred by the MOU, particularly the nuclear file, must be resolved. 

While extendable by mutual consent, the collapse of negotiations will mean Iran closes the Strait again, despite the risk of American bombing. If the Iranians perceive Israeli intransigence over the MOU's demand for "the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon," they will close the Strait. Should the Americans prove intransigent, including after any hypothetical deal is reached, Iran will—you guessed it—close the Strait. Welcome to a new regional reality. 

The terms of the MOU reflect how thoroughly the United States lost the war it and Israel initiated. Section Four stipulates: "The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final Deal." I don't presume to know the form that fulfillment of this clause will take, if it gets fulfilled at all. But the Trump administration has agreed in principle to a transformation of its military posture in the Middle East. 

Every previous retrenchment from the Middle East or South Asia, with the exceptions of the 2019-20 Taliban negotiations and the collapse of the 2011 U.S.-Iraq basing negotiations, have been unilateral American decisions. All of them in the past 15 years have come in the form of bivouacking to what was thought to be defensible positions arrayed against Iran. However much Section Four is compelled by accurate Iranian missile and drone fire cratering the airfields and blowing up the radar systems of the constellation of U.S. bases hosted by now-nervous Gulf and regional allies, it's an unambiguous retreat. This is categorically different and far worse for the U.S. than 2019-21 or 2011 the Afghanistan withdrawal negotiations with the Taliban. Iran is flexing a might that neither the Taliban nor post-Saddam Iraq could possess. 

On top of that, Section Seven pledges the U.S. to "terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran." Section Eleven obligates Washington to "make fully available for use, the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MoU." 

In other words, no more American economic or military coercion. That's how badly the U.S. lost. And if the United States needs a reminder, Iran can always close the Strait. 

Much as Trump needs for propaganda purposes to posture as if the Iranian leadership are moderates, they're anything but. Trump and Netanyahu killed the moderates and discredited any who remain. Now Iran is in the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that the United States has spent decades confronting by proxy. The IRGC and its allies are under pressure from even more hardline elements, who consider any deal with Washington to be capitulation, and who prefer to return to shooting. The current Iranian leadership will need to present Iran's diplomatic achievements as codifying its battlefield achievements. Either they'll produce that at the bargaining table or risk being marginalized by the ultras, just like the faction that negotiated with the Obama administration was. The easiest way to force the Americans back to the table? You guessed it: close the Strait of Hormuz. 

The Israelis say, and not incorrectly, that this pattern will continue as long as the Islamic Republic continues to exist. But they say that out of impotence—get a load of this scathing Ha'aretz piece—not strength. Their shot to overthrow the Islamic Republic failed, producing precisely the conditions of strength Iran now enjoys: the willingness in Teheran to use economic leverage never before exercised. No one in the present Iranian leadership is under any illusion it can trust anyone in the American leadership after seeing the successful rejectionism, particularly from Israel and its American allies, of the 2015 Iran deal. 

I'm laughing in particular at the rejectionist Mark Dubowitz at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. For a decade, Dubowitz insisted to credulous reporters that he merely sought a "better deal" with Iran while rejecting every step necessary to produce any deal. Now he's face to face with the bitter fruit of his rejectionism. How you like this deal, Marky? Did the war you wanted so badly not turn out the way you thought? 

Make no mistake, the regional status quo before February will not return. We will have to await the conclusion or collapse of U.S.-Iran negotiations to understand the form the new one will take. But it is one in which the U.S. has displayed its weakness against Iranian economic leverage. Iran will never give that leverage away. The MOU says Iran will permit passage through the Strait "with no charge for 60 days only." Whatever becomes of the nuclear file, Iran is going to make money from here on out over one of the world's most vital energy and commercial waterways. The precedent set here is epic. Even though the Strait of Hormuz isn't international waters, it has operated that way for as long as, well, Iran has been weak relative to Western naval powers. Free trade and "freedom of navigation" have always flowed from the barrel of a naval gun; but it's been so many hundreds of years since their imposition that they seem like the natural resting state of the world. No longer. 

The domestic political forces that will attempt a return to war are all aligned with Israel. That creates a tremendous anti-Zionist opportunity to exploit the wedges between the public, on both the left and the right, and the pro-Israel establishments in both parties. Anti-Zionist politics and anti-war politics are inextricable in the context of the Iran War. That can be parlayed into conditionalized or outright-nullified military aid to Israel—which, particularly for airpower sustainment, Israel cannot afford. The first place to apply that pressure is on the upcoming 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that ties the U.S. and Israeli defense industrial bases closer together. Israel, with only its genocidal and supremacist self to blame, has never been less popular in the United States. Anti-Zionists hold a winning hand here. It's time to play it for all it's worth—and that will also mean policing the movement against a Groyperist current of antisemitism that will seek to assert itself.

We should not expect consistent Strait closure. We should instead expect sporadic Strait closure. That is most likely to disrupt western economies and create pressure on western governments. What equilibrium will exist over the Strait of Hormuz will revolve around the imposition of maritime tolls. This is a historic thing for the United States to lose. What happens if other states, located at similar geographic chokepoints, decide to take up the toll-road precedent? Something we haven't seen since the rise of western liberalism and its handmaiden, the British Royal Navy. 

Finally, consider Josh Hart, the Knicks' swingman and 2026 NBA champion. According to clips from his recently recorded live podcast, Josh recalled watching the San Antonio Spurs celebrate victory over the Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. He considered that celebration so premature as to tell him that the Spurs would be food for the far more disciplined Knicks in the Finals: 

If everyone can forgive me this absolutely insane analogy, the Knicks here are Iran, the Spurs are Trump, and the premature celebration was Trump's "let the oil flow!" boast the moment when the MOU was signed—before any of the hard work begins. The smart set never thought the Knicks would get the chip, nor that Iran would win the war. They're going to have to taste defeat for a very long time. 

OUR LAST EDITION was about the ominous indictment of 15 people in Minnesota for protesting ICE. Since we published, a legal defense fund has been established for the defendants. You can donate to it here. 

PUNK ISLAND 2026, the all-day, all-ages music festival on Randalls Island, will now feature 100% more me. I'll be playing drums with the Funkrust Brass Band, set time TBD. The show is from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 27. Come say hi! 

THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY, June 30, at 7 p.m., I'll be at  the Urbane Arts Club in Brooklyn to launch The Midnight Special, the new book by Colin Asher, one of my oldest and best friends, about incarceration through the lens of popular/roots music. It's an excellent book and I'm honored to be interviewing Colin—singer of the teenage punk band I drummed in—about it. You should join us.