Blazingcatfur

What now after the collapse in peace talks between America and Iran in Pakistan? The gap between the two sides on the two critical issues – Iran’s nuclear programme and the Strait of Hormuz – proved too big in the end. Is it back to war? What does the failure to reach a deal mean for the fragile, two-week ceasefire the two sides agreed? Whose fault is it that the discussions, which lasted for a marathon 21 hours, broke down? So far, there is little in the way of concrete facts about what exactly happened in Islamabad but the blame game is already under way.

There is, in Washington, a recurring temptation: that the Middle East can be managed, contained, adjusted at the margins through economic pressure, surgical strikes, and the careful selection of supposedly “acceptable” figures drawn from within the very systems that generated the chaos. US President Donald Trump, whose instincts have often broken with this practice, now appears perilously close to reproducing it. The issue is not a lack of clarity— he understands the nature of the threat far better than most Western leaders — but the potential failure of an operation halted midway. Regimes are destabilized but left standing, Jihadist ecosystems are weakened but not dismantled. Recycled figures from the same ideological mold are repackaged as partners. This sadly makes for half-finished wars presented as advisability.