On June 17, President Donald Trump reached a preliminary agreement with Iran at the Palace of Versailles in France. Ahead of the deal, he and his aides had said the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened to shipping and that the United States would again allow Iran to sell oil, letting Tehran earn hundreds of billions of dollars.
Trump’s assumption was that Iran, under sanctions for years, would not want to lose that windfall once it began selling oil again, and would therefore keep the peace. “This is a very good deal for Iran. They are tired of being attacked again and again,” he had said.
It did not turn out that way. Within a month of the deal, three ships were attacked near the Strait of Hormuz. Trump then canceled the permission he had given Iran to sell oil, and the United States bombed more than 170 Iranian military sites over two nights. No schedule has been set for fresh talks between the two countries.
Both of Trump’s earlier plans – bombing and a deal – have thus failed, and it is unclear whether he has a new one. Washington is now returning to its earlier path of economic sanctions and military strikes. “If they attack ships, we will strike them hard,” US Vice President JD Vance said. But many experts ask why sanctions and strikes would work now when they did not before.
“We are now in a situation where no good strategy is visible,” former US diplomat Richard Haass said. The more the United States attacks Iran, he said, the more Iran strikes oil and energy installations in the Gulf – facilities Washington cannot fully protect. Trump had first thought bombing would change Iran’s government, then that it would force a surrender, Haass said; when neither worked, he tried to improve relations by letting Iran sell oil, which also failed.
Iran, too, is deeply divided politically. After Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a recent attack, many at his funeral were angry at the government; stones were thrown at Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was abused as a “compromiser,” with some even chanting for his death, and guards had to pull President Masoud Pezeshkian away from an angry crowd. Trump, however, rarely mentions these internal divisions, speaking as though a single group of leaders makes all of Iran’s decisions.
The United States still says it wants a peaceful solution and that talks could resume. But analysts say the problems are political rather than technical, and cannot be resolved by lower-level officials. One central dispute is Iran’s nuclear program: the new agreement did not clearly state whether Iran could keep its nuclear fuel or would have to send it elsewhere. Under the 2015 deal struck by the Obama administration, Iran gave up 97 percent of its nuclear fuel, and Trump does not want an agreement that delivers less than Obama’s.
Another major dispute is control of the Strait of Hormuz. The agreement said Iran would make its best effort to allow ships to pass safely, but the two sides understood the phrase differently: Washington believed Iran would simply ensure security, while Tehran believed it would decide the route ships used and could later charge for it. When the US Navy began routing ships through another passage near Oman, Iran fired on some vessels, and traffic through one of the world’s most important sea lanes fell sharply. An angry Trump declared the deal void, though his administration says it was Iran, not the United States, that broke it. Overall, the situation has returned to where it began – with Trump realizing that military power alone cannot solve the problem, and Iranians believing diplomacy is merely a way to buy time before another US or Israeli attack.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report