Rich Pawlak

U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives. Counterfactuals are impossible to prove but in other circumstances Iran's closure of Strait by brazenly attacking maritime traffic and neighbors' civilian infrastructure would likely have justified and led to a united, global response--like the U.S.-led naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq war, the global coalition that reversed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the multinational naval force enforcing UN sanctions in the Gulf in the 1990s, or the UN Security Council sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program in the 2010s--that led to the JCPOA. Instead US and other countries are now being forced to accept an outcome that would have been unthinkable before the war but seems to have become unavoidable because of it.