Donald Trump has blinked in accepting a two-week ceasefire deal with Iran, say defence experts.
Michael Clarke, a visiting Professor at King’s College London, said the US president had achieved none of his war aims.
But Trump is still already claiming “complete victory”.
Amid the fog of war and fury of Trump’s hyperbolic language, what is clear is that he has found an off-ramp, as he did over his failed bid to grab Greenland, to end the conflict, if he now wants to do so.
Follow the money, and the world is clearly relieved.
Stock markets jumped and the cost of oil plunged, reducing the likelihood of millions of people in Britain facing sky-rocketing energy bills this autumn.
But the economic war is far from over as Iran has shown it can control the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas is transported, and now wants to charge tankers a levy, possibly of $2 million (£1.5 million) per vessel to use it.
“Undoubtedly, President Trump has blinked,” said Prof Clarke.
“The Iranians made it pretty clear yesterday that they were going to tough this out,” he added on Sky News, despite Trump’s vow that Iran’s civilisation would “die” if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
It was a stratospheric threat which if he had followed through on it would almost certainly have been a war crime.
Even some Republicans in Washington were warning the president that it would be a “mistake”.
The announcement of a ceasefire deal by Trump late on Tuesday represented an abrupt turnaround from his extraordinary warning earlier.
It came after mediation efforts by Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and its Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council portrayed the deal as a victory over the US, claiming Trump had accepted Iran’s conditions for ending hostilities.
Trump later trumpeted what he called a “total and complete” victory.
“But the Americans have achieved none of their objectives,” said Prof Clarke.
“And the Strait of Hormuz which wasn’t a problem before, now is a permanent problem.”
The Tehran regime has not been toppled and might even have become more hardline.
The people of Iran are unlikely to seek to rise up any time soon to overthrow the regime hated by so many of them.
Iran retains its nuclear stockpile and programme, even if depleted by US and Israeli airstrikes.
While many of its missile sites and military production facilities have been destroyed, Tehran still has the power to project power far beyond its borders, through drone and missile strikes on Gulf nations, and terror attacks on the West.
General Sir Richard Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe for Nato, compared Trump’s move with Britain’s 1956 humiliation over the Suez Canal which was seized by Egypt.
He accused Trump’s inner circle of “completely underestimating” the threat and resistance posed by Iran.
“You now see the global superpower humbled by a tinpot theocratic dictatorship,” he told Times Radio.
“This is America’s Suez moment.
“The very fact that Trump is now accepting the Iranian 10-point proposals as a workable basis on which to negotiate says to me that he’s blinked, he’s backed off.”
Different versions of the 10-point plan are circulating, and America has a 15-point blueprint of its own.
But Iran’s plan clearly has key points which are unacceptable to America including paying for reparations in Iran, ending all conflicts in the Middle East which could mean withdrawal of US troops, allowing Tehran to charge a levy for tankers to use the Strait of Hormuz, and on the country’s nuclear programme.
Former UK National Security Adviser Lord Ricketts stressed that Iran had been “hugely damaged” economically and militarily.
“But strategically, I think it comes out stronger,” he told BBC radio.
“It’s still standing. It has shown the massive power it has of controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the vulnerability of the Gulf countries to attacks from Iran. None of those lessons are going to be unlearned.
“For America. I mean, Donald Trump, having not set any clear objective in the end, his objective for getting a ceasefire was the reopening of the strait, which was itself a consequence of the war that he chose to pursue.
“He has not got any agreed limits on missile capability, on the nuclear programme.”
Prof Clarke argued that there is now a “worse regime” in place in Tehran, after the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, and his replacement with his son Mojtaba, 56.
“What you had before was a religious dictatorship with a strong military arm, and that religious dictatorship has now been replaced by the strong military arm.
“So it’s now a military junta with a religious veneer...that leadership is tougher than the previous one, is more dominant over the population, so the population has got less chance of coming out on the streets now.”
The war, now in its sixth week, has claimed more than 5,000 lives in nearly a dozen countries, including more than 1,600 civilians in Iran, according to tallies from government sources and human rights groups.
If the conflict ends in coming weeks, the economic fallout will reduce significantly as tankers start travelling through the Strait of Hormuz again, the biggest ever oil supply shock eases, airlines reinstate cancelled routes and flights, and petrol and diesel prices fall.
America is less reliant on oil and gas from the Middle East than many other countries including in Europe.
Trump allies argue that it will now be up to European and other nations to work out a deal with Iran on fees, if any, for tankers to pass through the key strait.
“It’s pretty amazing, it’s up to the rest of the world to pick up the pieces and the mess after Trump has decided he’s going to wind down his military action,” said Lord Ricketts, a former head of the Foreign Office.
