Yesterday afternoon, the top story at bloomberg.com was headlined: “US Touts Progress in Iran as Trump Floats ‘Winding Down’”. The top story at wsj.com (The Wall Street Journal’s website) was headlined: “Iran Believes It’s Winning—and Wants a Steep Price to End the War”. Both headlines were (and are) accurate. The question is: Which one will turn out to be true?
To overstate matters a bit, it all comes down to the Strait of Hormuz. If it remains closed, the damage to the global economy escalates and Iran’s leverage grows. If it’s re-opened, financial markets relax (somewhat), the global economy is less disrupted, Iran’s leverage is diminished.
How does the U.S. achieve the latter result? One answer: Execute the Haass plan. This from Richard’s newsletter of 18 March:
(T)he time has come to consider an alternative approach to opening the Strait. The United States (ideally with the political and military support of allies in the region, Europe, and Asia, which would likely be forthcoming given the extent of their energy insecurity) should consider adopting a policy toward the Strait of Hormuz that could be summarized as “Open for All or Closed to All.”
Under such a policy, the United States and its partners would announce that no tanker from Iran would be permitted to reach its destination in another country until Iran backed off its threats to and attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Strait. In other words, Iran cannot pick and choose who gets the region’s oil and who does not. (Source: richardhaass.substack.com)
This episode revolves around four questions: (1) Who is winning?, (2) Who is not losing?, (3) Is there an “exit ramp”? and (4) “Time is on whose side?”
Listen in:
(‘Alternate Shots’ with Richard Haass and John Ellis. Episode 21. Produced by Dale Eisinger. Recorded 21 March 2026. 27 minutes long. )
If you prefer, you can listen to Episode 21 (and all previous episodes) on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and most of the other major podcast platforms).