War(s).
"Rogue state" joins the club.
“Make the blurbs shorter.” — James Walker, distant cousin.
1. Institute for the Study of War Briefing (Iran):
Iran’s latest proposal in negotiations offers no concessions and represents an Iranian effort to end the war on Tehran’s terms. The proposal illustrates that Iran’s current decisionmaker, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Major General Ahmad Vahidi, believes Iran is winning despite the serious damage Iran has suffered. The United States remains opposed to the most recent April 26 proposal because it failed to address both Iran’s nuclear program and enabled Iran to assert “control” over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s growing challenges in storing and exporting its oil could be one mechanism by which Iranian calculations change in negotiations. Iran also faces significant pressure on other parts of its economy. It is unclear, however, whether this pressure on Iran’s economy will cause Vahidi and his inner circle to make concessions to the United States.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf appears to be trying to retain political support and remain a key actor in negotiations despite prior signs of opposition from Vahidi and his inner circle.
Infighting among hardline factions has escalated into a public media confrontation amid intra-regime competition over negotiations. Intra-regime power struggle between pragmatic hardliners and ultrahardliners indicates the absence of a decisive central arbiter, which has allowed factional disputes to unfold publicly.
Iran continues to cooperate with key US adversaries, such as Russia and China, as it prepares for a potential resumption of conflict with the United States and Israel. (Source: understandingwar.com. Richard Haass and I discussed the status of the war in the most recent episode of ‘Alternate Shots’.)
2. President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said, targeting the regime’s coffers in a high-risk bid to compel a nuclear capitulation Tehran has long refused. In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said. Yet continuing the blockade also prolongs a conflict that has driven up gas prices, hurt Trump’s poll numbers and further darkened Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections. It has also caused the lowest number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began. Since ending the major bombing campaign in an April 7 cease-fire, Trump has repeatedly walked back from escalating the conflict, opening space for diplomacy after earlier threatening to destroy the entirety of Iranian civilization. But he still wants to tighten the grip on the regime until it caves to his key demand: dismantling all of Iran’s nuclear work. (Source: wsj.com)
3. War has imposed a heavy cost on Iran’s economy: more than a million people out of work, soaring food prices and a prolonged internet shutdown that has slammed online businesses. The question is how much more pain Iran’s leaders are willing to tolerate as they try to negotiate a favorable end to the war. Talks between the U.S. and Iran have stalled. American officials are betting that Iran will soon crack because of the deepening economic crisis. Iran is betting the U.S. will crack first and end its blockade of Iranian ports to calm global markets and bring down American gasoline prices. To contain the economic fallout, the Iranian government has raised wages, subsidized basic goods and handed out cash to the poor. But authorities are confronting a level of hardship not seen in decades, according to residents. (Source: wsj.com)
4. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which not only oil and natural gas but also fertilizer is shipped, is hitting global food production, particularly in poor countries where farmers are more vulnerable to sudden cost increases. That is raising fears of prolonged food price rises and could even lead to shortages if farmers abandon their fields or use less fertilizer. The crisis is unspooling across Asia and the developing world. The price of Vietnamese rice exports, for instance, has surged as production costs rise. In Thailand, a big seafood exporter, fishing fleets have been idled because of rising fuel costs. Much of the Philippines’s fuel is imported from other Asian countries that themselves rely on oil from the Middle East. “Developing countries generally, and the Philippines specifically, have some serious vulnerabilities as a result of the Middle East crisis and the energy supply shock,” said Andrew Jeffries, the Philippines country director for the Asian Development Bank. “People don’t have the incomes to absorb it, as compared to the developed world.” There are political implications, too. Rising food prices could reignite protests in countries such as the Philippines, America’s closest ally in Southeast Asia, or Indonesia, which just agreed to a major defense partnership with the U.S. (Source: wsj.com)
5. The United Arab Emirates said it would leave OPEC, dealing a heavy blow to the oil cartel as the war in Iran scrambles alliances and investment priorities among the world’s top oil producers. The sudden departure of OPEC’s third-biggest producer further weakens a bloc that despite producing up to four out of every 10 barrels of oil pumped worldwide has been hobbled by internal disunity and the rise of American oil output. The war in Iran has piled on more pressure by exacerbating rifts among the Arab countries at the core of the group and by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which the group’s biggest producers export most of their oil, making it impossible for the group to influence the market during its biggest supply shock. The U.A.E. is in a relatively privileged position with the ability to circumvent the blockage in the strait by routing more than half of its oil exports across the country. (Source: wsj.com)
6. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off a significant source of liquefied natural gas, but the United States, the biggest exporter of the fuel, is unlikely to pick up that slack because it has no spare capacity. A two-month pause on L.N.G. shipments from Qatar, a Persian Gulf country near the strait, has caused prices to surge across Europe and Asia. That is spreading significant economic pain because places like Italy, Taiwan and South Korea depend on the fuel to produce electricity, heat homes and run industrial plants…The United States is building several export terminals where natural gas is chilled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, turning it into liquid that can be loaded onto oceangoing tankers. But these projects, most of them in Texas and Louisiana, cost billions of dollars and take several years to complete. (Source: nytimes.com)
7. Institute for the Study of War Briefing (Ukraine):
Ukrainian forces struck the Tuapse Oil Refinery overnight on April 27 to 28, the third strike against the refinery in April so far.
Ukrainian forces recently advanced in the Kharkiv and Orikhiv directions.
Russian forces launched 123 drones toward Ukraine overnight. (Source: understandingwar.com)
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