Weekend Edition.
The Proud Boys won.
1. The Wall Street Journal:
Fighting between the U.S. and Iran intensified overnight, with the American military hitting a wide range of new targets and Tehran claiming it had launched attacks on several of Washington’s allies in the region.
The skirmishes represented a higher level of military activity between the two foes since a ceasefire went into effect last month and raised hopes of a lasting peace deal. President Trump declared the ceasefire over last week after Iran fired on ships heading through the Strait of Hormuz.
Now the two sides are locked in a stalemate over the strait, a waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil flowed before Iran effectively shut it down during the war. Trump administration officials have grown pessimistic about ongoing negotiations with Tehran and frustrated about Iran’s continued attacks on Hormuz shipping. On Friday, senior officials told reporters that a nuclear deal is increasingly unlikely and warned that there would be serious consequences if Iran didn’t guarantee safe passage of ships.
The White House wanted Iran to issue a statement declaring that the Strait of Hormuz is open and that it will stop attacking commercial vessels. Instead, the Revolutionary Guard declared the strait closed and took aim at yet another ship seeking to transit the waterway near the coast of Oman, a route that has been cleared and promoted by the U.S. military. (Source: wsj.com)
2. The Wall Street Journal:
For the Iranian regime, keeping a chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz has turned out to be more important than the tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief from the Trump administration.
That is because Tehran is playing a long game. Iranian officials believe the country has finally emerged as a regional hegemon, after the U.S. and Israel failed to achieve their main goals in the war they unleashed in February. And, as long as Tehran cements this new status by securing permanent arrangements to control the vital waterway—and dominating the Persian Gulf economies along with it—then the rest, including American sanctions relief, will eventually follow.
“This is the only way: recognize the new Iranian order in the Strait of Hormuz,” warned Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission. “The Strait of Hormuz will only open with ‘Iranian arrangements,’ not American threats,” added the parliament’s speaker and the lead negotiator with the U.S., Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
