Who wants what from the Iran war?

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Frank GardnerSecurity correspondent, Riyadh

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(L-R) US President Donald Trump, Iran’s leader Mojtaba Khamenei, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Most people, although not everybody, want this war to end as quickly as possible. But on what terms? That is where positions diverge.

The United States

President Donald Trump’s war aims have been somewhat opaque, appearing to vacillate between a simple curtailment of Iran’s nuclear programme, to capitulation to all US and Israeli demands, to the total collapse of the Islamic Republic regime.

So far, Iran has neither capitulated nor collapsed. But its military has been severely weakened by 16 days of relentless precision bombing.

Indirect talks between the US and Iran in Geneva in February, mediated by Oman, were making progress on the nuclear file.

The Omanis say Iran was prepared to make major concessions that offered significant reassurance Tehran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon.

What Iran was not prepared to discuss was curtailing or cancelling its ballistic missile programme nor its support for proxy groups around the region, like the Houthis in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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In an ideal world for Washington, and for many of its allies, this war ends with the collapse of the rule of the ayatollahs, to be swiftly replaced by a peaceful, democratically elected government that no longer poses a threat to its people or its neighbours. But as of Monday, that shows no sign of happening.

A next best result for the US would be if a severely damaged Islamic Republic were to then modify its behaviour, stop mistreating its citizens and end its support for radical militias in the region. Again, this looks unlikely after Iran chose as its new supreme leader, a man most likely to irritate Washington in the form of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of his late, hardline predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

With rising global oil prices, a partially blocked Strait of Hormuz and increasing unease back home that America is getting sucked into yet another costly Middle Eastern conflict, there will be mounting pressure on President Trump to call off this war. But it will be hard for him to present it as anything other than a failure if the regime in Tehran survives, unchastened and defiant.

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Iran

Getty Images

The US and Israel have launched thousands of strikes on Iran

Iran wants the war to stop as quickly as possible but not at any price - ie not if it means caving in to all Washington’s demands.

It knows that it probably has the “strategic patience” to outlast Trump in this war, plus it has geography on its side.

Iran has the longest coastline of any Gulf state and it has the capacity to threaten shipping - which in normal times carries around 20% of the world’s oil supplies - indefinitely as it passes through the narrow chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US president’s call on countries to come and help cope with the consequences of a war he co-started with Israel is being met with reluctance. The UK, Europe and other countries are wary of putting their navies in harm’s way, escorting commercial vessels through the Strait, when they did not support this war in the first place.

Officially, Iran says the war must end with a cast-iron guarantee that it won’t be attacked again and it also wants war reparations for the billions of dollars’ worth of damage done by US and Israeli airstrikes. It probably knows it won’t get either. But Iran’s Islamic Republic leadership and its Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) only have to survive this conflict to be able to present it to their people and the world as a victory.

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Israel

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Of the three combatant nations – the US, Iran and Israel – the Israelis seem to be in the least hurry to end this war. They want to see as much as possible of Iran’s ballistic missile stocks destroyed, along with storage depots, command and control centres, radar sites and IRGC bases.

All of these, of course, can be rebuilt when the shooting stops so Israel wants Iran to understand there is a severe cost in doing so, namely that the Israeli Air Force is quite capable of returning and bombing them again in a few months’ time.

Israel sees Iran’s missiles and its suspect nuclear programme as an existential threat.

Iran has – or at least had, up until this war started - a highly-developed homegrown missile and drone industry. (It gave its ally Russia the Shahed drones that have pummelled Ukraine).

Iran has also been enriching uranium to 60% purity, far beyond the level needed for civil nuclear power.

Taken together, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees these twin threats as something Israel cannot live with.

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The Gulf States

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The Gulf Arab states – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman – thought they could live with the Islamic Republic just across the water. Until now.

They are furious that despite declining to back this war on Iran they have still been coming under almost daily bombardment from Iran’s drones and missiles.

In the first few hours of this Monday alone, the Saudi defence ministry reported it had intercepted more than 60 projectiles aimed at its territory.

“A red line has been crossed”, one Gulf official told me. “There is zero trust between us and Tehran and we cannot have normal relations with them after this”.

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Israel

Oman

United Arab Emirates

Iran

Kuwait

Iran-US relations

Qatar

Saudi Arabia

Bahrain

United States

Iran war