The US-Israel war against the Republic of Iran is at an attritional stage. In this theatre of conflict, the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint is again critical: the US gambit is that its chokehold, along with sanctions, imposes such economic costs on the Islamic Republic that it will accept US terms. 

Tehran, on the other hand, appears to calculate that its continued resistance to Washington will raise the same costs for the US through the global economy. 

In the interregnum, there are back-and-forth parleys between the two countries and some skirmishes. The skirmishes reflect each side’s power capabilities and resolve. 

But the question is: at this stage of the war, what is the core sticking point?

It appears that the nub of the issue for both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the US is the nature, form, and pattern of the exit from the war. 

Within this dynamic, each side wants to appear as a winner, if not a loser, of and from the war. The proverbial name of the game, then, is perceptual. 

How, the question is, can each side clamber out of the perceptual morass?

In the whole saga, neither country’s establishments are central. There are multiple cross-cutting pulls, pressures, power centers, turf issues, and ideologies at work in both countries’ establishments. 

This renders their significance rather moot in ending the war, but each establishment is ultimately answerable to the captains of the ship: Ayatollah Syed Mujtaba Khamenei in the case of Iran and Donald Trump in the US. 

From being mocked, called names, and subjected to attempts at discrediting, Syed Khamenei has emerged........

© Kashmir Observer