Iran was bombed through late February and March. Its supreme leader was killed, its ports blockaded, its oil revenue cut to a trickle. By Trump’s own account the war is essentially won, and whoever ends up with Iran’s uranium will decide who really won it. Iran is losing, which is not the same as saying the regime has fallen or that Tehran has surrendered.

And yet, at the negotiating table, Iran keeps pressing one demand as if it were the one holding the advantage: the right to charge ships for crossing the Strait of Hormuz. To understand why a country in that position still acts this way, you have to see what it is actually holding.

What the blockade did to Iran

The damage to Tehran was real and it was deep. When Trump’s deadlines approached in April, the Iranian government asked civilians to form human chains around power plants, a gesture of pleading more than defense, an admission that the regime could not shield those plants by military means and was reduced to placing its own people in front of the bombs. It also turned to Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey to carry messages to Washington.

The American naval blockade that followed sent Iran’s oil exports into collapse, and the US Treasury secretary estimated the pressure could cost Tehran about $170 million a day in lost revenue. Washington has the power to choke Iran, it proved it, and Iran felt every dollar of it.

The one piece it has left

So the question becomes what Iran has left to bargain with. It still holds the uranium, and it still holds Hormuz, and the two are connected. Think of it as a chess position. Iran’s survival and its uranium are the king. The strait is the rook it has placed in front of that king, controlling the square the other side has to cross. As long as that rook stays where it is, the opponent cannot move in for the checkmate.

The uranium matters this much because it is the one thing that lets the regime tell its own people the war was not lost. Hand it over and the king falls, and with it any story Tehran could sell at home about having survived. Giving up the uranium would be the equivalent of losing the war outright.

This is not a grandmaster running a brilliant strategy. It is a player who has been stripped of almost everything, left with a single strong piece, and forced to use it for all it is worth. Iran is not trying to win the game anymore. It is trying to keep the game from ending.

That one piece has teeth. Iran has opened and closed the strait, or threatened to, again and again, and the oil market reacts every time. When the waterway shut in March, Brent crude surged past $120 a barrel and QatarEnergy declared force majeure on its exports.

Each time a deal to reopen the strait has come into view, crude has dropped sharply within hours. Iran cannot carry the war to American soil, but it does not have to. A single........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)