Provpnadvice.com – Fears are growing that the deaths of three U.S. servicemembers over a 24-hour period this weekend could push President Trump toward further escalation, even as both sides leave diplomatic doors open.
The servicemembers’ deaths bring the U.S. death toll in the Iran war to 17 since the conflict broke out in March. Since the U.S. military began daily waves of strikes against Iran on July 7, nearly 100 service members in the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) theater have sustained injuries, with 96 percent of them returning to duty, the Pentagon said Monday.
Vali Nasr, a Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said the deadly tit-for-tat “changes the political calculation for President Trump.”
“It puts its own pressure. And what if in the next few days another four or five are injured or killed, or let’s say a U.S. ship is hit? Each one of these then, basically, regardless of what one side or the other thought of the scale of the war or how much it can be controlled, then find their own logic in terms of where we go,” Nars, an expert on U.S.-Middle East relations, said in an interview with The Hill.
Trump’s former national security adviser Victoria Coates said the deaths of the servicemembers marked “a new phase” in the war.
“It’s a very sobering event but I think it brings back to us the seriousness of this engagement, the viciousness of the Iranian regime,” Coates said, referring to the Iranians as “increasingly desperate.”
The U.S. responded to the deaths of the servicemembers by launching strikes on Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks over the weekend.
Trump warned in a TruthSocial post on Monday that “every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said shortly after that Trump would attend the dignified transfer of the fallen service members at Dover Air Force Base.
Michael Rubin, a Pentagon official during the second Bush administration, said military deaths were a predictable outcome of war.
“It’s naive for the United States to go into a military conflict and believe that nobody is going to get killed. That said, it is jarring and it does give fodder for those surrounding Trump to say ‘you need to respond to this. Otherwise, Iran is going to repeat its actions,’” he said.
A White House official told The Hill that Trump is “focused” on making Iran pay for what they said were the country’s violations of the memorandum of understanding reached between the two countries and “acts of terrorism” in the Strait of Hormuz.
Still, Washington and Tehran appear to remain at least somewhat committed to finding a diplomatic solution.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters over the weekend that the door was still open to talks with Iran despite the spike in hostilities.
“We’ve tried multiple times with Iran, and we’ll continue to try. If that door opens, we’ll be happy to see it open,” Rubio said, speaking overnight at Joint Base Andrews.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told reporters at a press conference on Monday that the two countries were still exchanging messages through mediators.
“We have been informed by mediators, we have received messages, without going into details, but the main point is that the diplomatic apparatus has been active in recent days and ideas have been conveyed to us by certain mediators,” Baghaei said.
The U.S. military has continued to pound Iran, striking the country for the 10th consecutive day since the fragile ceasefire shattered. The U.S. forces have fired strikes from coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities, missile and drone storage sites to underground weapons storage spots, bridges and other infrastructure.
In response, Iran has retaliated against at least four countries in the region, targeting U.S. positions in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. Kuwait’s military said Monday morning its forces were working on intercepting Iranian munitions. Jordanian forces intercepted three incoming Iranian missiles on Monday, a Jordanian state broadcaster reported.
Coates noted that Iran’s ability to fire missiles on U.S. targets in the region has been significantly degraded since the beginning of the war earlier this year.
“If you look at the numbers, they’ve gone from well over a hundred at the beginning of the war now to single digits per day,” Coates said. “That is being systematically degraded. That damage will only get worse for them.”
“It doesn’t mean they won’t keep trying. It doesn’t mean we don’t have to be vigilant about it, but the risk is definitely being eaten away at,” she continued.
Nasr said the U.S. appears prepared for a prolonged campaign, but noted the pressure on the global economy could force another truce in the near future. It’s also possible the conflict escalates, even if that’s not Trump’s preference.
“This can get quite ugly as well,” he said, adding that “you could start wars, but you can’t necessarily control how they unfold.”
Apart from kinetic action, the U.S. is looking to squeeze Iran’s economy and oil exports by recently resuming the naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military has redirected seven commercial vessels and disabled one ship to prevent it from entering an Iranian port, Centcom said in an update on Monday.
However, Nasr was skeptical that the U.S. could break Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz without a “much larger war,” given how easily Tehran can rattle the ship owners and insurance companies with occasional strikes on cargo vessels.
“The only card the U.S. has is to say that I’m going to hurt you more,” he said. “But you’re dealing with an adversary whose basically position is: so long as I have a breath left in me, I’m going to also impose costs on you,” he said.
The resumed hostilities have already driven up gas prices back to $4 a gallon. While many Republicans want Trump to deliver a decisive blow to the Iranian regime, there are growing concerns over how the administration is handling the conflict and what it means for the midterms — especially with Americans growing increasingly pessimistic about the war.
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released last week found that only one in four voters said they think Trump’s negotiations with Iran will result in a better deal than the agreement reached with Iran during the Obama administration.
The same poll also found that 59 percent of Americans said they were not confident that Iran negotiations would bring down gas prices, while 66 percent said they did not believe negotiations would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
One potential bright spot for Trump in the region amid the Iran war could be U.S. relations with Lebanon. On Tuesday, Lebanese President Aoun will become the country’s first president to meet with a U.S president at the White House.
The leaders are set to discuss how to disarm the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The meeting comes roughly a week after President Trump met with Iraq’s news Ali al-Zaidi last week. Trump’s supporters argue the visits are indicative of changing Middle East that puts Iran on the backfoot.
“That’s a totally new Middle East,” Coates said. “We could get somewhere on Lebanon, which are not words I ever expected to be saying.”
