Nobody knows where the war between US-Israel and Iran will go this weekend. Not even American President Donald J Trump’s little grey cells. Or is he the master of mixed messaging and media manipulation, constantly changing and contradicting himself to suit the moment? Nobody knows.
That hasn’t stopped everyone around the dining table and in newsrooms across the world from trying to read his mind.
Never more so than this week when Trump announced a five-day pause on strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure, after threatening last Saturday to “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants if Tehran didn’t fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.
He did this because US had “…very good and productive conversations” with Iran “regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East…,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
The Iranians denied this immediately.
These contradictory positions instantly set off speculation. It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that few people, besides Trump faithfuls, believe what he says.
Why did Trump pause? What will happen after Friday when and if he takes his finger off the pause button? Will it be the beginning of the war or the beginning of a long drawn-out conflict?
Also read: US headlines offended Trump. He’d better not watch Indian news channels’ Iran war coverage
Can’t figure out Trump
Journalists and experts have been scratching their heads for answers. Most have admitted defeat: with Trump, there are no easy answers, only the Truth as announced through his social media posts and his (ad hoc) press conferences or soundbites.
For instance, what does a journalist say when Trump announces that “this war has been won…” even as reports emerge of 1,000-3,000 US troops heading to the Gulf: “Trump prepares to seize island with elite force,” wrote British newspaper The Times, referring to a “possible assault” on Iran’s Kharg Island, its main oil export facility. According to The Wall Street Journal, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken steps toward joining the war against Iran.
The confusion is compounded by lack of media access. In an article titled “Iran is the first war of the social media age. It’s a black box”, Bloomberg noted how Iran imposed an internet blackout, Gulf states banned filming “damage from the war”, Israel “expanded” restrictions on war reporting, and in the US, Trump “made contradictory statements. The result is difficulty in reporting what is happening…”
Also read: I&B’s TRP freeze can’t stop Indian news channels beating war drums—it’s ‘khooni takkar’
Indian papers on Iran war
Once Trump had announced his pause on Monday, the news media gave him what he likes best: the headlines.
In India, news channels’ were not always kind: “Trump blinks first,” announced CNN News 18. “Tehran tames Trump,” wrote Times Now. Zee News welcomed Trump’s decision “if he doesn’t change his mind,” said its evening anchor, sarcastically.
Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami insisted we follow the money: he claimed that Trump and his friends made money, that there was insider trading before Monday’s announcement and that the US President would go back to doing what he’d been doing—attacking Iran—by the weekend.
The English language daily newspapers on Tuesday felt Trump deserved pride of place on the front-page. However, there was a problem: They had to give prominence to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on the war in Parliament too. The Hindu solved this by carrying the PM’s speech on an inside page, while The Hindustan Times and The Times of India went with Trump as the lead and PM Modi just below.
The Indian Express was the most ingenious (and perhaps diplomatic) by giving a six-column banner headline to Trump’s pause while making Modi’s Lok Sabha comments the accompanying story.
In terms of the Indian point of view, newspapers and opinion writers have focussed on India’s energy dependency on different Gulf countries, now engulfed in the Gulf War 3.0 — so much so that we could recite it like the table of Twos: Nearly half of India’s crude oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz; approximately 50 per cent of its crude oil imports come from West Asia (primarily Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait), while over 90 per cent of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports transit the strait.
And there have been plenty of expert opinions on the war, Trump and the war, war and oil, but an excellent overview is by Shyam Saran in Business Standard: “The Gulf war is now a global crisis: Russia, China emerge as winners.”
The Times of India, in an editorial Modi as Mediator’, suggested the Indian PM play a hand in negotiating peace: “…whether he’s a good choice as a mediator, is a simple question. He is.”
When is the war ending?
Since Donald Trump is as different from one day to the next, the international news media devotes much of its energy to looking at possible reasons and outcomes of his words and actions.
They were unanimous in viewing Trump’s Monday words and actions as, in Al Jazeera’s phrase, “a tactical pause”.
As The New York Times trenchantly put it in “Trump’s Ultimatum to Iran Was Almost Up. Then He Found an Offramp”: “For Mr. Trump, the prospect of negotiations allows him to buy time to try reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to extract himself from a box of his own construction.”
The Economist noted that “On Monday Mr Trump did the rounds of American business television channels… Mr Trump’s focus seems increasingly to be on averting a global energy crisis for which he would be blamed”.
Most reports confirmed that talks of some kind between the US and Iran were ongoing.
In ‘Pak steps up to as go-between in Trump’s Iran crisis’, Financial Times was one of the first to report Pakistan’s role in facilitating US talks with Iran, citing “Two officials familiar with the discussions…”
Nikkei Asia went on to explain why Pakistan, and what it stands to gain, in “Why Pakistan could mediate between US and Iran: 4 things to know.”
Trump’s pause allowed for a US military expansion in the region, as noted above. The Washington Post wrote: “US troop build ups raise specter of battle for Hormuz’’ and many news media outlets agreed that securing Hormuz had become the primary goal for the war for US.
They also agree that Israel’s keenness to continue hammering Iranian military positions, pressure from Saudi Arabia on Trump to fight on, and Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz were reasons for “a resumption of hostilities’ (CNN International).
So how and when might it all end? The Telegraph (UK) said this: “For as long as Iran’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz remains in place, Trump cannot end this campaign…. Breaking Iran’s grip on the strait by force would require a protracted war and perhaps the deployment of US ground forces. Trump may get a prolonged war of necessity with Iran whether he wishes it or not.”
Lastly, if this is a social media war, Iran is putting up a strong fight: have you seen its Lego social posts satirising Trump or the highly imaginative AI film ‘Iran War: The Movie’ with Liam Neeson as Donald Trump, Ian Mckellen as the now-deceased Ayotallah Khameini with a cameo from Judi Dench?
A must watch.
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)