The Spectator
Sorry, but America's still holds all the cards
Roger Kimball
April 15, 2026
Negotiations.” Are you heartened or dismayed by that word? Those who remember or who have read up on the seemingly interminable Paris Peace Talks designed to bring an end to the Vietnam War have reason to be dubious. A negotiation, if it is to be successful, requires that both sides be candid and in earnest. The Vietnamese were not candid participants. They stalled. They prevaricated. They acted out.
It seems that the Iranians are hoping to reprise that melodrama. They will be profoundly disappointed. On the second weekend in April, Vice President J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met some 70 Iranian representatives in Islamabad to hammer out a peace deal. After a marathon 21-hour session, Vance emerged and told the press that, despite their best efforts, no deal was reached.
‘Iran played its biggest card and the main result is that the United States became the world’s emergency gas station and China’s cheap energy subsidy evaporated.’
A spokesman for the Iranians suggested that negotiations would continue. “Diplomacy never ends,” he said. Vance begged to differ. The Americans had made their “best and final offer.” The Iranians refused to give up their nuclear ambitions. That was non-negotiable. “The simple fact is,” Vance said after the talks ended, “we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.”
That assurance was not forthcoming. The Iranians also refused to respect free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. “The Iranian nation will not back down from its demands even an inch,” said one delegate. This was bad news, Vance admitted, but it was “bad news for Iran much more than it is for the United States of America.”
What happens now? The Americans headed home. Vance, Witkoff and Kushner represent the dovish side of the Trump administration. By sending them to conduct the negotiations, Donald Trump may have been extending an olive branch. Or perhaps, as one commentator suggested, he was following Sun Tzu. When peace is impossible, Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, you must first appear to seek it, so that when force follows, it is seen not as aggression but inevitability.
For decades, the Iranians have pretended that the Strait of Hormuz was their personal property. It is not. It is an international waterway. Until recently, some 20 percent of the world’s oil was carried through that 21-mile wide nautical corkscrew. Now Iran has begun imposing a “toll” of $2 million (payable in yuan, crypto or Iranian currency) per tanker. By threatening free passage through the Strait, the Iranians could cause economic and political chaos. All that is changing in real time.
As I write, hundreds of supertankers are changing course. They are leaving the Arabian Sea and heading to the Gulf Coast of the United States to fill up on American oil. A canny Venezuelan summarized the situation: “Iran played its biggest card and the main result is that the United States became the world’s emergency gas station and China’s cheap energy subsidy evaporated.”
Meanwhile, President Trump has called Iran’s bluff on the Strait. As of April 13 at 10 a.m. ET, US Central Command enforced a blockade “against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.” The Iranians had, in effect, already imposed a selective blockade, mining the Strait and then saying that they weren’t quite sure where all the mines were. The US
just blockaded its blockade while it searches for and destroys the Iranian mines. Should the Iranians fire at any vessel, President Trump warned, they will be “BLOWN TO HELL!”
He made two additional points. One, those vessels that had acquiesced to the Iranian extortion and paid the toll would be stopped. “I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.”
The second came in another Truth Social post. “At an appropriate moment,” President Trump promised, “our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!” Is this a reprise of his infamous post-Easter prediction that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”? How the Karens of both sexes loved to hate that statement! What a splendid opportunity to parade their more exquisite moral fiber – and at so little cost! Some of us thought the Babylon Bee saw more deeply into the matter. “World in shock,” that inestimable satirical venue blared, “as Trump takes seemingly extreme position to negotiate best possible deal.”
In any event, here we are in the aftermath of one of the most successful military operations in history. The Iranian war machine is in tatters. Its navy is sunk, its air force is nonexistent, ditto its air defense capacity. Many thousands of drones and ballistic missiles have been destroyed along with the factories in which they were produced. Most of Iran’s political and military leadership has been eliminated, as have scores of its top nuclear scientists. Elements of the repressive regime apparatus remain intact, but those are being actively challenged by an increasingly well-armed resistance. A side note for the Iranian delegates to the Islamabad negotiation: you were temporarily taken off the proscription list so that you could broker a peace deal. No deal was made. Now your exemption has expired. Watch your backs.
As for the Iranian people, they are pleased at the outcome. “We are relieved the ceasefire negotiations collapsed,” wrote one Iranian. “The spirit inside Iran and the genuine desires of the people stand totally against any truce or bargaining with this brutal regime – particularly figures like [Mohammad-Bagher] Ghalibaf, [leader of the delegation], a murdering psychopath who has the blood of countless Iranians on his hands.” In other words, the play is over. It remains only to strike the set and sweep the theater.
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