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Iran Believes It's Winning and Wants a Steep Price to End the War
(Wall Street Journal) Yaroslav Trofimov - Three weeks into the war, the Iranian regime is signaling that it believes it is winning and has the power to impose a settlement on Washington that entrenches Tehran's dominance of Middle East energy resources for decades to come. Despite optimistic U.S. and Israeli pronouncements, Iran has retained the ability to fire dozens of ballistic missiles, and many more drones, every day across the Middle East. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf's chokepoint, remains only possible with Iranian permission. Surging oil and gas prices are exacting growing pain on economies worldwide. Tehran has pledged that it will agree to a ceasefire only if Washington and the Gulf states pay a steep price. The spokesman of the Iranian Parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, Ebrahim Rezaei, said any talks with the U.S. are off the agenda as Tehran "focuses on punishing the aggressors." "This hubris is dangerous because they are not smart enough to understand that President Trump will never let them win. They don't understand how far he's willing to go," said Jason Greenblatt, who served as the White House special envoy for the Middle East. "The cost of not taking care of the problem will be many times more expensive over many, many years." Demands voiced by Iranian leaders in recent days as conditions for ending the war include massive reparations from the U.S. and its allies and the expulsion of American military forces from the region. They have also called for transforming the Strait of Hormuz - an international waterway where free navigation is guaranteed under international law - into an Iranian toll booth controlling 1/3 of the world's shipborne crude oil. It is hard to imagine the U.S. - or the Gulf states - accepting such an arrangement.