WSJ: Qatar’s Still Trying to Get the MOU Band Back Together

Will they succeed? This band already has more reunions than Motley Crüe and Black Sabbath combined. Unfortunately, it also has had less success than the Wilton Place Street Band. 

On several occasions over the past six months, Qatar has attempted to intercede in the war between Iran and the US, as have Pakistan, Turkey, and occasionally Egypt. On several occasions, Donald Trump trusted these partners to guarantee Iranian compliance with terms in ceasefire agreements. And on every occasion, Trump got burned by Iran’s refusal to comply with those terms, even while the mediators insisted that Iran’s supposed “moderates” really want to negotiate. 

Now that the US has re-embarked on a full strategic offensive, Qatar wants to get Trump back to the table. The Wall Street Journal reports that Qatar is telling the US that Iran wants to talk … again:

Mediators were working to push the U.S. and Iran into a new ceasefire Monday, fearful the two foes could settle into a pattern where they keep conflict below the level of all-out war but disrupt regional economies indefinitely and run the risk of a miscalculation that escalates the fighting.

The efforts come after the U.S. carried out a ninth straight night of attacks, Iran retaliated against Arab allies including Kuwait and Bahrain, and another vessel in the Strait of Hormuz was hit by a projectile that started a fire and led the crew to abandon ship.

Qatar has floated the idea of a 10-day ceasefire and an end to restrictions on shipping in the strategic waterway, mediators said. It wasn’t clear whether either side was ready to accept a new halt to the fighting after the preliminary peace deal they signed in mid-June collapsed earlier this month, they said. 

The Qataris have told Marco Rubio that the government in Tehran’s ready to talk, but Rubio doesn’t sound enthusiastic:

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he was leaving the Philippines that Iran has signaled through intermediators [sic] it wants to talk. Esmail Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said mediators were actively trying to prevent further escalation and had conveyed various proposals to Iran, whose diplomats would work to see if there could be a solution.

The intermediaries are the Qataris, who once again see their usefulness nearly at an end. Qatar has profited immensely, both diplomatically and financially, as intermediaries between the US and Iran as well as between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah. If the IRGC regime collapses in Tehran and a popular republic emerges to replace it, the Qataris suddenly become superfluous. They want to keep their rice bowls on the table and filled regularly through Western frustration with the mullahs. 

The absence of the Turks and Pakistanis in this scenario may just be an oversight by the WSJ, but may also reflect a resignation by the other erstwhile intermediaries. Pakistan has especially gotten embarrassed by Iran’s refusals to negotiate in good faith; Turkey wants its F-35s. The Israelis remain focused on Lebanon, and mostly maintained their operational pitch even while Donald Trump castigated them for making it more difficult to negotiate the MOU. All of these entities may be attempting to pull Trump and the US in different directions sotto voce, but the lack of public pressure from Turkey and Pakistan after nine days of full-blown US offensive action seems very notable. 

Will the Qataris get Trump to return to an MOU-esque ceasefire? Perhaps, but as Middle East analyst Erfan Fard wrote yesterday, the nature of the action now points very clearly at a different objective. Despite Trump’s dodges on the point, the attacks now aim at strategic collapse of the regime rather than just forced compliance with Pax Americana:

The objective is no longer limited to degrading Iran’s military capabilities; it now appears increasingly focused on eroding the regime’s capacity to govern, sustain logistics, and finance its war effort.

The selection of targets – including bridges, ports, electrical infrastructure, and transportation networks – signals a transition from a conventional military campaign to a broader strategic effort aimed at disrupting the state’s ability to function.

From an intelligence perspective, the evolving target set indicates that Washington has redefined the regime’s center of gravity. Missile bases and IRGC command facilities remain important, but they are no longer the sole priority.

Oil export infrastructure, transportation corridors, southern ports, and the national energy network have become critical components of the campaign.

And it may already be changing the calculus:

As long as the coercive institutions remain cohesive and the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps continues to view its survival as inseparable from that of the regime, Tehran may retain the ability to prolong its rule despite severe economic deterioration.

The decisive factor is not the destruction of military facilities but the gradual loss of the state’s capacity to govern. Should prolonged power outages, disruption of ports, declining oil exports, fiscal exhaustion, and the inability to finance state institutions persist, the regime’s relationship with its military establishment and regional proxy networks would inevitably weaken.

This is what the Qataris fear. There is a legitimate and rational fear of being on the border of a systemic state collapse and the bloodbath that may well follow it. The bigger problem for Qatar is that a functioning, secular, and responsible government in Tehran would make their emirate irrelevant except for the energy production it can add to the world supply. A well-functioning Iran might produce exports that would make Qatar even more irrelevant. 

The Qataris have good reason to get the US and Iran back to status quo ante, albeit without the nuclear-weapons development program that finally provoked this war. Trump should look elsewhere for his counsel when it comes to Iran, to the allies who turned out to be right all along about the regime: Israel and the Saudis. 

Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all. 

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