The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

James discusses on Radio Islam this week's rollercoaster in the Iran war.

There is one thing US President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders agree on. They both religiously adhere to the principle that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

With an unprecedented eight teams competing, the Middle East casts its long shadow over this year's World Cup; not always for the right reasons. The shadow may not always cloud the pitch, even though several teams could spring a surprise. Think of Tunisia in 2022 beating France, Saudi Arabia defeating Argentina, and Morocco reaching the semi-finals in the Qatar World Cup, the first African team to make it to the final four. In this year's tournament, imagine the United States, the first World Cup organiser to host a team from a country with which it is at war, playing Iran at some point during the tournament, or Iran encountering Qatar or Saudi Arabia, countries it has bombed during the Iran war and continues to threaten.

James discusses the Iranian-Israeli tit-for-tat, the Lebanon war, and US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war on CNA938.

Like the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and last June's 12-day Israel-Iran war, this year's Iran war has reshaped the Islamic Republic. The Iran-Iraq war fuelled the Islamic Republic's initial embrace of nationalism at the expense of the revolutionary zeal that drove the 1979 toppling of the Shah and the Republic's first 18 months. This and last year's war cemented the transition and emboldened a new generation of confident leaders who were formed in the war of the 1980s and have since proven themselves in their ability to prepare for and stand their ground against overwhelming US military power. Their newly found confidence frames the Islamic Republic's strategy and goals in negotiations to end the war, including their insistence that Iran will retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, even if that primarily means the ability to disrupt and deny free passage through the waterway rather than absolute control.

James discusses this week's Iran war developments, Gulf splits on post-war relations with Iran, and the Middle East's shadow hanging over the 2026 World Cup.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stands accused of waging war in his personal rather than Israel's national interest. Mr. Netanyahu's critics argue that had the prime minister focussed on Israel's national interest rather than his personal concerns, Israel would have long sought to end hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon and, perhaps, lobbied US President Donald Trump less hard for military action against Iran. Focusing on Israel's national interests would also have spared Israel the reputational, diplomatic, and economic damage it has suffered that will take years to repair and require significant political and policy changes. Analysts define Mr. Netanyahu's personal interests as wanting to escape conviction in a corruption trial, betting on war boosting his lagging chances in elections scheduled for October, and ensuring that his legacy is one of military victory and enhanced Israeli security rather than responsibility for failures that led to Hamas's devastating October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and presiding over the worst reputational crisis in Israel's history. Polls suggest that most Israelis distrust Mr. Netanyahu, even if they empathise with his security and military policies. To be fair, Mr. Netanyahu's policies are as much informed by his personal interests as they are by his political and ideological beliefs. Even so, Mr. Netanyahu's ability to prioritise his personal ambitions raises multiple questions that are not simply answered by the fact that Messrs. Trump, his predecessor, Joe Biden, and other Western leaders have given the prime minister a long leash. Some of these questions go to the heart of problems with democracy that are accentuated by the rise of a critical mass of illiberal and autocratic world leaders, who have hollowed out democratic institutions or reinforced existing autocratic structures. Others have more to do with Israel's almost 60-year occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, the country's education system, including the prepping of youth for military service, refusal to acknowledge that nations and people have equal rights, and the ability to flout international law and moral and ethical norms in the name of national security.

A US-Iranian tit-for-tat in the Strait of Hormuz amounts to a game of chicken that risks spinning out of control. US President Donald Trump's impatience with the grinding process of indirect negotiations to reopen the strategic Strait and end the Iran war, and the president's insistence, amplified by senior administration officials, that the United States could revert to military action, enhances the risk. “It's time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You've been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!” Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social platform, addressing Iran. The tit-for-tat is as much a calibrated effort by both the United States and Iran to frame the exchanges as not rising to the level of a breach of the fragile ceasefire as they are a window on what a revival of hostilities might look like.

James argues on TRT World that for Iran and the US a Lebanon ceasefire is not just about Hezbollah. It's also about leverage in US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war.

Disregard the US, European, Iraqi, and Gulf states' rejection of Iran's insistence that it will control the Strait of Hormuz no matter what. The fact of the matter is that Middle Eastern states are factoring in permanent Iranian control into their longer-term thinking about shaping the region's post-war balance of power and security architecture, even though they may not admit as much publicly. Already, the public US, European, and Gulf state consensus rejecting Iran's imposition of fees on ships transiting the Strait appears to be fracturing.

US-Iranian negotiations to end the Iran war have evolved into a performative tug-of-war over who has the longer breath rather than an all-out effort to resolve differences, given that neither US President Donald Trump nor Iran wants a full resumption of hostilities. Mr. Trump admitted as much during this week's public Cabinet meeting that resembled a sycophantic choir praising the conductor. The meeting enabled Mr. Trump to showcase his perceived achievements and shore up support for his desperate search for an off-ramp that would allow him to declare victory in the war credibly and would justify his 2018 abrogation of the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran's nuclear programme. The abrogation put the United States on a slippery slope, facilitated by President Joe Biden during his interregnum between the two Trump administrations, that ended up in the February 28 US-Israeli assault on Iran.

For Iran, control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz is about dominance in a post-Iran war era, in which the Gulf is looking at an adapted, if not new, regional security architecture.

James argues on TRT that the United States and Iran are nowhere close to an agreement to end the Iran war.

Three months into the Iran war, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have largely been absent, depriving Iran of an opportunity to increase further pressure on Saudi Arabia, global energy markets, and international trade. The Houthis could have bolstered Iranian leverage by disrupting shipping in the narrow Bab al-Mandab waterway, which connects the Suez Canal with the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Some ten per cent of global trade passes through the strategic waterway. The disruption would have come on top of Iran's throttling of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world's oil flowed before the war and the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. It would also have threatened Saudi Arabia's efforts to enhance existing and develop alternative export routes that circumvent the Strait of Hormuz by directing oil and trade to the kingdom's Red Sea coast. The Houthis have good reason to hold their fire and limit their support for Iran to statements and the symbolic firing of a few missiles in the direction of Israel in the first month of the war.

James discusses on Radio Islam this week's Middle East developments.

A resumption of Iran war hostilities could jeopardise Pakistani mediation and turn the South Asian nation into a combatant as differences between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates shape Gulf relations with the sub-continent.

James discusses on TRT World the Iran war's economic fallout in the Gulf states

The Gulf states' divergent responses to the Iran war are part of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)'s DNA. Founded in Abu Dhabi in 1981 by the region's six monarchies, the GCC aimed to be a hub for military coordination, intelligence sharing, and economic integration in response to the 1979 anti-monarchical Islamic revolution in Iran. The monarchies established the GCC on the back of their support for the 1980 Iraqi invasion of revolutionary Iran to the tune of US$60 billion. The GCC's creation also followed the Shah of Iran's seizure a decade earlier of three islands at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, which the United Arab Emirates claimed as it declared its independence in the wake of Britain's withdrawal from the region. The GCC has come a long way since its early days, when Emirati merchant families feared that they would be marginalised by their Saudi and Kuwaiti competitors who were wealthier, more powerful, and more numerous, even if the rivalry has more recently become fiercer and more pronounced as a result of diametrically opposed regional policies and the Iran war.

A US and Bahraini draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a halt to Iran's throttling of traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz has spotlighted US-Chinese disagreements rather than the consensus President Donald Trump claims he achieved in this week's talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. A Security Council vote on the resolution would be a litmus test of the degree to which Messrs. Trump and Xi had reached a meeting of the minds in Beijing on Iran that went beyond platitudes on which both men could agree and would camouflage their differences.

James discusses the struggle for the Strait of Hormuz, US President Donald Trump's visit to China, US-Gulf relations, and the return of sectarianism on Radio Islam.

US President Donald Trump has rejected Iran's response to peace talks as tensions rise ahead of his trip to China, while global powers prepare military plans to restore trade routes through the Strait of Hormuz. CNA938's Daniel Martin speaks with James M. Dorsey, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.

The United States and Iran are closer to a deal that would end the Iran war. James M. Dorsey tells TRT World why that does not mean that they are close to reaching agreement.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on thin ice when he declared this week on the White House press podium that “Operation Epic Fury is concluded.” Mr. Rubio's reference to the codename of the two-month-old US-Israeli assault on Iran echoes George W. Bush's 2003 Iraq war “Mission Accomplished” declaration, eight years before the president withdrew US forces from the country. Even so, both the United States and Iran are, at least for now, careful to ensure that a four-week-old shaky ceasefire remains in place. The question is for how long. None of the combatants -the United States, Israel, and Iran - likely want the war's lay of the land to settle into either a slow-grinding war of attrition or a long-term no war-no-peace situation.

The good news is that Iran's latest ceasefire proposal apparently includes elements that US President Donald Trump finds worthwhile considering, even if he insists that it doesn't go far enough. The bad news is that the US and Iranian positions remain so far apart that a degree of renewed military conflict seems inevitable.

The gap between the US and Iranian positions is widening. Whatever understandings existed have vanished. Driving the widening of the gap are US inflexibility, the increased influence of Iranian hardliners due to the war, and the expectation that domestic and economic pressure will force the other to blink first. The question is whether the widening gap takes on a life of its own, with a renewal of hostilities making a return to negotiations in the near future next to impossible, or constitutes brinkmanship to push the other to concede first. Which way the pendulum will swing hangs in the balance.

Celebrated Orban's defeat-That may have been premature by James M. Dorsey

An Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Islamabad for talks with Pakistan's leadership, as uncertainty hangs over potential negotiations over the weekend. Iran's foreign ministry says no direct talks with the US are planned in Islamabad, adding that Tehran will instead relay its position through Pakistan. But in a contradictory statement, the White House says Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to travel to Pakistan on Saturday for face to face discussions with Iran. James M. Dorsey, joins TRT World from Singapore. He is an adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

The US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz threatens to backfire as the Trump administration and Iran seek to gain the upper hand. Iran assumes that US President Donald Trump believes it's a matter of days, or at most weeks, before the blockade's economic and military pressure compels the Islamic Republic to compromise on at least some of its demands. Mr. Trump has conditioned the lifting of the blockade on Iran putting forward a “unified” proposal that leads to an agreement on ending the war. The implication is that the proposal would have to differ fundamentally from Iran's hitherto consistent position. That is not Iran's perspective. On the contrary, Iran operates on the principle that time is on its side.

Will the Iran war gun remain silent by James M. Dorsey

It's going to take more than a knife-edge game of bluff poker to get US-Iranian talks back on track. To successfully pull back from the brink, both the United States and Iran would have to fundamentally alter the assumptions underlying their negotiation strategy and what they hope to achieve in talks. That may be a tall order, particularly for President Donald Trump, who clings to the fiction of already having achieved total victory in Iran, an inflated perception of his negotiating skills and ability to dictate terms, and an overestimation of the powers of his office and country, and of what military superiority can achieve. Mr. Trump's belief that the US-Israeli air campaign has rendered Iran militarily impotent, inflicted incalculable infrastructural damage, and that Iran is a one-man dictatorship rather than a multi-layered governance system reinforces his flawed perception of reality. On the bright side, Mr. Trump, like Iran, would prefer a negotiated resolution rather than escalation of hostilities once the current ceasefire expires on April 22. The problem is that neither the president nor Iran, both convinced that they have the upper hand, wants a resolution at any price.

The 1987 Iran-Iraq Tanker War offers important lessons for today's US-Iranian stand-off in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The war erupted as a subset of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war after Iraq's navy attacked Iranian tankers and oil facilities. The similarities between the Tanker War and the battle for the Strait are significant.

US embassies in three Muslim-majority countries have warned the State Department that the United States is losing the war of narratives with Iran. In cables to the State Department dated April 15, seen by Politico, US diplomats in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Indonesia cautioned that pro-Iranian digital influencers, bots, and memes effectively exploit US weaknesses, including restrictions on the embassies' ability to respond. US embassies are only allowed to regurgitate approved, generic White House and State Department messaging rather than respond in real time to pro-Iranian social media postings with original creative content. The fallout goes far beyond Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Indonesia, and is likely representative of much of the Muslim world and beyond.

If the US, Israeli, and Iranian armed forces have anything in common, it may be militant interpretations of faith as a motivational driver that demonises the enemy, projects war as inevitable, and obstructs, if not precludes, long-term negotiated conflict resolution. The pathways of the three militaries towards positioning faith as an overarching ideological driver differ. They represent alternative models for the indoctrination of militaries with faith. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is the easiest, most straightforward model. It also suggests that faith as a motivational driver has its limits.

US President Donald Trump has made Iran's nuclear ambitions, alongside free passage through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the key to permanently ending the war. The contours of a potential agreement on the nuclear issue have been on the table since last June, when Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran during which the US bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities. The contours remained on the table in negotiations this year that were interrupted on February 28 when the US and Israel launched their latest assault on Iran. The reasons why US Vice President JD Vance and chief Iranian negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, failed to bridge the gaps between its position during talks in Islamabad a week ago have less to do with the details of a realistically achievable deal and more to do with the parties' political needs. That is particularly true for Mr. Trump as Pakistan proposes a second round of talks in the Pakistani capital later this week.

Several factors doomed US-Iranian negotiations in Islamabad to end the Iran war from the outset. Even so, the failure did not immediately spell doomsday, that is until US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, his first response to the failure, announcing that the United States and other unidentified countries would blockade the strategic Strait of Hormuz. “Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz. At some point, we will reach an “ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT…. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” Mr. Trump said in one of two postings. “At an appropriate moment, we are fully “LOCKED AND LOADED,” and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!” Mr. Trump added. In many ways, Mr. Trump's escalation of the Iran conflict may have been inevitable, given that breaking the stalemate in Islamabad would have required fundamental changes in the US and Iranian approaches to negotiations.

In anticipation of Pakistan-mediated US-Iranian talks In Islamabad on ending the Iran war, James discusses the prospect for a permanent halt to hostilities on Radio Islam.

A fragile halt to Iran war hostilities was always a question of who blinks first. Even so, both the United States and Iran are declaring victory. However, a careful reading of Donald Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's social media postings suggests that the US president blinked the most. Iranian officials point to Mr. Trump's acknowledgment that the Islamic Republic's plan to end the war, involving ten points, which the president earlier rejected, was "a workable basis on which to negotiate." In return, Iran has agreed to halt attacks on Israel and the Gulf states and to open the strategic Strait of Hormuz under continued Iranian control. Even so, there is no indication that the gap between US and Iranian demands has narrowed. Narrowing the gap will require significant compromise by both parties. Yet, fresh out of the starting block, Mr. Trump's acceptance of the Iranian plan as a negotiating framework is an initial Iranian success with a caveat.

On this edition of Parallax Views, James M. Dorsey discusses the Iran War's potential consequences for the United States, Europe, the Gulf States, Israel, and Iran itself.

Three months into the new year, 2026 is emerging as a year of potentially serious setbacks for US President Donald Trump. Trapped in an expanding Iran war with no good exit strategy, Mr. Trump risks not only losing this November's mid-term elections. He's also at risk losing key pillars of his far-right European support base.

James discusses on TRT World what happens of US President Donald Trump unilaterally ends US involvement in the Iran war.

The Gulf states, rather than Iran, may shape the next phase of the war. With Yemen's Houthi rebels entering the war and threatening to close Bab al Mandab, the crucial waterway that links the Suez Canal with the Indian Ocean, Saudi Arabia, alongside the United Arab Emirates, may feel that their defensive posture is no longer sustainable. If so, the Gulf states, rather than the United States and Israel, could emerge as the players capable of forcing Iran to rethink its strategy of attempting to increase pressure on US President Donald Trump to negotiate an end to the war that does not involve the Islamic Republic's surrender.

James discusses recent developments in the Iran war on Radio Islam.

The US-Israeli war against Iran has scholars, journalists, and pundits comparing the conflagration to Britain, France, and Israel's invasion of Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal after President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the strategic waterway 70 years ago. The jury is out on whether Iran is America's Suez. The answer is probably Yo, yes, and no. History rendered the Suez war a symbol of the demise of the British and French colonial empires or, in the words of British historian Corelli Barnett, the “last thrash of empire.” US pressure and the Soviet Union's threat to come to Egypt's aid forced Britain, France, and Israel to accept a humiliating ceasefire and withdraw their troops. The similarities between Suez and Iran are glaring, but the differences are likely to count the most.

For the Gulf states, US President Donald Trump's potential deal to end the Iran war threatens to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Gulf states would welcome ending a conflict that has jeopardised their economic diversification and development plans, shattered perceptions of the Gulf as a wealthy island of stability that hosts global transportation and finance hubs and data centres, and has seriously damaged oil and gas installations that remain the backbone of their economies. It would also spare them from having to retaliate against Iran for its missile and drone attacks more aggressively. On the other hand, the Gulf states fear that whatever deal Mr. Trump may conclude will fail to remove Iran as an imminent threat.

The United States and Israel's war on Iran is about to escalate with no exit strategy in sight. Several factors are pushing the combatants toward escalation:  US President Donald Trump cannot credibly declare victory and an end to the war as long as Iran controls passage through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.  Israel signalled its intent to emasculate Iran militarily and economically for years to come with this week's assassination of five top Iranian officials and an attack on the Islamic Republic's South Pars Gas field.  Iran, determined to prolong the war in the belief that it has the longest breath and ability to absorb body blows, has vowed to retaliate for the Israeli actions in ways that inevitably will spark an escalation of the hostilities

Since returning to the Oval Office in January of last year, US President Donald Trump has changed global diplomacy, placing himself at the centre of international relations. Countries manoeuvred to stay in Mr. Trump's good books and avoid becoming targets of his ire. However, Mr. Trump's success may be running out of steam with America's European and Asian allies refusing to heed the president's call to help secure shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

President Donald Trump would be well advised to learn the lessons of the last time the United States sought to protect Gulf shipping by escorting oil tankers in the region's waters. In 1987, the United States escorted Kuwaiti vessels that the Gulf state had reflagged with the US Stars and Stripes to allow the US Navy to legally protect them during the Tanker War, a facet of the Iran-Iraq war in which both sides attacked shipping. I stood on the bridge of the USS Fox, a destroyer, accompanying the first reflagged vessel, the MV Bridgeton, one of the world's largest tankers, which hit an underwater Iranian sea mine some 135 nautical miles north of the Strait of Hormuz. The explosion breached the outer hull of the Bridgeton and forward cargo tanks, spilling oily residue into the water. No one aboard the Bridgeton was hurt. The incident handed Iran a significant public relations victory on a silver platter. More importantly, it demonstrated that naval escorts provide at best limited protection unless the protecting power controls the waterway. It also showed that warships are potentially more vulnerable than the vessels they are protecting. The 413,000-deadweight-ton Bridgeton steamed under its own power to Dubai for repairs. Had the 8,000-ton Fox, rather than the Bridgeton, hit the mine, it would have likely suffered severe damage and potentially seen members of its crew killed or injured. The incident and the course of the current Iran war illustrate the pitfalls of any US attempt to wrest control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz from Iran.

The United States bombing of Kharg Island, Iran's foremost oil export terminal, suggests that President Donald Trump may realise that he has no good options in Iran. Without the bombing, any Trump declaration of victory would likely have rung hollow with critics comparing it to President George W. Bush's 2003 Mission Accomplished in Iraq speech, after which the war continued for another nine years. Even so, Mr. Trump faces unpalatable choices that don't include the falling silent of the guns at a time of his choosing, despite the death and destruction wrought by the US and Israeli militaries.

James discusses the Iran war on RTHK.

The question is not if but when US President Donald Trump will unilaterally declare victory in the Iran war. The problem is that it takes three to tango. Both Israel and Iran would have to agree, and both have little interest in ending the war any time soon.

Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei as its new supreme leader after the killing of his father, Ali Khamenei, in a US-Israeli strike — a move that could reshape the country's political future and its relations with Washington. The appointment comes despite strong opposition from Donald Trump, who had previously said the younger Khamenei would be “unacceptable” as Iran's next leader and suggested the United States should have a say in the succession. So, who exactly is Mojtaba Khamenei? And with Washington openly opposed to his leadership, could his appointment push tensions between Iran and the US to an even more dangerous level? On The Big Story, Hongbin Jeong speaks with Dr James M. Dorsey, Adjunct Senior Fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, to find out more.