The balance of power is heavily in favour of the US and Israel. <\/p>\n
These are two of the world’s most powerful and technologically advanced militaries in the world. <\/p>\n
There are two US carrier strike groups in the region with over 200 warplanes while Iran, under sweeping sanctions for years, has no air force to speak of. <\/p>\n
Both Israel and the US enjoy complete air superiority.<\/p>\n
But Tehran still has some things on its side. <\/p>\n
The regime, although weakened and unpopular with much of its population, only has to survive to proclaim itself the long-term winner in this conflict. <\/p>\n
The Islamic Republic, with its cult of martyrdom, can take a lot more pain than the US can and the longer this conflict goes on the keener President Trump will be to find an off-ramp.<\/p>\n
Will the US and Iran return to talks? <\/p>\n
If the Iranian regime collapses, that will not be necessary. <\/p>\n
But if the regime survives, and it may well, then Washington’s triple demands of Tehran will come back into focus, namely: a curb on Iran’s suspect nuclear programme, including a return to inspections; an end to Iran’s ballistic missile programme; and an end to Iran’s support for proxy militias around the region, such as the Hezbullah, Hamas, and the Houthis.<\/p>\n
Oman says real progress was being made in talks in Geneva last month on the nuclear file. <\/p>\n
But Iran ruled out discussing the other two issues – leading Donald Trump to say he was “not happy with the way the talks are going”. <\/p>\n
It is possible that back channel contacts could well produce a ceasefire, followed by a return to talks. <\/p>\n
But if the two sides’ bargaining positions have not moved then military action could well resume. <\/p>\n
So this conflict has yet to run its course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The balance of power is heavily in favour of the US and Israel. These are two of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-452843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}