As we en­ter the fourth week since the Unit­ed States and Is­rael de­clared war on the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic of Iran, over 8,000 Iran­ian tar­gets have al­ready been at­tacked. But Iran has been a most re­doubtable op­po­nent. It con­tin­ues to re­spond with drones and mis­siles at US re­gion­al al­lies and, crit­i­cal­ly, has es­tab­lished a stran­gle­hold on one of the world’s most vi­tal wa­ter­ways, the Strait of Hor­muz, threat­en­ing the glob­al econ­o­my with “the worst dis­rup­tion to oil sup­plies in his­to­ry.” The pres­sure is on for a so­lu­tion.

Last Sat­ur­day, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ened a mas­sive at­tack on Iran­ian pow­er plants if Tehran failed to re­open the Strait of Hor­muz by Mon­day.

In re­sponse, Iran warned on Sun­day that it would re­spond by tar­get­ing vi­tal in­fra­struc­ture across the Mid­dle East, in­clud­ing en­er­gy, IT and wa­ter de­sali­na­tion fa­cil­i­ties and would al­so close the Strait of Hor­muz to all traf­fic in­def­i­nite­ly. We faced the ut­ter­ly dis­mal prospect of scorched earth poli­cies from both sides, where op­pos­ing forces would de­stroy any­thing that could help the en­e­my-food, wa­ter, build­ings, trans­port, crops, even live­stock- leav­ing noth­ing of val­ue be­hind.

It was there­fore a huge re­lief to learn on Mon­day from Pres­i­dent Trump that the US had held “very good and pro­duc­tive” con­ver­sa­tions with Iran over end­ing the war, and that Wash­ing­ton and Tehran had reached “ma­jor points of agree­ment.” How­ev­er, Iran de­nied hold­ing talks with Wash­ing­ton but con­firmed that me­di­a­tion ef­forts were un­der­way by oth­er na­tions.

What­ev­er the out­come of the talks, the ef­fects of the war will en­dure way in­to the fu­ture. Re­la­tion­ships could be ir­re­triev­ably dam­aged. Take the transat­lantic al­liance be­tween Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, foun­da­tion­al to the peace and pros­per­i­ty of the west­ern world for over eighty years.

As pres­sure built for a so­lu­tion to the war, Pres­i­dent Trump called on Eu­ro­pean coun­tries-Britain, France, Ger­many and oth­ers, as well as South Ko­rea, Japan, Aus­tralia and even Chi­na - to send bat­tle­ships to es­cort mer­chant ves­sels through Hor­muz. They all re­fused.

Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz said, “The Unit­ed States and Is­rael did not con­sult us. There was nev­er a joint de­ci­sion re­gard­ing Iran. There­fore, Ger­many will not con­tribute mil­i­tar­i­ly.”

Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron, of France, took a sim­i­lar po­si­tion.

“We are not par­ty to the con­flict. There­fore, France will nev­er take part in op­er­a­tions to re­open Hor­muz,” he said.

And Britain’s Prime Min­is­ter Sir Keir Starmer said Britain would on­ly take part in any mis­sion as part of a “vi­able, col­lec­tive plan,” work­ing with the US, Eu­ro­pean and Gulf al­lies.

Trump was at­tempt­ing here to in­voke NA­TO to get Eu­ro­pean al­lies to re­spond. But that’s not how NA­TO works, say Eu­ro­pean of­fi­cials. Ar­ti­cle 5 binds coun­tries to de­fend one an­oth­er in case of at­tack, like in the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist strikes in the Unit­ed States.

“NA­TO is a de­fen­sive al­liance, not de­signed for one of the al­lies to go on a war of choice and then oblige every­body else to fol­low.”

The Eu­ro­pean Union, there­fore, says, “This is not Eu­rope’s war. We were not con­sult­ed.”

Japan, Italy, South Ko­rea and Aus­tralia took sim­i­lar po­si­tions.

The glob­al re­fusal led promi­nent writer in the Fi­nan­cial Times, Gideon Rach­man, to say, “A year of tar­iffs, threats and in­sults from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to­wards its al­lies has al­so burned through good­will to­wards Wash­ing­ton.”

Trump has now de­scribed NA­TA al­lies as dis­loy­al cow­ards and “pa­per tigers”. But “we don’t need any­body,” the pres­i­dent de­clared.

“The Unit­ed States is by far the most pow­er­ful coun­try in the world. We don’t need the help of any­one.”

Still, he did call for help from US ri­val, Chi­na, which de­clined. In re­sponse, Trump post­poned his vis­it to Bei­jing two weeks be­fore a crit­i­cal sum­mit with Xi Jin­ping. Chi­na ex­pert, Sarah Be­ran, says, if Wash­ing­ton thinks post­pon­ing would make Chi­na in­ter­vene against Iran, “they will be dis­ap­point­ed.”

In­deed, Chi­na’s for­eign min­is­ter Wang Yi has called for the US, Is­rael and Iran to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble. “One thou­sand war­ships can­not achieve what one ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble can,” he said.

Mean­while, as they cam­paign for No­vem­ber’s midterm elec­tions, Re­pub­li­cans must jus­ti­fy a 33 per cent leap in fu­el prices and the eco­nom­ic back­lash from the Pen­ta­gon’s call for fi­nanc­ing to re­place am­mu­ni­tion al­ready used in the war and which will cost US$200 bil­lion, equal to the com­bined fed­er­al bud­get for ed­u­ca­tion, health and hous­ing.

To as­suage Amer­i­ca’s con­cerns, Trump says he is “very close” to meet­ing his ob­jec­tives, and that he is con­sid­er­ing “wind­ing down” mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in Iran.

But in­con­sis­ten­cies are emerg­ing. Very short­ly af­ter­wards, the pres­i­dent threat­ened to bomb Iran’s pow­er plants if the coun­try did not open the Strait of Hor­muz with­in 48 hours.

Al­so, 4,500 marines and sailors are head­ing to the re­gion to help open Hor­muz or seize Kharg Is­land, Iran’s oil hub in the Gulf, rais­ing the prospect of boots on the ground for the first time in this war.

Who would have thought we would be here to­day, watch­ing a bat­tered, weak­ened Iran chok­ing life out of the glob­al econ­o­my and hold­ing at bay the most pow­er­ful na­tion on earth, which has not got the sup­port of al­lies and seems in­de­ci­sive in the midst of a war it start­ed.

Where are we head­ing?