War with Iran?

[Dill]

Sleepwalking Into War With Iran: Trump is drifting toward conflict and has no idea how to stop it.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/iran-britain-trump-tanker-bolton.html
Here is where we stand in the ongoing crisis (and it is a crisis) with Iran. The British navy is unable to defend a British tanker in the narrow Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump made it clear he wouldn’t help; he doesn’t want war, period, but is doing little or nothing to avert it. Meanwhile, the Iranians are escalating the conflict, hoping the West will back down. One can imagine the history book about all this 50 years from now, titled The Sleepwalkers: How the World Went to War in 2019.

This is rather interesting. No desire to lead a coalition of allies to police the Gulf.

Rather than going on about what Trump should or should not do right now,
I would be interested in hearing people's thoughts on how US allies and Iran will view US paralysis.

If allies and other nations all now have to spend money beefing up defenses to defend tankers, won't they see this as largely the result of Trump trashing the Iran deal? Will they blame Trump or Iran primarily?

Also, if Iran is seizing ships of countries that seize its ships, that means that control of escalation is one more step removed from Trump. And that willingness of individual countries to enforce Washington's embargo may falter.

Iran must know that, pre-election, Trump's hands are somewhat tied. It might be possible to humiliate him, force him back into the treaty, or a "new" one with cosmetic changes.

The way to stave off conflict, in this view, is for Trump to rejoin the accord. At this point, some say, the Iranians would be fine with cosmetic changes to the deal—for instance, renaming it—and letting Trump pretend that he wrote it so he wouldn’t suffer the humiliation of embracing Barack Obama’s diplomatic triumph.
But this level of humbling seems improbable.