One way or another, President Donald Trump would have you believe that the war in Iran is ending soon.
- Although President Donald Trump signals that he wants the war in Iran to end soon – and claims that the US has already won – an actual agreement to end the war still seems unlikely in the near future.
- Trump has been able to quickly declare victory and exit international conflicts in the past, but the scale of Iran’s regional retaliation, particularly the closure of part of the Strait of Hormuz, makes it difficult this time.
- Beyond the facts on the ground, Trump’s communications with other leaders as well as his news diet may make him unlikely to end the conflict quickly.
Trump said this week that he is “very willing to make a deal” and that his team has had good talks with unnamed Iranian leaders, who also “You want to make a bad deal.” He has insisted that the battle is already won and that “the only thing that likes to go on is fake news.” Wall Street, reeling from the distraction of the war, seems to love the new happy talk about negotiations.
The White House has submitted a proposal for a peace agreement and hopes for talks through a new diplomatic track that could be led by Vice President JD Vance, with the government of Pakistan acting as a mediator. The 15 point plan ending the war that the United States has presented to Iran, which includes Iran turning over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and accepting limits on its missile program, is probably not a priority for the Iranian government. Iran has rejected the plan and submitted a his five-point proposalincluding the payment of war reparations. But warring parties tend to present higher demands at the start of ceasefire talks. At least it is possible that this is the beginning of a plan.
But a better question than whether the US and Iran can reach an agreement may be why it matters. Why couldn’t Trump just order a halt to the airstrikes as he did at the end of the “12-day war” last June? If he really ended the war, shouldn’t it be as simple as stopping the war?
Iran will not let Trump go
The difference between this war and Trump’s previous military engagements with Iran, including Venezuela and Syria, is that this time Iran has fought on a much larger scale.
While this was highly anticipated and experts and commentators before the start of the war, Iran’s attacks on the Arab Gulf countries and the disruption of the world’s energy sector seem to be a surprise to the president. If it is the murder of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani in 2020 or bombing of the Houthis in 2024Trump’s enemies have generally seen fit to come down in the hope that he would simply go away. Even the recent invasion of Venezuela captured dictator Nicolas Maduro – which seems to have given Trump confidence that the Iran operation would go better than it is – appears to have been less of a “regime change” in the sense of President George W. Bush, and more of a backdoor deal cut by members of the administration who wanted to preserve their hold on power.
This time things are different: Iran’s leadership is worried that they will face a potential threat moving forward if they don’t prove Trump’s decision to strike was a bad mistake. And they may take Trump’s sudden aggressiveness about war as a sign that their attacks are working as intended.
“You don’t put your opponent in a corner where their only way out is through you. That’s what he ended up doing to the Iranians,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Pentagon Middle East adviser now with the advocacy group J Street. “He has put them in and threatened their sense of government life, that they have basically taken the gloves off and gone unconscious.”
One Iranian response in particular may contribute to why Trump can’t just declare victory and move on this time: his disruption of international trade, particularly oil, through the Strait of Hormuz.
“The simplest reason is Hormuz,” said Gregory Brew, Iran and energy analyst at Eurasia Group. Even with the damage that the Iranian regime has suffered, it has shown the ability to strike at the heart of the world economy and cause some kind of pain – in the form of high oil prices – that a US president heading into a midterm election year could be particularly vulnerable to. “I think the White House is well aware that if Trump just steps down now it will be seen very much as a victory for Iran, despite the costs that have been imposed on Iran,” Brew added.
In the interim, Iran’s leaders are also publicly doubting whether America’s requests are genuine — and not just sentimental during their time. move thousands of troops to the areapreferably before a ground invasion captures Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil facility, or controls the coast. It doesn’t help that Iran has been bombed by Israel and the US twice in the past year while in the middle of nuclear talks.
The bigger question now is whether Iran will restore the status quo in the Strait of Hormuz even if the US and Israel were to back down. Some analysts suggest the Iranians it can keep the sea channel partially closed to impose a large enough cost that the US and Israel will not easily do do all this again in six months. Iran is reported is now developing a selective review system which countries will be allowed to use the narrow channel.
Given that the economic effects of rising energy and fertilizer costs are felt globally – and more acutely in Africa and Asia than in the Americas – Iran may be under intense diplomatic pressure to restore normal traffic through the channel, including from its most important trading partner, China. But Iran has still shown the ability to score more than 90 percent of trade through the sea channel and did it with a small number of tanker strikes rather than the massive mining campaign that many expected. That raises the political stakes for both sides moving forward.
Trump’s allies are also not ready to back down
Trump, according to the day, may hope to end the war soon, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to be happy to continue.
From Israel’s point of view, every day the US and Israel continue to destroy Iran’s missile launchers and kill senior officials is “pure profit” in the sense of technique. “axis of resistance” groups.like Hezbollah in Lebanon. Furthermore, there is always the possibility that the leadership is weakened to the point of being vulnerable to mass protests again.
Netanyahu is also probably not the only foreign leader with Trump’s ear right now. Despite Saudi Arabia’s public opposition to the attacks on Iran, the supreme leader of the king Mohammed Bin Salman has been reported to be private. asking Trump to continue the warseeing it as a historic opportunity to reset the balance of power in the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal reports that Gulf Arab leaders are “pressing Trump in regular phone conversations to end the occupation and destroy Iran’s military capabilities before proceeding.”
Although the Gulf states may have been reluctant to engage in war at first, because it now appears that it would expose their cities and oil infrastructure to Iranian retaliation, the severity of Iran’s response may have changed their minds. Just as Iran has proven that it can make the world pay a heavy price by shutting down oil shipments in the Strait of Hormuz, its regional rivals hope to prove to Iran that it cannot hold onto their economy without paying even more to prevent this from becoming a common occurrence.
The United States is still the main player in this war and can resist demands from allies to take matters further. As Trump demonstrated in June when he effectively ending the 12-day war on social media while the Israeli planes are still in the air, this is the president’s call to do. But having some of Trump’s closest friends in the region insist that the war is not over could give him some relief.
Trump also may not want to end things right now
It’s worth noting that we’re about three and a half weeks into what Trump had predicted would be a a battle of four to five weeks or more. Maybe Trump doesn’t feel the urgency to end the war.
“What we’ve seen is that he’s very willing to pull the strings when he thinks he needs to,” said Emma Ashford, a senior at the Stimson Center. “So obviously he doesn’t know, or hasn’t yet felt that he needs to.”
A tug-of-war goes on as long as both sides think they are winning. The calculations of Iran’s leaders, from the beginning, have been that their tolerance for pain is greater than that of Trump and that with little effort they can continue to impose unbearable costs on the United States.
But does Trump really feel the pain? One would think the president would be alarmed by the high cost of energy – and the way diplomatic announcements seem to be timed around the opening and closing of the New York stock market suggests he at least has one eye on the market. along with his vote numbers.
But the president too is reported to have consumed the war in the form of two-minute highlights of “trending items” compiled by military commanders. It is far from clear that the strategic costs of this war, despite operational success, are being passed on to the commander-in-chief. He may have concluded that he can sell the market as needed with a phone call or press conference, ignoring the long-running operation while preparing for more maneuvering behind the scenes.
Critics have coined the term “TACO” – Trump is never happy – to describe Trump’s tendency to avoid confrontation when faced with pressure. A more generous interpretation is that throughout his career, Trump has shown an uncanny ability to declare victory and move forward rather than wallow in conflict. If that instinct doesn’t happen this time, it may be because he doesn’t believe it’s still a crisis.
