Nearly three months after the United States and Israel launched their large-scale bombing campaign against Iran and about six weeks since the April 8 ceasefire went into effect, President Trump faces a turning point. Are you going back to war? Maintain the ceasefire and the US blockade of Iranian ports in the hope of reaching a deal on US terms? Or abandon your maximalist negotiating stance?
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.S.C.), informal White House foreign policy advisor, keep pressing for more aggressive US military action. Trump's political advisers would prefer the war end as soon as possible to minimize political fallout against the Republican Party in a midterm election year.
Trump seems conflicted. Despite weeks of US bombing and an ongoing naval blockade, Tehran is as protective of its nuclear program today as it was before the war began. “For Iran, the clock is ticking and they better get going, FAST, or there will be nothing left of them.” Trump wrote in Truth Social during the weekend. A day later, Trump took to the social media platform again. announce suspended planned US attacks on Iran to give more time for talks.
Unfortunately for Trump, he has proven to be his own worst enemy on this issue. Iran's reserves of highly enriched uranium and Tehran's effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, the regime's two greatest assets, are a byproduct of Trump's own political decisions.
The first is a clear indictment of Trump's first term. order to withdraw the united states from the Obama era Joint Comprehensive Action Plana highly technical agreement that limited Iran's nuclear work by restricting the number and quality of centrifuges it could use, limited the amount of enriched uranium it could produce, and forced Tehran to ship 97% of its stockpile out of the country. When the Trump administration scrapped that hard-won deal, Iran responded by enriching more nuclear material at a faster pace and amassing the same stockpiles that the Trump administration now seeks to neutralize.
The Strait of Hormuz, Iran's second card, wouldn't even be an issue today if the Trump administration had refrained from going to war in the first place. On February 27, a day before the conflict began, more than 150 tankers and ships passed through the strait. The international waterway was open to traffic.
It is not like that today. On Thursday, a total of three crossings were recorded in the waterway. This collapse in trade is a consequence of Iran's ability to harass civilian oil tankers so much that shipping companies no longer consider the journey worth it. As Admiral Brad Cooper, America's top commander in the Middle East, said, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday: “Iran's ability to stop cross-strait trade has been dramatically depleted, but its voice is very strong. And those threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and the insurance industry.”
By virtue of his own actions, Trump is now left with a series of policy options ranging from the least bad to the terrible. None of them are ideal and all carry some risk.
For starters, Trump could restart the war. Any renewed US bombing campaign would likely expand the US military's original set of targets to include a portion of Iran's energy infrastructure, which Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack. A US invasion of Kharg Island, where 90% of Iran's oil processing takes place, could also be under discussion. The goal would be to destroy Iran's remaining military capabilities and further reduce its oil revenues until Tehran's strategic calculus on war shifts in Washington's favor.
However, there are no guarantees that redoubling the use of military force will work. Trump's entire strategy has been based on a basic assumption: the more punitive the United States is, the more likely Tehran will concede. However, that simply has not happened. If anything, Iran is more entrenched now than in the early days of the conflict. For the regime, capitulating to Trump is as dangerous as losing the war. Why would more bombings succeed where previous ones failed?
The risks of additional US military action are also considerable. Before the ceasefire, Iran was launching ballistic missiles and attack drones across multiple Gulf Arab states, attacking Qatar's largest natural gas processing facility, Saudi Arabia's east-west oil pipeline and Dubai's luxury skyscrapers. As the Iranians have stated, such attacks will not only resume if Trump orders the resumption of war, but will expand to new targets, including desalination facilities and nuclear power plants. Such strikes would raise global oil and gas prices to even more absurd levels, adding to the additional 40 billion dollars The American people are already paying for fuel since the war began.
What about the continuation of the status quo? While this contingency would be less costly than another round of bombing or a U.S. ground invasion, it is unclear whether it would help or hurt negotiations to reach a deal. There is a possibility that extending the US blockade to Iranian ports will simply reaffirm the regime's earlier decision to preserve its own closure of the strait. Iran is now urging Washington to end its blockade before talks on the nuclear file can take place. And it's a mystery whether Trump's lockdown is working anyway; The US intelligence community assesses that Iran could withstand this pressure point. for three or four more monthswhich may be too long for Trump to hold given oil disruptions that will surely get worse.
Reaching an agreement to end the war, return open traffic to the strait, and restrict Iran's nuclear program would be the most beneficial policy for the United States with the lowest associated cost, without fully undoing the damage caused by Trump's decision in his first term to scrap the nuclear deal and his decision in his second term to start a war. American and Iranian negotiators are exchanging proposals as we speak. But for now, Trump can't bear to accept a deal that covers some of Iran's terms, including, among others, a shorter suspension of enriched uranium and some kind of Iranian role in managing the strait. Even if Trump reconsidered his position, he would be forced to confront the hawks in his political coalition, who would consider anything short of Iran's complete surrender a failure.
In short, Trump finds himself in an unenviable position. He has no one to blame but himself.
Daniel R. DePetris is a Defense Priorities Fellow and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist..
