Militarily speaking, the United States has a lot to be proud of. The war in Iran, now over a week old, has blown up plenty of buildings, killed a whole crop of senior Iranian officials—most notably the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei—and destroyed a significant chunk of the Islamic Republic’s military capacity. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine have provided several updates at the Pentagon lauding the Trump administration’s brilliance, marveling at the U.S. military’s technological superiority, and bragging about Iran’s inability to control its own airspace. Senior Israeli military officials are just as bombastic; on March 5, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir claimed that 80 percent of Iran’s air defenses were destroyed and 60 percent of its missile launchers were taken out of action.
But the Iranians aren’t going down without a fight. Although Iran is unquestionably the weaker party in this war, the country’s leadership is treating it as an existential conflict that requires a total-war strategy. To date, Tehran has calculated that expanding the conflict into other states, chief among them Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, is not only appropriate as a method of retaliation but also the best way to compel Trump to eventually sue for peace. The idea is to press the Gulf States, all of whom want to get back to business as usual, into lobbying the Trump administration for a ceasefire. Whether or not the gambit works, the Iranians risk ruining the very detente they established with the Gulf over the last several years by sending missiles into hotels, oil fields, gas terminals, and ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
Right now, it’s difficult to envision an off-ramp to the war. Based strictly on public remarks, the Trump administration doesn’t appear all that interested in sitting down with the Iranians, either directly or indirectly, to find a way out. Trump is talking about a full-blown Iranian capitulation, or, in his words, “unconditional surrender,” which could either be a negotiating ploy on his end or a genuine statement of intent. If it’s the latter, then the war will go on for weeks, if not months, because the Iranian regime is not going to simply throw up its hands and give up, no matter how lopsided the military balance is. Nor has the regime, or what’s left of it, decided to grant Trump his wish to pick its next supreme leader, which made about as much sense as giving the Iranians veto power over who wins the 2028 U.S. presidential election.
Even so, it’s far too early to eliminate diplomacy from the picture. Trump is fickle, unpredictable, and malleable, and he doesn’t like to take any of his options off the table. Although he may be sounding more like George W. Bush with every passing day, nobody can say with absolute certainty that “dealmaking Don” won’t make an appearance. Depending on the regime’s ability to sustain retaliation across the Gulf, its ability to stay unified internally, and the U.S. military’s capacity to keep its air defense interceptors stocked, diplomacy could switch from unlikely today to at least plausible in the future. Add in fluctuating price increases in world energy markets, and it’s possible that Trump could begin to see an exit ramp in a more favorable light. At the time of writing, Brent crude prices have increased by nearly 25 percent since the war began, cracking over $100 a barrel for the first time in nearly two years. Natural gas futures have nearly doubled in the same timeframe. None of this is particularly great for Trump, whose party could possibly lose one (or both) houses of Congress in the midterm elections this year.
The economic pain is only going to get worse. Kuwait, which produces about 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, is now reducing oil production due to a lack of storage capacity. Meanwhile, Qatar’s energy minister has said that crude prices could rise to an astounding $150 a barrel, which will be felt by Americans when they’re filling up their tanks. For the Iranians, this is precisely what the strategy entails—make Americans feel the economic consequences of their government’s actions, drive a wedge between Washington and its Gulf Arab partners, and send the message that all of these consequences will compound even further as long as the war continues. Trump, who obsesses about gas prices, could very well take the bait.
Of course, all of this is purely hypothetical right now. It could also be a waste of ink if Trump insists on changing the Iranian regime from the inside out. Over the last 48 hours, Trump has given a slew of interviews pontificating about who Khamenei’s replacement might be and demanding that he personally sign off on the next candidate. (In the end, the Iranians did not consult him and installed Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba.) If this feels like the very regime change he lambasted during his previous presidential campaigns, that’s because it is. What Trump seems to be after is not merely degrading Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile, preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, or wiping out Tehran’s ability to project power against its neighbors, but a wholesale transformation of the Iranian government and a complete 180-degree shift in Iranian foreign policy. To think the regime would cater to these demands even as it’s under military pressure is delusional. The first, second, and third priority of the regime is to keep itself in power, and bowing to Trump’s diktats would bring the exact opposite result.
The question, then, becomes what a potential negotiated deal could look like. Some of the Trump administration’s demands—Iran can never have a nuclear weapon—are reasonable and in keeping with longstanding U.S. policy. Others, like Iran being essentially gutted of its defense capabilities, cutting all ties with its proxy networks in the Middle East and agreeing to become the Persian Gulf’s version of post-Maduro Venezuela are obviously desirable but unrealistic given Tehran’s own objectives.
We also need to ask whether Tehran would be responsive to more diplomacy with Trump. Casual observers who see Iranian military bases, government buildings, and mobile missile launchers getting blown up on the news may scoff at this question. But we need to remember that Iran has been burned by Trump at least three times before. The first time was in May 2018, when Trump withdrew Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal. The second was last June, when Trump permitted Israel to begin a 12-day bombing campaign against Iran despite having scheduled the sixth round of nuclear negotiations with Iranian officials days later. The third was last week, when the Trump administration chose to unleash a second, more comprehensive air campaign only days after U.S. and Iranian negotiators met in Oman for talks, which Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, called serious. Given this track record, the regime will view any outreach by the White House as suspect.
Last June, Trump essentially made Israel swallow a ceasefire. The U.S. objectives back then were straightforward and easily explained to the American public: destroy, or at least heavily damage, Iran’s three major nuclear facilities. Once that goal was met, Trump declared victory, patted himself on the back for a job well done, and pressured Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop his own airstrikes.
Today, the situation is markedly different. U.S. objectives are wishy-washy and change by the hour; rumors of U.S. ground troops deploying into Iran are beginning to percolate; and Trump appears to want to end the Iranian problem once and for all. If this is the case, then there’s no off-ramp to consider.
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