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WASHINGTON — Approaching six months of war with Iran after predicting a six-week campaign, President Trump has few options before him to bring the conflict to a close. But some experts believe a new strategy emerging from his administration could avert a more consequential defeat.
The president has repeatedly flirted with broadening the assault, hoping yet another round of bombardment might force Iran to yield. Yet he has ultimately resisted, once again stepping back this month from options to expand strikes across Iran’s critical infrastructure and leadership. And he has refrained since the beginning of the war from ordering a ground operation that would expose U.S. troops to direct attack, faced with dwindling U.S. munitions stockpiles and an entrenched Iranian government willing to retaliate.
The result has been a U.S. campaign that has failed to achieve any of Trump’s stated war aims — of regime change in Tehran, the elimination of Iran’s ballistic missile and naval capabilities, and the end of its nuclear program — but has also avoided the costs of uncontrolled escalation, experts said.
In remarks Friday, Trump said the United States was still in the process of “defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated.”
“We have the blockade. No ships get through,” he said. “They still have missiles, but not a lot. They still have drones, but just a fraction of what they had. But their manufacturing is largely gone.
“We’re winning big with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added. “Nobody has any idea how successful we are — they don’t want to write it. But they know. You know who knows how well we’re doing? Iran.”
In an interview published last week, Trump explained his decision not to proceed with expanded strikes, telling Axios, “we are low-keying it.”
“We are only semi-negotiating with them,” he said. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
President Trump railed against “forever wars,” but with hostilities increasing and negotiations at a standstill, there appears no easy exit from the war he launched on Iran.
It is a shift from an instinctual posture to one of restraint uncharacteristic of a president who launched the war in February after consulting a mere handful of people, including Israel’s prime minister and fewer than a dozen of his closest aides.
The current approach — an economic choke hold on Iran — is being led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was not involved in Trump’s prewar deliberations.
“The options are escalating militarily, conceding Iranian victory through a phony negotiation, or continuing the economic pressure we have in place. The president’s problem is that he can’t simply choose — the ayatollah gets a vote,” said Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as under Trump in his first term.
“Trump has to choose now between sticking to the blockade and the risks it brings — including high oil prices and a loss in the midterm elections — or accepting defeat by Iran and the risks that brings,” he added, “to our friends and allies and to his own reputation.”
White House officials are betting the risks to Tehran, from soaring inflation and a shortage of goods, are greater than the political costs Trump will incur at the ballot box in November during the midterm elections, with oil prices holding stable under $100 a barrel since mid-July.
