Trump’s withdrawal from the Hormuz payment indicates a struggle to stop the war in Iran

Now Trump and the Iranians find themselves in the usual predicament. The latter are facing US military attacks around their territory, showing their inability to protect their territorial sovereignty. With the reimposed sanctions, their oil revenues – a lifeline for the Iranian regime – have been cut off again.

Meanwhile, Trump faces a choice between aggravating domestic economic and political costs and settling for some kind of solution that will keep a hostile Iranian government in power.

“We’re back to where we were at the beginning, and the question is who has more patience?” Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. “Who are the Iranians who can’t export oil, or the US and other countries that use Persian Gulf oil?”

Trump got some good news on Tuesday after months of fears that a new round of the Iran war was causing inflation that would hurt popularity. Consumer prices were falling..

A resumption of full-scale war or an escalation in the conflict would inevitably push oil prices back to their previous highs, threatening the positive trend and again putting Republicans in a difficult position heading into November’s midterm congressional elections.

On Monday, after Trump’s Truth Social post, the price of a barrel of oil jumped nearly 10% — the biggest one-day increase in six years.

For the first time, Trump’s sanctions have forced the Iranians to the negotiating table, creating a memorandum of understanding and a framework for a lasting peace.

Now, according to Kelanid, the president’s leverage over Iran may be diminishing.

“He tried things that he could easily do, that he could do honestly,” she said. “He can attack military targets, regime targets. He’s done that before, and he hasn’t made Iran surrender.”

The latest target, Trump said, was Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified nuclear research site south of Tehran. But there is conflicting evidence that the site’s value – or US airstrikes – could have caused significant damage to the tunnels beneath the granite rock.

If Trump’s latest moves finally end another ceasefire and face-to-face talks, underlying, hard-to-reconcile disputes — over Hormuz, the posture of Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s influence in the Middle East — remain.

“I think there is room for negotiation here on the Straits of Hormuz agreement,” Abrams said. “But not going back to the MOU.”

As the war approaches its fifth month, Trump reiterated on Monday that other U.S. conflicts — including the Vietnam War — have dragged on for years.

However, that particular coup ended Lyndon Bain Johnson’s presidency and damaged America’s global standing for at least a decade. That’s a fate Trump certainly hopes to avoid.

His supporters are also tired of repeating the “perpetual wars” in the Middle East that Trump has denounced in previous presidential campaigns.

But with the memorandum in limbo, the cease-fire deadlocked and the prospect of further conflict looming, the end of Iran’s war seems no closer to a resolution than it did just weeks after it began.