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Two months after the US and Israel struck a surprise deal on Iran, negotiations seem to have failedas the Strait of Hormuz conflict continues to disrupt international power, and the fate of Iran’s nuclear program remains unresolved.
In a sign of continued tensions, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly on Tuesday said the US was still engaged in talks with Iran but was “not in a rush to make a bad deal”, a day after US President Donald Trump and his top security advisers held talks. a new concept of Iran by ending the war.
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All options for war are still on the table, although the ceasefire from April 8 has stopped the war. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday warned of the possibility of a “cold conflict”, where the difficult waterway is used as a trump card amid the possibility of violent conflict.
The US president sees the possibility of halting the military campaign against Tehran while maintaining the ability to carry out the necessary protests.
In the absence of a stable agreement that allows both sides to win, experts say that a low-level conflict combined with occasional strikes offers the best way out – even one that prolongs regional instability and global economic disruption.
The cost of the ‘cold’ war
The war between the US and Iran can already be described as “cold”, but these non-war events come at a very high cost for both, Mehran Kamrava, an Iran expert at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.
“Iran cannot afford to have its ports closed forever and the US cannot keep Iran forever,” Kamrava said. “At the moment, we may see some short-term tension, but this will not last for months or years.”
The American foreign policy think tank Quincy Institute estimates that Washington’s spending in the first month of the war was between $20bn and $25bn. A major underground project in Iran similar to that of Iraq in 2003 will require at least 500,000 workers and $55bn per month, or more than $650bn per year, and the think tank warns that this would be less.
Maintaining the status quo will have economic benefits in the short term, but a heated conflict, without clear words, could also be costly for the US – economically and politically.
The United States military has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and ships since April 13. Last week, it sent a third group of aircraft carriers and thousands of elite troops, in the largest group since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. More than 10,000 US troops are estimated to be sent to the region.
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz to ships that do not pay fees has been felt in the US, where the average price of gasoline at the pump has reached about $ 4.18 a gallon ($ 1.10 per liter), the highest level in almost four years. This comes ahead of the November mid-term elections, where polls show Trump’s approval rating at 34 percent, down from 47 percent when he took his second term as president in January 2025.
The attack on Iran has also caused billions of dollars in damage to US military equipment in the region and tested relations between Washington and its Gulf allies, who have seen major industrial and energy centers affected by Iran, as well as their reputation as safe business havens damaged by war.
Kamrava said the U.S. economy could handle the financial crisis caused by the war. “Whether American politicians can afford it is another question,” he added.
A long and long argument
In Trump’s first presentation, the Iran war was supposed to last “four to five weeks”. Two months into the conflict, Chandler Williams, a researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), says the long-running conflict has lasted longer than predicted.
“When a government or government relies too much on air power, it often leads to an escalation rather than a problem because it doesn’t allow it to happen, and that’s what we’re seeing right now,” Williams said.
While long-range friction is often the result of miscalculations, long-range friction is driven by design. “The question now is whether this long conflict is going to last,” he added.
Washington is betting on economic and diplomatic pressure with the help of Trump’s constant threats to see if “it can finish what the airstrikes alone cannot achieve”, said Williams.
For its part, Iran is aware of the success of the US military and has decided to use the Strait of Hormuz until the US decides to end the negotiations. “Iran is betting that the US will not continue, but a long-term conflict may be difficult to sustain in the long run,” he said.
A report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) earlier this month found that the escalation of hostilities is disrupting work and life in Iran by disrupting the economy, transportation, and supply chains.
Most of Iran’s grain exports pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important shipping route to Tehran. Disruption of transportation around the unrest has led to concerns about delays in grain shipments, the UNDP said, straining domestic employment and increasing the risk of food insecurity in the country of 90 million people.
“In the case of Iran, the calculus is whether they can bear the cost while still incurring the cost of shutting down a major part of the world’s economy, and whether that will help them get a better deal at the negotiating table,” Williams said.
‘Mowing the grass’ in Iran
On Tuesday, the United States Department of Defense requested $53.6bn for autonomous drones by 2027, an increase of 24,000 percent from last year.
“If the tactics of war are changing to drone warfare and moving towards less conflict, this has a lower cost to the attacker but a greater impact on the receiver as we have seen in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia,” Michael Kerr, a historian and political scientist at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.
Israel, a U.S. ally, has already adopted a similar approach to conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Tensions on both sides have led to cease-fire agreements that have done little to end the conflict.
Israel often describes its approach to changing periods of silence with large military forces as “mowing the lawn”. The US could choose the same path with Iran, destabilizing the region and destabilizing the Gulf states’ desire for stability and economic development.
According to Kerr, the risks of using this strategy by a state actor with Iranian weapons and missile capabilities are very high. “If you mow the lawn (against Iran), what will stop Iran from hitting Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait and shooting drones at American ships every time it happens,” he said.
Iran, the second largest country in the Middle East, has great significance due to its strategic location in the Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Kerr said Western hopes that its regional and international ambitions could be “put back in the box through bombing” were likely to fail.
“The idea that Iran could be bombed into accepting Israeli rule through a US bomb — I don’t think it’s going to be good.”
