On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump threatened to hit Iran “VERY HARD,” seize its main oil export terminal at Kharg Island, and take “total control” of its energy industry. By the afternoon, he’d canceled it all on indications that Iran had approved “discussions and final points” toward a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and constrain its nuclear program. In the space of a few hours, the war’s depressing denouement was compressed into a single news cycle: Trump blusters, Trump retreats, Trump desperately seeks a face-saving exit ramp.
The fact is that Trump is stuck. Militarily, he fears that a return to all-out war would carry even more damaging military, economic, and political costs for his presidency than he’s already suffered, with no assurance of corresponding strategic gain.
Diplomatically, the “very good deal” that he’s promised for months — restoring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and ending Iran’s nuclear program — has failed to materialize, stymied by Iran’s insistence that Washington first enrich it to the tune of billions of dollars and Trump’s mortal fear of appearing weak after repeated assurances that Iran’s capitulation was at hand.
But no amount of spin will obscure the emerging truth. There will be no Iranian unconditional surrender, much less the installation of a pliant Delcy Rodriguez of Persia. With or without a deal, when the fighting ends, it will almost certainly reflect a harsh new reality that Trump’s ill-conceived war has exposed: The security commitments that stood at the heart of America’s deterrence in the Gulf for decades have been proven hollow.
Before the war, U.S. deterrence rested on a simple proposition: Any Iranian attempt to close the strait would be suicidal. The Islamic Republic’s rulers constantly had to worry that challenging freedom of navigation through the world’s most critical choke point would trigger not just a military campaign to reopen the waterway, but a devastating assault to end the regime itself. The fear of those consequences — an untested but credible Sword of Damocles hovering over Iran’s calculations — was the essence of Washington’s deterrent, constraining not just Iranian behavior in Hormuz but across multiple domains, including whether to cross the nuclear threshold.
That proposition now lies in ruins.
Forced into a fight for its existence by a U.S.-Israeli war that made regime collapse a central purpose, Iran’s new leadership, convinced it had nothing to lose, threw caution to the wind. It closed the strait and has successfully held the global economy hostage for three months.
Confronted with what had always been its worst nightmare — a full-scale war against the United States and Israel — the Iranian regime not only survived, it asserted control over one of the world’s economic lifelines while holding at risk the well-being of America’s Gulf partners. And contrary to all pre-war assumptions, Washington had no good military answers to either challenge. That’s the sound of deterrence crumbling.
Yes, Iran has paid a horrific price. Its conventional military power has been smashed, its nuclear timeline extended, a generation of leaders killed, its already-battered economy in freefall, and its industrial capacity to reconstitute its missile arsenal — the force intended to shield its eventual dash to the bomb — degraded by as much as 90%. The U.S. and Israel have bought important time against the Iranian threat — an extremely valuable commodity that should not be gainsaid, especially given the Islamic regime’s ongoing crisis of legitimacy with the Iranian people.
But nor can it be denied that the war has also cost the U.S. dearly, and in coin that may be far more strategically significant. Iran’s path to rebuilding the foundations of its broken military and economy may be long and difficult, but relatively straightforward. U.S. deterrence, on the other hand, once shattered in the crucible of a war that found the credibility of American threats wanting, could prove far harder to reestablish.
Trump attacked Iran with the intent of demonstrating America’s overwhelming power and ability to defeat its adversaries. Instead, his gambit ended up highlighting the limits of Washington’s capacity to impose its will on a much weaker enemy. You can bet the lesson will not be lost, either on America’s friends nor its foes.
The war will end eventually, but Iran’s proven ability to shut down Hormuz, threaten catastrophic harm against U.S. allies, and live to tell the tale will remain lodged in the world’s collective memory — an extraordinary shift in the balance of global leverage that the U.S. will be hard-pressed to reverse.
It’s a bell that, once rung, will be difficult to unring, and almost certainly not at a price that the American people seem prepared to pay.