The US is not going to win the Iran war, that much is clear. Their best hope now is to find an agreement with Iran which is not a complete humiliation for the Trump administration.
Mohammad Eslami is a PhD Candidate and Research Fellow at the University of Tehran. He is a co-author of “The Second Europe”, a study of Iranian-European nuclear negotiations, and was formerly editor-in-chief of Khorasan Diplomatic Magazine, traveling regularly with Iranian negotiators during the JCPOA nuclear talks.
Dr. Zeynab Malakouti is a Senior Fellow at the Global Peace Institute and a Research Affiliate at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. She received her PhD in International Law from the University of Leeds, UK. She previously served as an Assistant Professor and Director of the Human Rights Department at the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights, Peace, and Democracy in Iran. Cross-posted from Responsible Statecraft Picture by U.S. Navy U.S.-Iran talks have foundered. America’s naval blockade has not reopened the Strait of Hormuz . Iran , for its part, has confronted Washington’s “Project Freedom” directly — by denying passage to a South Korean vessel, and targeting two American warships and Fujairah Port. Donald Trump stopped short of declaring that Tehran has violated the ceasefire. “They were shot down for the most part,” the president said of the Iranian drones and missiles . “One got through. Not huge damage.” Meanwhile, the U.S. sank several Iranian fast boats reportedly making their way to commercial vessels in the Strait.
In Washington and Tel Aviv, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continue to frame the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran as a string of tactical successes. Beneath these claims, however, a strategic reality is taking shape. To put it plainly, this was not a victory.
Yet Tehran’s position resists triumphalism. Iran has won the strategic contest, but it has not secured the peace it envisioned. The Islamic Republic has neither dislodged the U.S. military from the Persian Gulf nor secured the removal of sanctions. More significantly, Tehran miscalculated the Trump administration’s resolve to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. This was no bargaining chip. It was the next theater of war: a pivot from conventional combat to prolonged economic siege.
All parties, it appears, have arrived at an impasse. Washington and Tel Aviv misread Iranian endurance from the start — just as they have now misjudged the blockade’s efficacy. Iran is steeled for a long economic struggle; it has spent decades honing that capacity under sanctions. The global economy, by contrast, is far more exposed.
The essential uncertainty for Tehran is what happens when Trump finally recognizes that the blockade is failing to deliver its intended results. Will he turn toward authentic diplomacy, with all the patience and technical rigor it demands? Or will he redouble his efforts on a failing course, clinging to the hope that renewed pressure might somehow yield a different outcome?
Still, every war ends at the negotiating table. A diplomatic resolution remains possible — if all sides confront the formidable obstacles ahead. Each obstacle is daunting. But none is insurmountable.
The first impasse: the erosion of trust
In a recent analysis , we articulated the essential conditions for a potential win–win agreement — or, at a minimum, an outcome in which no party emerges a loser. Yet the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has resurrected a familiar dilemma that no quantity of technical negotiation can circumvent: the problem of trust, or rather, its profound absence.
Federica Mogherini, who steered the European Union’s negotiations and shepherded the implementation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), once remarked that “it took us twelve years and immense technical work” to reach that accord. The trust that ultimately underwrote the JCPOA was not bestowed; it was painstakingly cultivated.
Today, however, from Tehran’s vantage point, that trust has largely dissolved. The U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, the “maximum pressure” campaign of relentlessly tightening sanctions, and the two direct military campaigns launched against Iran during active negotiations have all fed this erosion. Each broken pledge has compounded the last. What remains is a gulf of suspicion that no joint statement can readily span.
Amid this climate of distrust, Iran’s recently proposed three-phase framework offers a plausible way forward. The first phase envisions rebuilding trust through a full cessation of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. In return, Tehran would commit to refrain from retaliating against any neighbor that provided territorial or aerial access for attacks on Iran — the result being regional de-escalation. The second phase would involve the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, coupled with the lifting of the U.S. blockade, thereby easing the stranglehold on the global economy. The third phase would tackle deeper issues through sustained, multilateral diplomatic engagement.
The implication for Washington and Tehran is unmistakable. Trust cannot be restored through rhetorical gestures or unilateral posturing. It demands concrete, verifiable actions, undertaken in good faith and executed in parallel by both parties.
The second impasse: the false simplification of nuclear complexity
The second impasse flows directly from the first. Even if trust can be restored, a conceptual chasm remains. The Trump administration has consistently sought to simplify a deeply intricate issue. Withdrawing from the JCPOA and dismissively relabeling that accord as the “Obama Deal” does nothing to alter the underlying reality.
Iran’s nuclear program has now become the central sticking point. For Tehran, its stockpile of roughly 400 kilograms of enriched uranium constitutes a significant asset. Its domestic scientific and technical expertise is not negotiable. The right to maintain a peaceful nuclear program serves vital domestic purposes—technological, political, and symbolic. And without firm, verifiable guarantees against future attacks, transferring enriched uranium abroad would leave Iran dangerously exposed. Tehran is therefore reserving this leverage for the final phase of its proposed three-stage framework.
Washington’s objective, by contrast, remains the outright elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacity. Hence the impasse.
But it is possible to break through it. The answer is neither novel nor mysterious. It is the same path that led to the JCPOA: patient, technical, step-by-step diplomacy, backed by verified commitments and sustained political will. The JCPOA was imperfect. No single party found it ideal. But it worked, until Washington abandoned it. Returning to that model, or something approximating it, remains the only proven pathway for managing Iran’s nuclear program without resorting to further coercion or conflict.
The third impasse: the dilemma of sanctions relief
The third impasse is simultaneously the most practical and the most politically charged: sanctions relief. This is not a new battlefield. The economic war predates the recent conventional conflict. For decades, the sanctions regime has inflicted profound humanitarian costs — casualties measured not in bullets, but in medicine denied, food costs inflated, and livelihoods eroded.
There are indications that Washington is now considering the release of frozen Iranian assets, possibly in exchange for an extended suspension of nuclear activities. Yet from Tehran’s perspective, this proposal collides with a long and painful history of broken promises. On multiple occasions, the United States claimed to have released frozen assets but continued to pressure international banks and financial institutions to not work with Iran. The result was a functional denial of access. Funds that were theoretically freed remained effectively unreachable.
The core problem is structural. The Trump administration possesses the legal authority to lift primary sanctions — not merely to offer waivers or asset releases that can be quietly rescinded, but to remove the legal architecture of financial pressure. What stands in the way is not a lack of authority. It is the persistent fantasy that Iran will capitulate under financial pressure. That fantasy has not aged well. After decades of pressure, Iran has not surrendered.
If the United States offers only recycled proposals — asset releases without bank access, waivers without primary sanctions relief, mechanisms without financial substance — Tehran has every reason to decline. Past experience has shown that such offers do not deliver genuine economic benefits. And if the United States offers nothing at all, then the war continues, and the global economy continues to bleed.
The path not taken
The joint U.S.-Israeli war of choice on Iran has produced a multidimensional global crisis. Its resolution requires not more pressure, but a fundamental rethinking. First, clarity and expertise are essential. This crisis demands professional economists, seasoned nuclear negotiators, and military de-escalation experts. Second, Washington must locate a reliable “balanced point” — and abandon the fantasy of capitulation.
The choice is not between victory and defeat. That framing is itself a product of the same strategic illusion that produced the war. The real choice is between a negotiated settlement, however difficult, and an open-ended conflict with no exit and no end.
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