Trump’s Iran Deal Has Collapsed, Leaving the U.S. With Few Good Options

Max Boot is a historian, bestselling author, and foreign policy analyst. His latest book, a biography of Ronald Reagan titled Reagan: His Life and Legend, is his third New York Times bestseller.

On March 1, President Donald Trump said that the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran would last “four to five weeks” at most. More than four months later, after a brief lull, the war is reigniting and showing no sign of ending.

Over the past week, the ceasefire has unraveled as Iran attacked merchant ships trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz near the Oman coast, rather than the Iranian shoreline. The United States struck back by bombing Iranian military bases and at least two bridges, and Iran in turn retaliated against U.S. military bases in the region and U.S.-allied Persian Gulf states. Over the weekend, Iran declared that the strait was closed, and Trump struck back on Monday by declaring that the U.S. blockade of Iranian oil was back on—and that the United States (as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE STRAIT”) would impose a 20 percent toll on cargo passing through the waterway.

So much for the memorandum of understanding (MOU), signed by Trump on June 18 at Versailles. It was essentially a lucrative deal for Iran to reopen the strait—the conduit for 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas. Trump pledged many billions of dollars in economic relief for Iran by lifting sanctions, unfreezing Iranian funds, and providing reconstruction assistance. In return, all Iran had to do was allow normal commercial traffic to flow through the strait, as it did before the war, and enter into negotiations with the United States over the status of its nuclear program.

This deal was widely criticized as an act of appeasement on Trump’s part after failing to reopen the waterway by military force or to achieve his other military objectives—the overthrow of the Iranian regime and the abandonment of its nuclear program, its missile program, and its support for terrorist proxies across the region.

Yet, hard-liners in the Iranian regime are apparently not satisfied to pocket the lucrative gains their country could accrue from this deal. Iran has seen how it could hold the entire world hostage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, and it is in no hurry to relinquish that control. The regime is insisting that any ships that go through the strait pass through its own waters, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is attacking any that refuse to comply. Iran pledged to abstain for only sixty days from charging “user fees”—i.e., tolls—on shipping, and it is intent on ensuring that shipping lines will be forced to pay up or else.

Trump has, predictably, responded by bombing Iran and reinstituting the U.S. blockade while claiming that the United States will charge its own tolls on traffic through the strait, thereby seemingly abandoning the United States’ age-old commitment to freedom of navigation through international waterways.

Trump’s threat to collect tolls is probably just bluster, but the bombing and the blockade are real. The question is what will they accomplish?

The United States and Israel bombed Iran for thirty-nine days (February 28–April 8) without overthrowing the regime or forcing it to give in to U.S. and Israeli demands. Iran ultimately made Trump back down and agree to a humiliating MOU by holding the Strait of Hormuz and the energy infrastructure of U.S. Persian Gulf allies hostage. Trump is in a weaker position to pressure Iran today, after having let the regime cash in on his temporary lifting of sanctions; by one estimate, Iran earned at least $5 billion in oil exports since the United States lifted its blockade on June 17.

The fundamental problem, as I previously noted, is that for all of Trump’s bluster—and that of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—they have no good military options to bring Iran to its knees. Truly defeating Iran and overthrowing its regime would require an invasion by hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. This contingency is impossible to imagine given how unpopular the war already is with the American public. In one recent poll, 60 percent of those surveyed said the Iran war was not worth it.

Trump is left facing the same dilemma as many of his predecessors in the Oval Office: He is fighting a limited war with limited means and, not surprisingly, achieving limited results, at best. The most that can be said for Trump’s war is that it has degraded Iranian military capabilities, but Iranian drones and missiles remain as much of a threat as ever, and Iran has actually increased its ability to blackmail the world since the war began. Even after the signing of the MOU, maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz never returned to prewar levels. Now, with Iran claiming the waterway is closed, even fewer ships are likely to pass through it.

Trump is left with an unpalatable choice: Either acquiesce to Iran charging a toll for traffic through the strait or else run the significant risks of military escalation. More than four months in, the Iran war once again shows why presidents should be wary of starting wars of choice based on wishful thinking and without an obvious exit strategy.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.