The options for ending the war keep getting fewer and worse.
The window for Donald Trump to end the Iran war by simply declaring victory and walking away is rapidly closing. Soon he will face a stark choice: He can take greater risks in pursuit of a decisive tactical success, prepare the country for a prolonged conflict that could last for many months, or seek a negotiated settlement that involves a real compromise with Tehran.
Initially, Trump saw his Venezuela operation as the template for Iran. He imagined that he would make a deal with someone inside the regime who would work pragmatically with him and maybe cut the United States in on the oil. But the Islamic Republic proved more aggressive and more resilient than he had anticipated. By his own admission, no one in his administration had expected Iran to strike out against American allies in the region—“they weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East”—although it had repeatedly threatened to do exactly that. As the war grew more difficult, declaring victory anyway and unilaterally ending it without a deal became his most obvious off-ramp.
