Trump faces slew of ‘bad options’ on Iran as diplomacy falters

Trump faces mounting pressure amid stalled Iran peace talks as domestic discontent grows and geopolitical stakes rise.

By Virginia Pietromarchi

Published On 13 May 2026

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/13/trump-faces-slew-of-bad-options-on-iran-as-diplomacy-falters

Optimism surrounding another set of peace proposals aimed at shaping a deal between Iran and the United States quickly faded this week as the two sides appeared to instead pull further apart, digging in and insisting that the other compromise for negotiations to resume.

US President Donald Trump has said that the already fragile ceasefire with Iran, in place since April 8, is now on “life support”, and members of his administration have increasingly hinted that the US could resume fighting.

But analysts say for all of Trump’s bluster on Truth Social, his preferred megaphone, the US president is now trapped between escalation and concession, with the region increasingly stuck in a grey zone of neither peace nor war.

A resumption of hostilities remains possible, but the war is unpopular among Americans and could weigh heavily on Republicans ahead of crucial midterm elections. Yet extricating the US from the conflict and securing a deal may require Trump to concede ground to Tehran – either on its nuclear programme or over Iran’s role in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of global energy exports passes.

“The White House is left with a set of bad options,” said Allison Minor, a former official at the US State Department and National Security Council, and currently a director at the Atlantic Council’s Project for Middle East Integration.

Tehran wants an end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon; it wants the first stage of negotiations to focus on ending hostilities before moving to a second step to discuss its nuclear programme and support for proxy groups. It rejects the dismantling of its nuclear programme and wants sanctions to be lifted and the recognition of its influence over the key waterway. Trump has called its latest proposal — with these demands — “garbage”.

So, what options does he have?

On Sunday, the US president hinted that more military moves may be needed, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested the war was not over. Iran’s enriched uranium remains in the country — even though it is likely buried under rubble from US and Israeli bombings last June. Iran’s enrichment sites have not been dismantled. And Tehran still retains its proxy networks and ballistic missile arsenal, Netanyahu said in a CBS interview. “There is work to be done,” Trump said.

But while the US and Israel could well resume attacks on Iran, the prospects of a protracted conflict with no end in sight could translate into a major political liability for Trump, said Ian Lesser, a distinguished fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“Things don’t evolve the way either side might assume,” he said, noting that the Iranian leadership has already proven to be more resilient and durable — with a higher threshold for physical and economic pain — than the US administration had expected.

To add to that, renewed fighting would affect US abilities to respond to threats elsewhere, including in the Indo-Pacific region, Lesser said, amid mounting concerns over depleted US ammunition stockpiles after five weeks of bombing Iran. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that the conflict had already reduced Washington’s readiness for other potential confrontations, particularly with China.

Iran has already shown what would happen should the US and Israel resume bombing it, with Gulf allies bearing the brunt of it. After Trump announced “Project Freedom” – an initiative to force the opening of the narrow waterway to allow stranded vessels to transit – Iran responded with a barrage of missiles and drones targeting the United Arab Emirates. US officials argued that the attacks were not enough to be considered a breach of the fragile ceasefire agreed upon in early April – a signal of the Trump administration’s lack of appetite to pick up fighting again, observers said. Instead, the US president suspended the Hormuz initiative within 24 hours, even though a naval blockade of vessels linked to Iran seeking passage through the strait remains in place.

Pressure is mounting at home, too. The latest Reuters/Ipsos survey published on Tuesday suggests two-thirds of Americans polled do not think that Trump has given a clear rationale for why the US waged this war. And the same percentage is feeling the financial strain from the war as gas, oil and fertiliser prices are rising. Trump’s approval rating of 36 percent remains far lower than what it was — 47 percent — last year, ahead of mid-term elections in November that could determine whether the Republican Party retains control of Congress.

While the US president has often appeared relatively insensitive to popular opinion in Washington, he cares about market fluctuations, energy prices and inflation and “understands that the status quo can’t be protected indefinitely,” said Minor of the Atlantic Council. “He will find creative framing to present some agreement as a victory even if he will have to concede something” to Iran, she added.

Trump, she said, is unlikely to be able to convince Iran to both strike a deal that limits its nuclear programme and give up control over the Strait of Hormuz. “He will be forced to prioritise one over the other and he will prioritise the nuclear deal,” Minor said.

Meanwhile, Iran’s posture on the negotiations has hardened. Iran’s ceasefire proposals and defiant position reflect a leadership that has emerged from the conflict confident that it holds the upper hand and is unlikely to bow to American pressure, says Dennis Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies.

From Tehran’s perspective, the war and the economic pressure campaign have failed to force strategic concessions. On the contrary, Citrinowicz said, Iran appears to view the crisis as an opportunity to expand its leverage and redefine deterrence vis-a-vis Washington. Still, Iran’s confidence masks significant vulnerabilities, including mounting economic strain and damage to parts of its military infrastructure.

“The Iranian response leaves Trump with very few viable options, and all of them range from bad to worse: either accepting terms that are politically impossible in Washington, or escalating further in ways that could trigger a broader regional confrontation without actually changing Tehran’s core positions,” he said on X.

Could Trump’s Iran Fiasco Be America’s Suez Crisis?

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies | May 12, 2026

https://original.antiwar.com/mbenjamin/2026/05/11/could-trumps-iran-fiasco-be-americas-suez-crisis/

Empires rise and fall. They do not last forever. Imperial declines follow a gradual shifting of the economic tides but are also punctuated and defined by critical tipping points. There are many differences between the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the US war on Iran today, but similarities in the larger context suggest that the United States is facing the same kind of “end of empire” moment that the British Empire faced in that historic crisis.

In 1956, the British Empire was still resisting independence movements in many of its colonies. The horrors of British Mau Mau concentration camps in Kenya and Britain’s brutal guerrilla war in Malaya continued throughout the 1950s, and, like the United States today, Britain still had military bases all over the world.

Britain’s imperial domination of Egypt began with its purchase of Egypt’s 44% share in the French-built Suez Canal in 1875. Seven years later, the British invaded Egypt, took over the management of the Canal and controlled access to it for 70 years.

After the Egyptian Revolution overthrew the British-controlled monarchy in 1952, the British agreed to withdraw and close their bases in Egypt by 1956, and to return control of the Suez Canal to Egypt by 1968.

But Egypt was increasingly threatened by Britain, France and Israel. Through the 1955 Baghdad Pact, the British recruited Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan to form the Central Treaty Organization, an anti-Soviet, anti-Egyptian alliance modeled on NATO in Europe. At the same time, Israel was attacking Egyptian forces in the Gaza Strip, and France was threatening Egypt for supporting Algeria’s war of independence.

Egypt’s President Nasser responded by forging new alliances with Saudi Arabia, Syria and other countries in the region, and, after failing to secure weapons from the US or USSR, Egypt bought large shipments of Soviet weapons from Czechoslovakia.

Upset with Egypt’s new alliances, the United States, Great Britain and the World Bank withdrew their financing from Egypt’s Aswan Dam project on the Nile. In response, Nasser stunned the world by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company and pledging to compensate its British and French shareholders.

British leaders saw the loss of the Suez Canal as unacceptable. Chancellor Harold Macmillan wrote in his diary, “If Nasser ‘gets away with it’, we are done for. The whole Arab world will despise us… and our friends will fall. It may well be the end of British influence and strength forever. So, in the last resort, we must use force and defy opinion, here and overseas”.

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden hatched a secret plan with France and Israel to invade Egypt, seize the Canal and try to overthrow Nasser. The US rejected military action against Egypt, and President Eisenhower told a press conference, on September 5, 1956, “We are committed to a peaceful settlement of this dispute, nothing else.” But the British assumed that the US would ultimately support them once combat began.

Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, and then Britain and France landed forces in Port Said at the north end of the Suez Canal, under the pretense of protecting the Canal from both Israel and Egypt.

But before Britain and France could fully seize control of the Canal, the US government intervened to stop them. The US began selling off its British currency reserves and blocked an emergency IMF loan to Britain, triggering a financial crisis. At the same time, the USSR threatened to send forces to defend Egypt and even hinted at the possible use of nuclear weapons against Britain, France and Israel.

The UN Security Council used a procedural vote – which Britain and France could not veto – to convene an Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly under the “Uniting for Peace” process. Resolution 997 called for a ceasefire, a withdrawal to armistice lines and the reopening of the Canal, and was approved by a vote of 64 to 5.

Four days later, Prime Minister Eden declared a ceasefire. British and French forces withdrew six weeks later, and the Canal was cleared and reopened within five months. Egypt subsequently managed the Canal effectively, and did not block British or French ships from using it.

The Suez Crisis was the pivotal moment when the British government finally learned that it could no longer use military force to impose its will on less powerful countries. Like Americans today on Iran, the British public was way ahead of its government: opinion polls found that 44% opposed the use of force against Egypt, while only 37% approved. As Prime Minister Eden dithered over the UN’s ceasefire order, 30,000 people gathered at an anti-war rally in Trafalgar Square.

Eden was forced to resign, and was replaced by Harold Macmillan, who withdrew British forces from bases in Asia, expedited independence for British colonies around the world, and repositioned Britain as a junior partner to the United States. That new role included arming British submarines with U.S. nuclear missiles, which is now a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But Macmillan’s successor, the Labour Party leader Harold Wilson, would later keep Britain out of Vietnam.

Britain charted a successful transition to a post-imperial future through its relationships with the United States and the British Commonwealth – an association of independent states that preserved British influence in its former colonies. On the domestic front, there was broad political support for a mixed capitalist-socialist economy that included free education and healthcare, publicly owned housing and utilities, nationalized industries, and strong trade unions.

Macmillan was reelected in 1959 with the slogan, “You’ve never had it so good.” When a cartoonist mockingly dubbed him “Supermac,” the nickname stuck.

Britain’s Tories were dyed-in-the-wool imperialists, much like Trump and his motley crew today. But they did not let their imperial world view blind them to the lessons of the Suez Crisis. They could see that the world was changing, and that Britain had to find a new role in a world it could no longer dominate by force.

Most Americans today have learned similar lessons from failed, disastrous US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But like the British people who opposed Eden’s invasion of Egypt, Americans have been repeatedly dragged into war by the secret scheming of leaders blinded by anachronistic, racist, imperial assumptions.

Trump is now encountering the same kind of international pressure that forced Britain and France to abandon the Suez invasion. Another Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly and a new “Uniting for Peace” resolution might also be helpful.

But ultimately, the resolution of this crisis, and the future of the United States in today’s emerging multipolar world, will depend on whether US politicians are capable of making  the kind of historic policy shift that Macmillan and his colleagues made in 1956 and the years that followed.

Macmillan was not an opposition politician, but a senior member of Britain’s Conservative government, up to his neck in the Suez fiasco. The secret plot with the Israelis was his idea. President Eisenhower personally warned him at the White House that the US would not support a British invasion of Egypt. But unlike the British Ambassador who sat in on the same meeting, Macmillan assumed that, when the chips were down, Eisenhower would stand by his old World War II allies.

Maybe it was the shock of getting it all so wrong that persuaded Macmillan and his colleagues to take a fresh look at the world and radically rethink British foreign and colonial policy.

The crisis with Iran is at least as catastrophic for US imperialism as the Suez Crisis was for the British Empire. The question is whether anyone in Washington today is capable of grasping the gravity of the crisis and making the required policy shift.

To follow Britain’s Suez example would mean closing US military bases around the world; renouncing the illegal threat and use of military force as the main tool of US foreign policy; and relying instead on multilateral diplomacy and UN action to resolve international disputes.

But where is the Macmillan in the Trump administration or the Republican Party? Or the Harold Wilson in the Democratic Party, whose leaders have never even tried to formulate a progressive foreign policy since the end of the Cold War? Obama’s belated outreach to Cuba and Iran in his second term were their only flirtation with a new way forward.

The silver lining in the current crisis is that it may mark the final collapse of the neoconservative imperial project that has dominated US foreign policy since the 1990s and now cornered Trump into a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” choice between an unwinnable war with Iran and a historic diplomatic defeat.

Americans must insist that this crisis spark the radical rethink of US politics, economics and international relations that neocons in both parties have prevented for decades. Trump’s dead end in the Persian Gulf must also be the final end of this ugly, criminal neoconservative era, and the beginning of a transition to a more peaceful future for Americans and all our neighbors.

Israel-Firsters Won’t Let Trump Get an Iran Deal

The president keeps following the men who led him into a quagmire.

Andrew Day

May 8, 2026

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/israel-firsters-wont-let-trump-get-an-iran-deal/

Here’s a lesson President Donald Trump should have learned a long time ago: Israel and its American lobby cannot be satisfied. No matter how much you give them, they always want more. Right now, they want Trump to restart the war with Iran, Israel’s chief adversary in the Middle East.

Will Trump give them what they want? I fear he will.

In early February, weeks before Trump launched the war, I argued in The American Conservative that Iran was his “Israeli influence test.” War with Iran would advance Israeli interests, not American ones, so it seemed a good test case for whether U.S. foreign policy served a foreign nation. I predicted Trump would fail the test, and I was right. So much for America First.

After the war went much worse than Trump expected, he wisely secured a two-week ceasefire in early April, and mere hours before the truce was set to end, he wisely extended it. The U.S. and Iran have used the opportunity to engage in diplomacy, mediated by Pakistan, but negotiations haven’t seemed promising—until this week.

Axios reported Wednesday that the Trump administration “believes it’s getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations.” The reporter, Barak Ravid, has been derided as a White House stenographer who publishes stories that seem designed to calm the markets rather than uncover the truth. But this time, other journalists have corroborated Ravid’s reporting.

Here’s an important development and cause for hope: Iran seems willing to accept a moratorium on uranium enrichment, a key stage in the process of making nuclear fuel. “I do think there are signs that parts of the Iranian establishment are more open to creative arrangements around enrichment levels or temporary limits, especially given the economic pressure Iran has been under,” Sina Toossi, an Iran expert at the Center for International Policy, told The American Conservative.

Elements of the Islamic Republic have at times denied that Iran was mulling a moratorium. But the journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News, which has sources in the Iranian government, told TAC that Tehran seems willing to pause enrichment in exchange for U.S. concessions like sanctions relief. “They have said as much,” Grim insisted.

That would be a big concession on a major sticking point. If the Islamic Republic agreed to a yearslong moratorium, followed by caps on enrichment far below the amount needed to build nuclear weapons, then Trump could claim to have struck a deal with Tehran better than Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear accord, which he exited in 2018.

Sounds great, right?

Not if you’re one of “the Marks,” a troika of Israel-first American conservatives who exert influence over the president. Mark Levin of Fox News, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post are getting nervous that Trump might give peace a chance.

Levin wrote Wednesday on X, “If the Axios report is close to accurate, the Iranian regime will survive, the Iranian people will face even more extensive brutality, and the Israeli government could fall in the October election. A disastrous result.”

Thiessen complained that Trump on Tuesday paused “Project Freedom” barely a day after it began. That was the U.S. mission to guide vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial chokepoint for global trade which Iran has effectively closed. After Iran launched attacks in the Hormuz, Trump said he was suspending the operation to create space for diplomacy.

Thiessen wasn’t pleased. “They take that as weakness,” he wrote in a tweet reposted by Dubowitz. “They don’t think Trump is willing to bomb them again. They think they have leverage. He needs to prove them wrong.”

That the Marks are freaking out is a good thing, and it wasn’t the only sign this week that the reported diplomatic progress is real.

“One credible signal that peace talks are actually proceeding is this massive airstrike that Israel carried out on Beirut just now,” Grim said on Wednesday. “Whenever you’re getting closer to an agreement, you usually tend to see the Israeli military ramp up its violence.”

Iran has always maintained that the ceasefire covers the entire regional war, including Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon. That’s why Israel massively escalated violence in Lebanon after the ceasefire was announced—to sabotage the truce—and in Grim’s view, it’s why Israel attacked Beirut on Wednesday amid new reports of progress in negotiations.

If Israel is ramping up its sabotage campaign, then Trump just might be on the right track. Still, I think it’s more likely that he’s careering toward another calamity. After all, Israel and its supporters usually get most of what they want from Trump, and despite this week’s burst of optimism, I haven’t been in a glass-half-full kind of mood.

Iran may have dropped its resistance to a moratorium on uranium enrichment, but Trump has developed a new fixation: getting Iran to ship its 900 pounds of highly-enriched uranium to the United States. “We’re going to get it,” he told a White House reporter on Wednesday. In a phone interview the same day with PBS, Trump was adamant. “It goes to the United States,” he said.

Where might Trump have gotten the idea that Iran must give its enriched uranium to America? Take a wild guess.

Al Jazeera reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s ally, said on Wednesday the two leaders agreed that all enriched uranium must be removed from Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb.” The Marks, as always, are doing their part. Dubowitz said Iran’s handing over all its enriched uranium, not just the highly-enriched material, was a “good red line.”

If Trump hasn’t figured this out yet, he probably never will: The Israel lobby shapes his diplomacy not to help him get the best deal possible, but to insert poison pills into the negotiations. That’s why they pushed last year for Trump to demand zero enrichment—as the former Trump official Joe Kent explained to TAC in March—and it’s why they’re now pushing him to demand that Iran ship out all its uranium.

Iran experts doubt Tehran would make this concession. “The demand that Iran hand over all of its enriched uranium to the United States is extremely unlikely to be accepted and comes very close to a red line for the Iranian system,” Toossi said.

Like a moth to the flame, Trump gravitates toward the very men who convinced him to attack Iran. He’s been promoting Levin’s lunatic rants and Thiessen’s hawkish op-eds, the White House recently added an FDD staffer to its team of Iran negotiators, and Netanyahu continues to have the president’s ear.

Considering how disastrous the Iran war has been for America’s geopolitical position and Trump’s poll numbers, might the president finally be ready to put America first, rather than let Israel dictate his Mideast policy? Sadly, I don’t see much reason to suppose he’ll pass the test this time either.

Trump: Iran’s Response to US Proposal Is ‘Totally Unacceptable’

The US president spoke with Netanyahu about Iran's response

by Dave DeCamp | May 10, 2026 

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/05/10/trump-irans-response-to-us-proposal-is-totally-unacceptable/

President Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s response to the latest US proposal to reach a deal was “totally unacceptable,” signaling that the two sides are still not close to reaching a deal.

“I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Trump made similar comments to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, saying, “I don’t like their letter. It’s inappropriate. I don’t like their response… They have been tapping along many nations for 47 years.”

The president said that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday about Iran’s response. According to Israeli media, Israeli officials are trying to convince their US counterparts to launch major airstrikes aimed at destroying Iran’s energy infrastructure.

An Iranian source told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that Trump’s rejection of Tehran’s response was “of no importance” because no one “writes proposals to please Trump.” The source added that the “negotiating team should draft proposals only for the rights of the Iranian people, and when Trump is dissatisfied with them, naturally that is better.”

Iranian media has reported that the Iranian response, which came after the US provided its response to a 14-point Iranian proposal, is focused on bringing a permanent end to the conflict and other hostilities in the region, including in Lebanon, where the Israeli military killed dozens of people over the weekend.

Iranian sources said Iran is also asking for an immediate end to the US blockade, the lifting of US sanctions, the release of frozen assets overseas, and the ability to freely sell its oil. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had offered to move some of its enriched uranium to a third country, but that hasn’t been confirmed by Iranian sources, which suggest the idea is to end the hostilities before negotiating on the nuclear issue.

The war on Iran will likely end in American retreat

The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at acceptable financial, military, and political costs.

9 May 2026
By Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/5/9/the-war-on-iran-will-likely-end-in-american-retreat

The war against Iran that the United States and Israel launched on February 28, 2026, will likely end in an American retreat. The United States cannot continue the war without producing disastrous consequences. A renewed escalation would likely lead to the destruction of the region’s oil, gas, and desalination infrastructure, causing a prolonged global catastrophe. Iran can credibly impose costs that the United States cannot bear and that the world should not suffer.

The US – Israel war plan was a decapitation strike, sold to President Donald Trump by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Barnea, the director of the Mossad. The premise was that an aggressive joint US–Israeli bombing campaign would so degrade the Iranian regime’s command structure, nuclear programme, and IRGC senior leadership that the regime would fracture. The United States and Israel would then impose a pliable government in Tehran.

Trump seems to have been convinced that Iran would follow the same course as had occurred in Venezuela. The US operation in Venezuela in January 2026 removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in what appears to have been a coordinated operation between the CIA and elements inside the Venezuelan state. The US won a more pliant regime, while most of the Venezuelan power structure remained in place. Trump seems to have believed naively that the same outcome would occur in Iran.

The Iran operation, however, failed to produce a pliant regime in Tehran. Iran is not Venezuela, historically, technologically, culturally, geographically, militarily, demographically, or geopolitically. Whatever happened in Caracas had little relation to what would take place in Tehran.

The Iranian government did not fracture. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), far from being decapitated, emerged with a tightened internal command and an expanded role in the national-security architecture. The supreme leader’s office held; the religious establishment closed ranks behind it; and the population rallied against external attack.

Two months on, Trump and Netanyahu have no Iranian successor government under their control, no Iranian surrender to close the war, and no military pathway whatsoever to victory. The only path, and the one the US seems to be taking, is a retreat, with Iran in charge of the Strait of Hormuz and with none of the other issues between the US and Iran settled.

Several reasons explain America’s disastrous miscalculations and Iran’s successes.

First, American leaders fundamentally misjudged Iran. Iran is a great civilisation with 5,000 years of history, deep culture, national resilience, and pride. The Iranian government was not going to succumb to US bullying and bombing, especially reflecting on the fact that Iranians remember how the US destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953 by overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a police state that lasted 27 years.

Second, American leaders dramatically underestimated Iran’s technological sophistication. Iran has world-class engineering and mathematics. It has built an indigenous defence industrial base, with advanced ballistic missiles, a homegrown drone industry, and indigenous orbital launch capability. Iran’s record of technological development, built up despite 40 years of escalating sanctions, is a stunning national achievement.

Third, military technology has shifted in a way that favours Iran. Iran’s ballistic missiles cost a small fraction of the US interceptors deployed against them. Iranian drones cost $20,000; US air-defence interceptor missiles cost $4m. Iran’s antiship missiles, with costs in the low six figures, threaten US destroyers that cost $2-3bn. Iran’s anti-access and area-denial network around the Gulf, layered air defence, drone and missile saturation capacity, and sea-denial capability in the strait have made the operational cost of imposing American will on Iran far higher than the United States can sustain, especially taking into account the retaliatory destruction that Iran can impose on the neighbouring countries.

Fourth, the US policy process has become irrational. The Iran war was decided by a small circle of presidential loyalists at Mar-a-Lago, with no formal interagency process and a National Security Council that had been hollowed out across the preceding year. Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned on March 17 with a public letter describing “an echo chamber” used to deceive the president. The war was the output of a decision-making system in which the deliberative apparatus had been turned off.

This was neither a war of necessity, nor a war of choice. It was a war of whim. The underlying premise was hegemony. The United States was attempting to preserve a global dominance that it no longer possesses, and Israel was trying to establish a regional dominance that it will never have.

The likely endgame, given all this, is that the war will likely end with a return to something close to the status quo ante, except for three new facts on the ground. First, Iran will have operational control over the Strait of Hormuz. Second, Iran’s deterrent posture will be significantly raised. Third, the US long-term military presence in the Gulf will be significantly reduced. The other issues that supposedly prompted the US to attack Iran — Iran’s nuclear programme, regional proxies, the missile arsenal — will most likely be left where they were at the start of the war.

Even as the US retreats, Iran will not press its advantage against its neighbours. Three reasons explain why. First, Iran has a long-term strategic interest in cooperation with its Gulf neighbours, not an ongoing war. Second, Iran will have no interest in restarting a war it has just successfully ended. Third, Iran will be restrained, if any restraint is needed, by its great-power patrons, Russia and China, who both desire a stable and prosperous region. The Iranian leadership understands this clearly and will stop the fighting.

Trump will no doubt try to depict the coming retreat as some great military and strategic victory. No such claims will be true. The truth is that Iran is far more sophisticated than the United States understood; the decision to go to war was irrational; and the underlying technology of war has shifted against the US. The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at an acceptable financial, military, and political cost. What America can regain, however, is some measure of rationality. It’s time for the US to end its regime-change operations and return to international law and diplomacy.

Pakistan-Iran corridor punches through the Hormuz blockade

By opening six overland routes for Tehran-bound cargo, Islamabad is turning transit trade into strategic leverage as US pressure reshapes the Persian Gulf’s commercial arteries

F.M. Shakil

MAY 8, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/pakistan-iran-corridor-punches-through-the-hormuz-blockade

When more than 3,000 Iran-bound containers began piling up at Karachi’s ports, the Strait of Hormuz crisis had already moved beyond the sea. It was now pressing on Pakistan’s docks, customs authorities, and border crossings. Soon after, Islamabad announced an overland transit mechanism for third-country cargo moving through Pakistan and into Iran.

This shift occurs as Washington’s influence over Persian Gulf and West Asian nations continues to decline, leading to new geostrategic adjustments throughout the region, affecting ports, pipelines, and defense diplomacy.

Energy security, military cooperation, and trade routes are being reassessed, while China and Russia quietly push alternatives that reduce US influence and open new regional linkages.

Analysts say the emerging pattern is visible in calls for a combined Muslim force, efforts by Gulf and Arab states to dilute dependence on Washington, and the growing push to replace the dollar in energy transactions. Each trend points to a region testing how far it can move beyond the old US-led order.

For Pakistan, the calculation is also domestic.

Transit trade promises customs revenue, port activity, and leverage at a time when Islamabad is squeezed by debt, energy costs, and security pressures along its western frontier. A corridor serving Iran can also support Pakistan’s ambition to become a connector between the Arabian Sea, Central Asia, and western China.

A land bridge for Iran

In line with these regional developments, Pakistan made a surprising and daring move last month by allowing Iran to carry its commercial shipments across six overland routes, ending at the Taftan border crossing with Iran.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce issued the “Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026” on 25 April, and three major seaports—Karachi Port, Port Qasim, and Gwadar Deep-Sea Port—were designated to receive and dispatch cargo to Iran and onward to Central Asian states.

Media reports framed the decision as a way for Iran to bypass the US blockade linked to the Strait of Hormuz, although Islamabad has avoided presenting it in openly confrontational terms.

Earlier last month, Pakistan sent a shipment of frozen beef to Uzbekistan via Iran, opening a new overland route through the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing between Iran and Pakistan. It was a test shipment, and officials said that the Iran corridor will facilitate trade between Iran and Central Asia via Pakistan's ports of Karachi and Gwadar.

Global media have suggested that the new arrangement could thwart US efforts to halt Iranian cargo shipments, a ploy primarily aimed at limiting Iranian oil exports, especially to China, and at tightening pressure on Tehran’s economy.

Speaking to The Cradle, Mushahid Hussain Syed, a former information minister and head of Pakistan's Senate Defense Committee, says:

“The unfair blockade has left thousands of Iranian containers stuck at Karachi ports, which has made it harder for people in Iran to get consumer goods. However, I disagree with the media reports suggesting that the overland corridors with Iran render the US blockade of Hormuz technically ineffective. The media intentionally or unintentionally made this facility seem like a way to help Iran get around the US blockade, even though it has a pure business consideration and has nothing to do with making things worse between the US and Tehran.”

Syed says that establishing six overland transit lines to Iran will have major political, economic, and diplomatic consequences. The corridor, he adds, has gained importance amid the US Navy’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz since 13 April.

The immediate result of Pakistan’s new regulations is the potential clearance of about 3,000 Iranian containers stranded in Karachi, after restrictions on ships traveling to and from Iran left essential food and consumer goods stuck in the Pakistani port city.

Washington’s silent consent?

Did the US allow Pakistan to provide Iran with land routes around the Strait of Hormuz blockade? Has the blockade become less effective now that Iranian cargo can move through Pakistan?

These questions have circulated on social media since The Economic Times of India published the headline, “Asim Munir’s double game: Pakistan punches a legal hole in the US naval blockade of Hormuz,” on 27 April.

Some observers see the development as evidence that backchannel peace talks are producing results. In that reading, Washington has accepted a partial easing of pressure while expecting Iran to reopen the Strait, thereby lowering the likelihood of a wider escalation.

On 1 May, US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he knew Pakistan had opened land routes with Iran. He replied that he was aware of it, while expressing respect for Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Majyd Aziz, President of the Employers Federation of Pakistan, tells The Cradle:

"Conventional wisdom and market intelligence suggest that China and Russia did play a role in this policy’s formulation. However, common sense indicates that the facility would not have been offered without tacit approval from Washington. The beneficial element is that despite UN economic sanctions, a constant smuggling system, and a 900-kilometer border, bilateral trade has the potential to become a normal conduit advantageous to both countries.”

Aziz explains that, in the case of China, the agreement would most likely enable China-Iran trade via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) rather than through Central Asian countries. Russia, always seeking access to warm-water ports, would also view Pakistan’s geography as an opportunity to bypass US and European sanctions.

He argues:

“The juxtaposition of China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan is ideal for streamlined transportation via land routes. Therefore, China could have played a facilitative role in convincing Pakistan that it would provide all diplomatic support, given its critical mass to withstand any negative reactions from the US or even Europe.”

Aziz adds that a key bottleneck to implementation remains the hesitation of Pakistani commercial banks to support transit trade with Iran due to US sanctions. Without letters of credit, insurance coverage, and banking channels, the corridor could remain a narrow emergency route rather than the broader trade artery its supporters envision.

From Jebel Ali to Gwadar

Iran has been uprooting its logistics infrastructure from the Persian Gulf to shift its maritime trade—mostly handled by the UAE—to Pakistan’s overland corridor.

The movement of a large amount of Iranian-linked cargo, worth tens of billions of dollars, from busy hubs in the UAE—particularly Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port—to ports like Gwadar, Karachi, and Port Qasim indicates a clear shift in the regional trade scene, driven by increasing geopolitical tensions.

Iran has depended on the UAE's re-export systems for a long time, managing about US$22 billion in imports in the year 2025. Total bilateral trade has increased to roughly US$27 billion.

However, due to significant security concerns, including the need to avoid potential sanctions and disruptions to sea routes, as well as the increasing instability in the region that could affect trade, this setup is gradually being shifted to overland routes.

In a series of posts on X, The Tehran Times, Iran’s leading international daily, said the country has replaced the UAE’s Jebel Ali port with Pakistani seaports.

The newspaper argued that replacing the UAE route with the Pakistani overland corridor could accelerate cargo movement, reduce costs, and bring Iran closer to the $60 billion CPEC network and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), positioning Pakistan as a bridge between South Asia and Eurasia amid a period of contested sea power.

“Setting up six overland routes, such as Gwadar and Taftan, is a smart move that will help both Iran and Pakistan. The main goal of this corridor is to resolve the problem of Iranian cargo that is stuck and to make it easier for goods from other countries to enter Iran through Pakistan,” Syed opines.

Temporary fix or permanent corridor?

How long will the Hormuz crisis persist? Could it still escalate into shortages of oil, gas, and other commodities, deepening global instability? In Pakistani trade circles, the question now is what happens to the land-route mechanism with Iran if the Strait reopens for regular shipping. Aziz reveals:

“The argument over these variables continues, as the Strait became a tinderbox, exacerbating the front-loading shipping costs. A suspension of hostilities, the opening of the Strait, and the resumption of oil, gas, and commodity cargo would eventually release pressure on the global economy. However, the six land-route facilities to Iran will remain intact and eventually become permanent, even if the war ends. This will not only generate considerable revenue, but hopefully, the much-delayed Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline will start functioning.”

He adds that the underlying issue remains Tel Aviv's confrontational approach, rooted in Israel's substantial and unwavering influence over Washington.

“Netanyahu would be uncomfortable with the US backing down and Iran consenting to a sensible compromise; therefore, the battle will continue in a blow-hot, blow-cold phase,” Aziz remarks.

US Bombs Iran’s Qeshm Port and Bandar Abbas

Iran's military has said that the US violated the ceasefire by attacking ships and launching airstrikes on Iranian ports

by Dave DeCamp | May 7, 2026 

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/05/07/us-bombs-irans-qeshm-port-and-bandar-abbas/

The US bombed Iranian ports on Thursday, an attack that will likely plunge the region back into full-scale war.

Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin first reported that the US was behind strikes on a port in Iran’s Qeshm island in the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, and a naval target in Minab, where the US bombed an elementary school on February 28, an attack that killed 120 children.

Iran’s military then released a statement saying that the US violated the ceasefire by attacking two commercial ships and bombing Iranian ports.

“The aggressive, terrorist, and bandit American army violated the ceasefire by targeting an Iranian oil tanker ship moving from Iranian coastal waters in the Jask region towards the Strait of Hormuz, as well as another ship entering the Strait of Hormuz, opposite the port of Fujairah in the UAE,” said a spokesman for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.

“At the same time, they carried out aerial attacks on civilian areas in cooperation with some regional countries on the coasts of Bandar Khamir, Sirik, and Qeshm Island,” the statement added.

Iran said that its forces responded to the US attacks in the region by targeting US warships, and US Central Command released a statement that said three US Navy destroyers came under attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM said that in response, it hit “Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces, including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance nodes.”

CENTCOM framed the strikes as launched in “self-defense,” and the US official speaking to Griffin said that the US bombing Iran doesn’t mean the ceasefire is over. The Trump administration has attempted to frame its recent military operations, which include a blockade of Iranian ports, as “defensive” even though it’s all part of the war of aggression that the US and Israel launched against Iran on February 28.

The Iranian military said that its attacks on the US warships caused “significant damage,” but President Trump insisted in a post on Truth Social that the destroyers did not get hit.

“Three World Class American Destroyers just transited, very successfully, out of the Strait of Hormuz, under fire. There was no damage done to the three Destroyers, but great damage done to the Iranian attackers. They were completely destroyed along with numerous small boats, which are being used to take the place of their fully decapitated Navy,” the president wrote.

“These boats went to the bottom of the Sea, quickly and efficiently. Missiles were shot at our Destroyers, and were easily knocked down. Likewise, drones came, and were incinerated while in the air. They dropped ever so beautifully down to the Ocean, very much like a butterfly dropping to its grave!” he added.

The president called the Iranians “lunatics” and threatened Iran with heavier attacks if it doesn’t agree to US demands for a deal. “[W]e’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!” he said.

Trump also told ABC reporter Rachel Scott that the US bombing of Iranian ports was a “love tap” and that the “ceasefire is going. It’s in effect.”