As the on-again, off-again war in Iran flares up again, President Trump seems bogged down in a conflict that he cannot control or move past, despite his declarations of total victory.
On Tuesday night, after the latest exchange of fire over control of the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Trump called on the Iranian people to rise up — something he did at the outset of the war six months ago, before he acknowledged that his command was easier said than done.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump also brushed off the stalled negotiations with Iran.
“I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement,” he wrote on Tuesday night, hours after the United States carried out a fresh wave of attacks and Iran hit back.
“I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing,” Mr. Trump continued. “They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”
The post followed a 24-hour stretch during which Mr. Trump’s by-now familiar playbook for the conflict was on full display. The president went from boasting that Iran was defeated militarily, a “failed nation” in economic disarray, to threatening an apocalyptic attack that would leave “very little left” of the country after it had defied his declarations and demands.
By Wednesday morning, as Iran and the United States assessed the damage of the most recent attacks, Mr. Trump was back to trolling the country on social media, asking his followers whether the United States should name the Strait of Hormuz the “Trump Strait.”
Foreign policy experts say the latest round of hostilities point to a reality that has become increasingly clear of Mr. Trump’s handling of the war: He has run out of options.
“The strategy has been rinse and repeat, whether it’s rhetorical or kinetic action,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former State Department appointee in the first Trump administration. “It’s been absolutely shocking how the United States has been exposed for a lack of a plan of engagement, and a lack of a plan to either win or exit this war.”
Mr. Bartlett said that Mr. Trump’s return to a call to action urging Iranians to take over the government — an unfulfilled objective of the war that Mr. Trump has admitted was not achievable — suggests he has no real strategy.
“When you get to the bottom,” he added, “you go back to the top of the ladder of engagement.”
But regardless of Mr. Trump’s combative words, Iran is making clear that it has leverage, as well. Even though Mr. Trump had predicted that the war would be over in a matter of weeks, there is no real end in sight. Iran has fired on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, severely curbing the ability of U.S. allies to export oil and gas.
That is not to say that the U.S. operations in Iran have not hurt the country. Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that it was undeniable that Iran was in a fundamentally weaker position than it was a few years ago, and that the U.S. military had achieved many of the war’s objectives.
In the first weeks of the operation, the United States took out senior leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and decimated Iran’s navy. Mr. Trump has also claimed that the country has “no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country.”
But Iran, now led by a more hard-line regime, has proved that it can disrupt the global economy even with a weakened or limited military, by wielding its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.
“The U.S. has demonstrated its capacity, and that it continues to have one of the most effective militaries in the world,” Mr. Froman said. “I think the challenge is this asymmetric warfare — where we do have the most effective military in the world, but smaller powers with far less capacity, strategically deployed, could still wreak havoc and make it difficult for us to achieve 100 percent of our objectives.”
Mr. Trump has recently sought to move on from a military campaign in Iran by waging economic warfare.
The United States has sought to squeeze Iran economically by enforcing a naval blockade on Iranian ports and increasing sanctions on Tehran. The administration is also banking on a so-called “economic D-Day” announced last month by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, which the White House described “an unprecedented campaign to sever every remaining economic lifeline sustaining the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The campaign is intended to exert pressure on other countries, including potentially China and Russia, that continue to trade with Iran or help it evade U.S. sanctions.
But few countries have shown any indication that it plans to heed the calls, including the two U.S. adversaries Mr. Trump has been reluctant to confront.
China remains a lifeline for Iran, buying its oil and supplying it with raw materials and technology that support its economy and military. And just this week, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia pledged that his country would continue to support Iran and help them defend their national interests.
Mr. Trump is also feeling the political price at home, in terms of the toll on the American economy ahead of the midterm elections. He is reluctant to resume an all-out bombardment, even though he issues regular threats, including one on Tuesday night announcing that the United States was hitting Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz.
“If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack,” he wrote, “they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!”
Khaled Elgindy, a senior research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and adjunct instructor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said that Mr. Trump’s bluster on social media is attempting to save face for the quagmire he has put himself, and Republicans heading into the midterms, in.
“Part of the play is that he’s just playing to his base, whether it’s true or not,” Mr. Elgindy said. “I don’t think there’s much of a strategy beyond trying to wish things into existence by sheer force of words.”