Trump’s brinkmanship stalls as Iran holds firm
By Gwynne Dyer
“TACO! Of course.” Donald Trump always chickens out, but it’s a feature, not a bug. If his threats aren’t working, he eventually drops them and tries something else.
Trump has always been a real-estate developer. He was born into it and knows no other way of dealing with the world. It’s about deals, and the fastest way to win is to frighten the other side into backing down. Mutually profitable “win-win” deals are possible, but he prefers the thrill of a high-stakes showdown.
So Trump subjected Iran to six weeks of air attacks, threats and deadlines, with no result. The regime in Tehran still stands, and Iran’s ability to block the Strait of Hormuz gives it strategic leverage.
Trump’s instincts still work well enough to see the threats failed. That’s why he stopped setting deadlines. No more “by Saturday night” or “within two weeks.” Now it’s open-ended, waiting for Iran to produce a proposal.
“I will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted,” he said. It sounds reasonable, though Iran never asked for a ceasefire.
Iran didn’t attend the meeting Trump scheduled either. It isn’t in a hurry. The longer the war drags on, the more pressure builds on the U.S. economy, which matters far more to Trump than the battlefield.
What Trump now needs is time. Slowing events could create a default ceasefire. A few weeks without bombing might make the pause feel permanent, at least temporarily.
That may be as much as the key players can accept. One of them, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants the war to continue. Both the U.S. and Iran have likely reached the point where force brings no further gains, but not everyone in either government accepts that.
As for Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons, there will be no lasting agreement soon. A workable deal existed a decade ago. It limited Iran’s enrichment to peaceful levels and was widely judged effective. Trump scrapped it in 2018 as part of his feud with Barack Obama. It cannot be revived.
Iran still has no nuclear weapons, but the idea has become politically powerful. Israelis see an existential threat. Iranians see a symbol of sovereignty. That combination sustains conflict.
The broader damage is already clear. It has been more than two years since the Hamas attacks and the Israeli response in Gaza Strip. Even after a ceasefire, Gaza remains devastated.
In Lebanon, Israeli operations halted midway, but thousands of homes are gone.
Iran itself is still largely intact. Several thousand people are dead, and some infrastructure is damaged, but the systematic destruction of civilian systems has paused.
Stopping before that destruction spreads further still matters. But the outcome depends heavily on one person whose position can shift rapidly.
In the end, it also depends on whether thousands of others carry out those decisions. That raises a harder question: what kind of system allows that to happen?
Clear answer
Trump’s strategy is coercion through threat, but it is failing against Iran. The conflict is drifting toward a temporary pause, not a resolution, because neither side can gain more through force and the political incentives for escalation remain.