As Donald Trump feels pressure to end war, allies fear what Iran may do next

As US President Donald Trump edges toward a self-imposed deadline for Iran to strike a deal to halt the war, he is being squeezed between domestic pressure to stop the conflict and concerns from allies that Tehran’s radicalised ambitions make it a more dangerous regional actor than ever.

Four weeks into what Mr Trump on Thursday called a “little stopover” of a conflict, Iran’s regime has clung to power despite thousands of US and Israeli airstrikes. It has halted ship traffic through a crucial maritime choke point in the Persian Gulf. And it has declared its enduring defiance toward Washington.

Mr Trump and his top deputies have signalled that they hope to wrap up the war soon, saying that it was always intended to last four to six weeks, and that, on Day 26, it was ahead of schedule. The president postponed a scheduled trip to China until May 14, a sign that the White House expects the war to end by then.

US officials have circulated a 15-point peace offer from Trump’s negotiators that appears to echo many of the demands Trump made ahead of the war.

But the attack he launched February 28 has transformed the risks in the region. The Strait of Hormuz - which was open and secure before the fighting began - is now a danger zone. And many US allies among the Arab states lining the Persian Gulf, who were sceptical about the war in the first place, now fear that a wounded Iran run by hard-line leaders imperils their populations.

That leaves the United States with a dilemma, part of which Trump summed up in a Cabinet meeting on Thursday in which he talked about shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

“The problem with the straits is this,” Mr Trump said. “Let’s say we do a great job. We say we got 99 percent. One percent is unacceptable, because 1 percent is a missile going into the hull of a ship that cost $1 billion.”

“If we do a 99 percent decimation, that’s no good,” he said.

What Mr Trump didn’t say explicitly, but what Iranian officials appear to be counting on, is that the 99-1 asymmetry gives Tehran significant leverage despite being badly outgunned by the combined US and Israeli bombardment.

On Friday, the price of Brent crude rose above $113 a barrel. Asian markets closed slightly lower and European markets were mostly flat, suggesting that Trump’s move to delay attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure for 10 days had failed to reassure investors.

As Israel and Iran continued to trade strikes, Iran blocked three ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Tasnim, a news agency affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in France for a meeting of the Group of Seven foreign ministers, warned allies that Iran may seek to impose a toll on the strait, which he said would be “unacceptable” and “illegal.” He did not say the US would lead a response to this challenge despite Washington’s role in initiating hostilities. “It’s important that the world have a plan,” Mr Rubio told reporters.

“Iran wants to fight this war of attrition,” said Nate Swanson, a former diplomat who was on Trump’s Iran negotiations team last year and is now at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. “Once the war got underway, they had two objectives. One was to survive, but the second was to outlast Trump. Make the US feel so much pain through the economy, strikes on the energy infrastructure, that they don’t do it again. What they’re trying to ensure is that Israel doesn’t go in and do a war like they do in Lebanon every six months.”

Having demonstrated that they can inflict damage on the world’s economy by closing down the Strait even while under major bombardment from Israel and the US, Iranian leaders have publicly stuck to maximal demands. They have insisted that the US compensate them for damage and pledge not to resume attacks in the future.

Whether there is room for a deal remains unclear, though Mr Trump said Thursday that the talks were going well.

“I read a story today that I’m desperate to make a deal. I’m not,” Trump said. “I’m the opposite of desperate. I don’t care. … In fact, we have other targets we want to hit before we leave.”

Later Thursday, he extended the deadline to reach a deal, saying that he was “pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days” to allow talks to continue.

US envoy Steve Witkoff on Friday described Trump’s extension of the deadline for a negotiated agreement as “a real positive.” The administration has put its 15-point deal on the table, transmitted through the government of Pakistan, including demands that Iran halt all uranium enrichment and give up its existing stockpile of highly enriched material, Witkoff said, adding, “We expect an answer from them.”

But despite statements by Mr Witkoff and Mr Trump that the two sides are close to a meeting, a senior diplomat from the region on Friday described them as still far from agreement on whether or where a meeting would be held, let alone any overlap in their demands. Iran, the diplomat said, has turned over its own list of five or six demands, including ongoing low-level enrichment.

For now, the three countries that have taken the lead as go-betweens - Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey - are still at the stage of “facilitation … just getting the people together,” the diplomat said. If the two sides can come to agreement on even a few of the points they have raised, “that is where mediation will come into play.”

While describing the situation as “dynamic” and evolving,” the diplomat stressed that “there are a lot of things that have to be decided. … It may look like a simple thing, but it is very complicated.”

So far, the gap between the two sides remains vast, said Ilan Goldenberg, who advised the Biden White House on Middle East policy.

“The American position was essentially Iranian surrender, and the Iranian response was essentially American surrender,” he said. “The American position was, ‘Get rid of your nuclear program, missiles and proxies,’ and the Iranian position was, ‘Compensate us for our losses, and get out of the Middle East.’”

Arab nations around the Persian Gulf that are now concerned about strikes from Iran are “getting totally screwed,” Goldenberg said. “They didn’t want this. They advised against it. They tried to stop it. But it’s one thing to say now you have to finish the job. It’s another thing to have a definition of what that means.”

Thursday’s Cabinet meeting was filled with declarations by Trump officials that the president was dealing a once-in-a-generation blow to a major adversary. Many seemed mindful of making a case to Americans about why the US was at war - and why this time is not like previous Middle East forays that have dragged for years.

“Mr. President, you are acting now to ensure future generations do not have to live under the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.

He went on to insist on a sharp distinction between the current fighting and the George W. Bush administration’s war in Iraq.

“Unlike Iraq, this isn’t a tie. This is not parity. This is not chaos. This is success. Pure American success on plan,” he said.

Those declarations come against the backdrop of public opposition to the war. Five national surveys released this week - interviewing over 10,000 Americans - consistently found that most Americans oppose the war and disapprove of Trump’s handling of it, a contrast from the conflict’s early days when polls found narrower opposition and more variation.

A Pew Research Center poll of more than 3,500 US adults found 59 percent saying the US made the wrong decision in using military force in Iran, with 61 percent disapproving of Trump’s handling of the conflict. Opposition to US military action ranged from 54 percent to 61 percent in polls by Fox News, Quinnipiac University, CBS News and Reuters-Ipsos.

Trump’s Republican base has rallied in support for the war, but polls show independents oppose it by more than 2 to 1. The Pew survey found that among Republican-leaning independents, just about half approved of Trump’s handling of the campaign.

Americans widely support trying to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and about half say the US campaign is going at least “somewhat well.” But the CBS poll found 2 in 3 saying it was a “war of choice” and more think it will make the US “less safe” rather than “more safe.”

Officials have offered mixed messages about how soon the conflict might end, as thousands of Marines sail toward the region. The presence of those added forces could signal the start of a ground incursion. Trump has rebuffed repeated questions in recent days about whether he would use troops to seize Iran’s highly enriched uranium - a risky and complicated operation that could take many weeks - or to take control of Kharg Island, which holds key infrastructure for Iran’s oil industry.

Using ground troops would significantly increase the risk that Washington could get embroiled in the region.

Witkoff said Friday he was “hopeful” that meetings between the US and Iran would be held soon. When asked about the US peace envoy’s timeline, the senior diplomat from the region said: “In any war situation it is a cliché that when the first bullet is fired, the first casualty is truth. So whatever is being said by either side is at a level intended to be part of their posturing and positioning.”

At the Cabinet meeting, Trump also revealed the nature of the “gift” from Washington’s Iranian interlocutors that he had referenced earlier this week. It was the passage of oil tankers out of the Strait of Hormuz, he said.

“They said to show you the fact that we’re real and solid and we’re there, we’re going to let you have eight boats of oil,” Mr Trump said. “And I didn’t think much about it. And then I watched the news and they said, a very good anchor actually, happened to be Fox. But I watched it and he said: ‘Something’s unusual happening. There are eight boats that are going right up the middle of the strait. …’ And I said, ‘Well, I guess they were right.’”

A Fox Business segment that aired Tuesday morning referenced the passage of eight vessels - and also that US consumers were facing gas prices that are now sometimes above $5 a gallon.

As the fighting wears on, Trump has appeared in recent days to be frustrated about how the war is being covered by the media. On Tuesday, he declared victory, even though the hostilities continue.

“I don’t like to say this, we’ve won this. This war has been won,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office. “They have no navy and they have no air force, and they have nothing. And we literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country. They can’t do a thing about it.”

He also said that the joint US-Israeli operation had achieved regime change, though the new supreme leader is the son of the one who was killed in the opening strikes of the war.

“We have really regime change. You know, this is a change in the regime because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with, that created all those problems,” he said.

Scott Clement, Victoria Craw, Karen DeYoung, Susannah George and John Hudson contributed to this report.

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