No Good Way Out

President Trump clearly wants out—and soon.

The war that the United States and Israel started with Iran delayed what Trump sees as a landmark visit to China, which he postponed until mid-May, suggesting that he thinks he will be free to travel by then. He said in a Cabinet meeting that most of Iran’s military capabilities have been destroyed, implying a high degree of success. And, having twice left the negotiating table with the regime in the past year, he now appears keen to make a deal of some sort that will allow U.S. and Israeli forces to withdraw and, he presumably hopes, reopen the Strait of Hormuz so that the stock market can rise and oil prices can fall.

But wars rarely, if ever, wrap up neatly, or perfectly solve the problems they aimed to address. Sometimes they lead to new problems. And how they end is always hard to predict. Four weeks into World War II, no one could have anticipated how it would end. By the first month of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban-led government was collapsing. Less than a month after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, in what turned out to be the apex of the U.S. military campaign. (Saddam was captured nine months after the invasion.)

One month into the war with Iran, U.S. and Israeli forces have successfully degraded Iran’s military capabilities. But Tehran has proved adept at counterpunching in asymmetrical ways, blocking the Strait of Hormuz and targeting U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf with drones. The regime’s allies, Houthi rebels in Yemen, launched at least two missiles toward Israel over the weekend. Those attacks again expanded the battlefield and raised fears that the Houthis could stop ships from using the Red Sea, as they did shortly after the start of the war in Gaza in 2023.

Trump—as his advisers repeatedly remind the public—has options. He is sending ground forces to the Gulf at the same time as he is considering dispatching senior members of his administration to talk peace. Trump said he was extending a pause on strikes against Iran’s energy infrastructure until April 6, while the negotiations continue.

None of Trump’s four current options to bring hostilities to an end comes close to achieving the grand ambition the president outlined on the first night of the war—regime change in Tehran—in the weekslong timeline he promised. Whether his other stated goals—destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities, and targeting Iran’s proxies—can be achieved, or whether the U.S. can withdraw and claim a victory with any credibility, remains unknown. All of his options come with serious liabilities, not least the fact that Iran appears to consider its own position to be relatively strong, given its de facto control over the Strait of Hormuz and, therefore, the global price of oil. Tehran may not feel that ending the war on a quick U.S. time frame is in its own interests.

“While we are inflicting enormous pain on Iran, we are also signaling to them that we are experiencing pain, and we don’t like it,” Peter Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, told me. “That tells them that their strategy—to just ‘survive’ and that will be a win—might be working. And if they hold on, they might get a better deal next week rather than this week. And that complicates negotiations.”

1. Send in the Troops

Trump could send in ground forces to seize energy facilities in a bid to sever Tehran’s economic lifeline, forcing the regime to sue for peace.

In the post–Cold War period, some in the United States believed that Russia was prepared to deliberately escalate any conflict—including through the use of nuclear weapons—to force its adversaries to back down. Pentagon policy papers described the doctrine as “escalate to de-escalate.” Nearly four decades later, some in the Pentagon fear that the Trump administration wants to escalate to de-escalate in Iran, sending in ground forces to end the war faster. The Pentagon has so far deployed at least 8,000 troops—including members of the 82nd Airborne Division, which began arriving in the region this week; Marines; and an unknown number of Special Forces. The Pentagon has not disclosed their destinations or missions.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t,” Trump told the Financial Times over the weekend. “We have a lot of options.”

Kharg Island—which sits off Iran’s coast in the Gulf, 400 miles from the Strait of Hormuz—is the center of Iran’s energy-exporting industry and has already been hit by U.S. forces multiple times. The U.S. calculus may be that seizing the island in a high-risk mission would put such a severe economic choke hold on Tehran that the regime would be forced into submission.

[Read: The trouble with seizing Kharg Island]

“We can do this. This is something we studied for years. We have thought about how to assault and hold it,” retired Marine Corps General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., who commanded U.S. Central Command, told me.

“You shut the Iranian oil economy altogether; you bring their economy to a halt,” he said. “If you seize Kharg Island, it allows you to return it back to the Iranians later as a bargaining chip.”

But Iran would not feel the economic squeeze as quickly as world markets would, current and former defense officials told me, and the island’s seizure could ramp up retaliatory strikes on Gulf energy and civilian infrastructure. Oil prices would likely spike at the prospect of losing exports from Kharg and as a result of further Iranian escalation.

As many as 20,000 Iranian civilians live on Kharg in ordinary times, complicating invasion planning. Iran would also likely aim drones toward U.S. troops and try to capture U.S. service members. Trump acknowledged during his interview with the Financial Times that if the U.S. targeted Kharg, “it would also mean we had to be there for a while.”

U.S. troops could instead target some smaller islands closer to the Strait of Hormuz with the goal of reviving commercial shipping. But reopening the strait alone would hardly constitute victory for the U.S.; shipping was flowing fine before the war. Neither Secretary of State Marco Rubio nor the White House yesterday identified ships’ transit as a war goal.

Earlier today, Trump appeared to dismiss the idea of a U.S. role in opening the strait, posting on Truth Social that other countries will “have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us” as the U.S. sought the “decapitation of Iran.”

“Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done,” he wrote: “Go get your own oil!”

Ground forces have also been mooted for perhaps the most daring expedition being contemplated: a strike deep into the country to seize enriched uranium from Iran’s nuclear processing facilities. This would be an incredibly complex maneuver. The uranium itself may be hidden underground. But if successful, the Trump administration could credibly claim to have removed the most existential threat posed by Iran, something previous administrations failed to achieve.

2. Desist and Depart

Trump could also declare victory and walk away.

To hear Trump tell it as recently as Thursday, the United States has reduced Iran’s ballistic and drone capability by at least 90 percent. And on Sunday, he told reporters traveling with him that the U.S. had achieved “regime change.” But the theocrats remain in charge. And Reuters reported last week that U.S. intelligence can confirm only that about one-third of Iran’s missile capacity had been destroyed. More of the arsenal has been damaged, but how depleted Iran’s stockpiles truly are remains opaque.

Still, Trump could declare that the U.S. has achieved one goal—“completely degrading Iranian missile capability”—and simply end the campaign there, much as the U.S. and Israel did last June after 12 days of strikes on Iran.

Such a scenario might mean that, months from now, the U.S. and Israel will have to return to stop the redevelopment of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs, a strategy Israel has called “mowing the grass.” And it takes two sides to end a war. Iran may continue its attacks on U.S. bases and U.S. allies to deter the U.S. and Israel from launching a new campaign.

Iran’s surviving leaders could also crack down on internal opponents and rebuild defenses knowing they had survived the onslaught. Operation Epic Fury put on full display the economic leverage that geography gives Tehran over global markets, which the regime may continue to exploit.

Among the many reasons Trump has cited for starting the war was to make sure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. If the U.S. and Israel quickly withdraw, Iran could once again revive its program. Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies may seek their own nuclear arms in response.

3. Negotiate With the Regime

Trump could still do a deal.

The prospect of negotiations has not curtailed hostilities. On Thursday, Israel killed the naval commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iran has repeatedly struck Tel Aviv and oil infrastructure throughout the Gulf. In the span of 24 hours, Trump both threatened “completely obliterating” Iran’s energy industry and expressed his desire to take Iran’s oil despite the “stupid people” telling him not to. Still, Trump keeps insisting that Iran is keen to negotiate, going so far as to say that the leadership in Tehran is now “more reasonable” to talk to than it was at the war’s outset.

[Read: Why hasn’t Trump mentioned Iran’s oil?]

Any negotiations, however, would start from a place of deep mutual mistrust. The regime has expressed strong reservations in the past about speaking with the U.S. intermediaries Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, because the United States and Israel interrupted previous rounds of talks with bombing campaigns twice in the space of nine months. U.S. officials, for their part, have often said that Iran’s representatives can’t be trusted and that Tehran drags out talks to preserve its regime rather than out of any interest in changing its ways.

Given the toll that the war has taken on both sides and on the global economy, however, Washington and Tehran may actually be motivated to reach a deal.

But Tehran’s five-point plan and the U.S.’s 15-point plan indicate that the two nations are seeking very different outcomes. The Trump administration wants Tehran to give up its ballistic-weapons capability, end its use of proxies, and forswear nuclear weapons. (The U.S. plan makes no mention of better governance for the Iranian people.) Iran wants the promise of no future war with the U.S. or Israel, the lifting of economic sanctions, and to collect a fee to allow ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Neither side has retreated from their maximalist claims, signaling that talks could be protracted.

Even if the two sides were to reach a deal, any revenue Iran receives from sanctions relief or through its control over the strait is likely to go toward rebuilding the same hostile capabilities the U.S. and Israel have spent weeks destroying. Israel may then seek to “mow the grass” again. Would the U.S. go along?

4. Keep Up the Sorties

Finally, Trump could order continued bombing until Iran capitulates or the state fails.

If the U.S. and Israeli militaries widen their targeting and keep bombing, Iran’s government may collapse or the country might splinter. But that is an uncertain prospect, given the results so far, and the costs would keep rising. The intense bombing of the war’s first month has already plunged the world into the largest supply disruption in the history of the global market, according to the International Energy Agency. The U.S. military is burning through its weapons stockpiles, and American consumers are seeing prices rise. As of today, the average U.S. price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline crossed $4 for the first time since 2022.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, few in the United States paid a pocketbook price. But Americans are already paying a daily tax in this war, at the gas pump and at the grocery store. The longer the war continues, the higher that tax becomes, as the midterm elections near. The president also said in the hours after the initial strike that Americans should be prepared for casualties, and the toll has since mounted.

If the U.S. and Israel have destroyed at least 90 percent of Iran’s defenses, as the president says, for how long is the Trump administration willing to prolong the war in order to destroy what remains? Israel might find higher gas a price worth paying for security, and see a failed Iran as posing little threat. For the U.S., a failed Iran could mean long-term energy-market instability, threats to Gulf allies and U.S. bases, and mass migration.

[Read: The U.S. and Iran are fighting a massively asymmetrical war]

A prolonged campaign would pose even greater challenges to countries that are more dependent on fuel imports. Over the weekend, Egypt implemented a curfew on businesses to preserve energy, and Sri Lanka went to a four-day week for government workers to combat rising fuel prices. Gulf allies may not have air-defense munitions to counter daily attacks from Iran for a sustained period. And the strain on U.S. stockpiles, troops, ships, aircraft, and weapons could leave the U.S. too weakened to protect itself from other threats, including China.

Most important, endless strikes would not resolve the United States’ strategic dilemma. The U.S. has struck 13,000 targets, Trump has said, with 3,000 more to go, and yet administration officials couldn’t tell fellow Republicans on the Hill last week what the president was seeking to achieve. Simply extending a war is not a certain path to victory. The U.S. fought for 20 years in Afghanistan, only to have the Taliban return to power even before the U.S. could complete its evacuation from Kabul.