Trump Made a Deal That Gives Him Nothing He Wanted

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President Trump said he went to war to ensure that Iran never acquired a nuclear bomb. The war ended—for now, at least—with a demonstration that Tehran possesses an arguably more powerful weapon of deterrence against future attacks, one that is cheaper to use, gives Iran enormous sway over the global economy, can bring in revenue, and can’t be negotiated away: the Strait of Hormuz.

More than 12,000 U.S. missiles, bombs, and drones hit Iranian targets over the past five weeks, destroying the country’s navy and much of its military infrastructure. Several of Iran’s leaders and some 1,500 of its citizens were killed, including more than 170 who died in a strike on a girls’ school that was the apparent result of errant targeting. But 12 hours after Trump threatened to destroy Iranian civilization and weeks after demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” the United States agreed to a two-week cease-fire last night while settlement talks play out. Among the president’s initial war goals—preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon; eliminating its ballistic-missile capabilities; laying the ground for a popular overthrow of the regime; and eradicating Iranian proxies in the Persian Gulf—none have been met.

Instead, Iran agreed only to reopen the strait, a global waterway that operated freely before the war began, and on terms that could yield substantial financial rewards for the regime. The U.S. and Israeli military strikes may have damaged Iran’s defenses. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted today that Iran had suffered a “devastating military defeat.”) But that, by itself, was not enough to extinguish Iran’s ability to defend itself. Depending on the outcome of the negotiations over the next two weeks, the regime could actually be in a stronger strategic position than it was before the war. Iran may have lost every military battle, but the war appears to have ended on Tehran’s terms. “Controlling the strait is now Iran’s vital strategic asset. It’s more important than their nuclear program,” Vali Nasr, a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, told me. By midday, Iran said it had stopped ships from transiting the strait because Israel launched a heavy barrage of attacks on Lebanon that killed and wounded hundreds, underscoring Tehran’s leverage. Iran also launched strikes at U.S. allies in the Gulf. The cease-fire is, quite obviously, fragile. But Tehran’s decision to announce that it was shutting down access to the strait suggested that the regime feels confident enough to keep defending its proxies, not to disavow them following the U.S. and Israeli bombardment.

Iran has said it will charge a toll for any ships seeking to access the strait. Trump has conceded that negotiations, which are set to resume in Islamabad later this week, will center at least in part on Iran’s control over the waterway—and has suggested that the U.S. could try to get in on the profits. Jonathan Karl of ABC News reported that during an interview this morning, Trump told him, “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture; it’s a way of securing it—also securing it from lots of other people.”

How does a nation under constant bombardment from some of the world’s most sophisticated weapons come out with a strategic advantage? What the U.S. lacked—and Iran held on to consistently—were clear aims. Over the course of the 39-day conflict, Trump offered various, often contradictory, explanations for why he was conducting the war and the effects of the strikes. On the first day of the war, according to Trump’s telling, the U.S. sought regime change. But that goal quickly receded when Iran replaced its slain leader with his even more hard-line son amid no sign of a popular uprising. Trump then said in a March 30 social-media post that regime change had happened anyway, claiming that new and more reasonable leaders had been installed, even though the regime was very much intact. Eliminating nuclear-weapons development sites, which Trump previously claimed had been obliterated by strikes last June, was at one point put forward as the main reason for the war. But then Trump declared that the sites were so covered in rubble, they were inaccessible anyway. Trump also repeatedly said that the U.S. had already won, but then didn’t explain why he also predicted in a prime-time address last week that the war would go on for another two to three weeks.

[Read: The Pentagon cut its civilian safeguards before the Iran war ]

Iran’s control of the strait, which carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil, ultimately became the most contentious issue. Trump called on NATO allies and other nations to assist in opening the strait, which they declined to do. He then insisted that the United States would leave the strait’s opening to others after American troops came home, because the U.S. was energy self-sufficient. Then, in his prime-time address, he suggested that the strait would “naturally” open after the war. By Easter, Trump was sounding desperate for Iran to do only one thing: He said on social media that those “crazy bastards” must open the “Fuckin’ Strait” or risk annihilation.

Iran, by contrast, consistently said it had two aims: for the regime to survive and to be compensated for damages from the war. Both aims, the regime discovered, could be achieved by asserting dominance over the strait and by striking U.S. forces and America’s Gulf allies with plentiful, cheap drones.

Until this war, Iran found other ways to exert its influence that did not depend on the strait, retired Admiral James Foggo, the dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy, told me. The regime worked largely through its proxies across the region: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq. Those proxies, at least until the U.S. assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, “were pretty effective,” Foggo said. But Soleimani’s death weakened Iran’s regional reach, as did the Israeli-led wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime didn’t help, because Syria was a longtime Iranian client. Widespread protests inside Iran that began in December, and lasted for weeks until they were brutally suppressed, further eroded the regime’s grip. By the time the U.S. and Israel attacked on February 28, Iran’s government was at its lowest point in years—and looking for a way to rebuild.

[Read: The real intelligence failure in Iran]

As the war began, the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, conducted a previously planned war game commissioned by the U.S. Navy. The exercise asked, in part: How could the U.S. reopen the Strait of Hormuz, if Iran closed it, employing autonomous systems—platforms or vehicles that use technology rather than human control? Under this scenario, Iran chose to close the strait to help Russia in an imagined conflict in Eastern Europe, forcing Europe to bear economic pain and allowing Russia to gain new buyers of its oil. The hypothesis was that Iran would need a strong incentive or provocation to close the strait, a nuclear option of sorts.

The Hudson Institute exercise concluded that Iran could close the strait easily and cheaply, and the U.S. would find its reopening challenging and risky. The military operation required to make passage safe for ships could take weeks, the exercise found. A monthslong military mission would then be required to maintain access. The exercise found that as soon as the United States sent autonomous systems to clear mines, Iranian forces would retaliate, slowing the operation. Over a matter of weeks, the U.S. could create a path for ships but would then need destroyers and drones to keep the route open.

“The expectation was not that we would win,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the institute and a retired Navy officer, told me of the U.S. position in the exercise. “The expectation is that we would get the strait open, and then we would have to continuously defend it.”

Before the war began, up to 135 ships traveled through the strait daily, carrying oil from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq—as well as vital supplies for the global fertilizer industry. Only 20 miles wide at its narrowest point, the strait is a geographical choke point for essential global exports.

After last year’s U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian Parliament voted to close the strait—but never officially did. It effectively closed around March 2, when Iranian fast boats, drones, and missiles harassed ships, leading shipping companies and their insurers to conclude that the risk of transit was too great. Brent crude prices, which stood at roughly $73 a barrel shortly before the war, rose to a peak of almost $120—and were predicted to reach $150 a barrel if the strait remained closed. The spike dealt a massive blow to the world’s economic fortunes.

As the war progressed, Iran negotiated transit fees with specific countries, charging as much as $2 million for one ship’s safe passage. Whether that toll remains in place may be decided in the talks between the U.S. and Iran. The cease-fire, in theory, removes some of the economic leverage that helped Iran benefit from the strait’s closure: If there is no threat of strikes, shipping companies may not be willing to pay for transit, particularly as oil prices fall. (They declined 15 percent overnight.) Still, Iran clearly intends to keep control. Under the cease-fire terms the regime put forward, safe transit must be negotiated with the Iranian army. If Iran maintains the existing fee, the regime could collect up to $90 billion a year, equivalent to roughly one-fifth of its GDP—revenue that didn’t exist before the conflict. The Financial Times reported today that Iran is proposing a payment of $1 per barrel of oil passing through the strait. The regime wants to be paid in cryptocurrency.

Talks will determine whether the war is really over. This morning, Reuters reported that Iran had attacked Saudi Arabia’s pipeline, which bypasses the strait. But Trump appears ready to move on: The president is scheduled for a visit to China in mid-May, and November’s midterm elections are looming. U.S. allies in the Gulf and in Europe are left to bemoan the lasting negative impact of the war and question U.S. guarantees of future security.

Every element of the talks brokered by Pakistan will be delicate, but the future of the strait perhaps most of all. The U.S. incentive is to lower gas prices and stabilize the global economy. Iran will seek to gain a reward for surviving the war intact against two of the world’s most powerful militaries—or at least keep the fees already secured during the war. “From Iran’s perspective, it is both strategically dangerous and a bad idea to let the strait open without some kind of accommodation for economic relief,” Richard Nephew, an expert on nuclear weapons and sanctions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. This morning, Trump said on social media that he would work closely with Iran and begin discussions on sanctions relief. He also said he would impose a 50 percent tariff on exports to the United States from any country that supplied Iran with weapons. Compared with the threat of civilizational erasure, this seemed like a threat Iran could live with.

[From the May 2026 issue: Someday in Tehran]

In their 2017 book, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy, Matthew Fuhrmann and Todd S. Sechser explored whether nuclear threats prevent attacks. They found that nations on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons—as Trump asserted was the case for Iran—are in a uniquely dangerous position. Such nations are short of developing a nuclear weapon, so they cannot provide a credible nuclear deterrent. But the fact that they are close motivates foes to strike. This has been a recurring dynamic for Iran. Yet over the course of this war, Tehran discovered that a deterrent already exists that can shock the world’s economy and force a cease-fire with the world’s superpower. It was always right there, winding its way along the Iranian coast toward the Arabian Sea.