President Trump’s ceasefire with Iran in June provided for a broader deal to end the war and curb the country’s nuclear program, all negotiated within 60 days. But that deadline, which was due Monday, has essentially been abandoned, and the war has been transformed into a contest of willpower and economic endurance with no end in sight. No US strikes against Iranian targets have been publicly reported since late July. However, the effective collapse of the deal underscores how Trump has struggled to end the war that began in February alongside Israel, and how far he is from the ambitions of the June deal, including fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway where Iran has blocked oil and gas shipping since the fighting began. talks. The current strategy bears a striking resemblance to the United States’ previous years-long attempts to isolate Iran in the hope of forcing it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The policy had mixed results, and some analysts are skeptical that even severe economic pressure alone would force Iran to change course. After all, that was the approach Trump attempted in his first term, even though his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, said last week that he was about to impose financial sanctions the likes of which had never been seen before. The June memorandum of understanding was widely seen as a boon for Iran, granting the regime much-needed sanctions relief even as talks on tough concessions such as nuclear enrichment were postponed until later. But Iranian leaders opted for further escalation rather than cementing the benefits of the deal, according to Nate Swanson, an Iran expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group. Ships could move freely through the Strait of Hormuz before the war. Iran’s insistence that the deal’s vague language on the issue gave it control over the waterway caused the deal to unravel. Iran began firing on ships transiting channels outside of Iranian waters, and US forces responded by bombing southern Iran, setting off a cycle of attacks and counterattacks across the Middle East. Now, Iran refuses to reopen the strait until the United States meets its ceasefire commitments, such as releasing Iranian assets frozen abroad. The Trump administration wants Iran to first end the blockade, said Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, a research institute. “Neither side is really ready to finalize a deal. They both think that in a matter of days or weeks, the other side will be more desperate to reach a deal, so they will be able to get more out of it,” Vaez said. “That’s why we’re stuck in this game of resistance again.” On Saturday, the UAE Foreign Ministry criticized Iran for attacking a ship affiliated with the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company the day before. Iranian officials had no comment. Reopening the strait has increasingly become Trump’s main focus in the conflict, even though he initially said the war was intended to empower the Iranian people to overthrow the existing regime, severely degrade its missile capabilities and prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. There has been little indication that Iran and the United States have discussed Iran’s nuclear program at length since the ceasefire in June, much less formulated an agreement that would satisfy both sides. Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, said over the weekend that Iran had not yet decided whether it would resume talks with the United States. But the 60-day deadline was no longer relevant, he added, since the June agreement virtually did not exist. “We did not have a ceasefire that now needs to be extended,” Araghchi said. “We had the end of the war, which has now acquired a new status.” Former U.S. officials who worked in Iran say the prospect of a new U.S.-Iran nuclear deal within 60 days was always remote, even though the deal provided for extensions. Negotiating a previous agreement, from the Obama era, required about two years of delicate talks. Trump withdrew from that deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2018. The Trump administration hoped the June deal would, at a minimum, open the Strait of Hormuz. But to get the deal through, they relied on vague language that lent credence to Iran’s claim to dominate future shipping in the waterway, analysts said. “It was a flawed document; it was rushed when it wasn’t ready for prime time,” said Swanson, the Iran expert. “And they did not resolve the most important issue in the short term, which was the strait.” Instead, the United States and Iran now appear to be preparing for an indefinite struggle, neither an all-out war nor a defined peace. Aiming to force Iran to accept U.S. terms, the Trump administration reinstated sanctions on Iranian oil and reestablished a naval blockade, both of which were temporarily lifted by the deal. Iran’s strained economy, which sparked mass protests that were brutally repressed earlier this year, is an important consideration for Iranian decision-makers. But Swanson argued that the current stalemate was more likely to push Iran toward escalation than conciliation. While there has been little progress on the commitments outlined in the deal, Trump and his Iranian counterparts have continued to exchange a war of words. During an event in Garden City, New York, on Friday, Trump once again seemed determined to change the narrative, saying he would soon “declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States.” Mr. Trump’s proposal was. But doing so could involve deploying troops on the ground and would almost certainly require a prolonged Navy presence, measures antithetical to the “America First” values of Trump supporters who want to end protracted military conflicts abroad. Trump has also been known to dismiss half-baked foreign policy ideas to redirect attention and scrutiny, such as when he shocked the world last year by proposing a U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip, an idea that never materialized. On Saturday, the White House did not respond to questions about whether the administration had developed actual plans to take control of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s advisers also did not respond to questions about the approaching Monday deadline. Iranian officials, in turn, have challenged Trump by pushing their own demands, including one they had not made before the war: “Accept reality once and for all. So far, you have suffered major strategic defeats,” Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said on social media. “The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian and will continue to be Iranian.”
