By Taiyi Sun
The latest round of United States strikes on Iran appears to follow Donald Trump’s familiar negotiating method: threaten overwhelming force, demonstrate a willingness to escalate, and then offer the opponent a path back to the table. Yet this approach works only when the other side believes Washington is more patient, more politically united, and better able to absorb the costs. Those assumptions are increasingly doubtful.
Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of United States Central Command, has reportedly prepared an option for an intensive air campaign lasting up to two weeks. Trump has simultaneously spoken of promising contacts with Tehran and warned that bombing will resume if diplomacy fails. Iran denies that formal negotiations have restarted, but intermediaries continue to carry messages. This is not a contradiction. Rather, it reflects Washington’s desire to use a brief surge of military pressure to secure a rapid ceasefire that can be presented as a victory.
The United States is militarily stronger but also more impatient. Trump wants to turn his attention back to domestic politics before the November midterm elections. He cannot accept Iranian attacks on American forces or efforts to disrupt passage through the Strait of Hormuz without responding, because restraint after a direct challenge would damage American credibility and his own strongman image. Yet every retaliation creates pressure on Tehran to respond in turn. Each side hopes that its own strike will be the last necessary act of escalation.
The proposed two-week campaign is therefore less a strategy for winning a long war than an attempt to avoid one. Air power can destroy launchers, command centres, radar systems and production facilities. It cannot reliably eliminate dispersed missile forces, compel political surrender, or guarantee that Iran will stop using proxies and maritime pressure. If a short campaign fails to make Tehran yield, Washington will eventually have to negotiate from a more difficult position and probably offer concessions it would prefer to avoid.
The military balance also conceals an unfavourable cost structure. Iran can launch relatively cheap drones and missiles, while the United States and its partners must employ scarce and expensive interceptors. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has warned that replenishing critical systems such as Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors will take years, even with increased production. The relevant question is not whether America has more weapons, but whether it can sustain this expenditure while preserving stocks for Europe, the Indo-Pacific and homeland defence.
The Strait of Hormuz reveals the same asymmetry. Washington has imposed new sanctions on Iranian-linked insurers, maritime service companies and shadow-fleet tankers accused of extracting revenue from ships using the waterway. These measures can disrupt payments and reassure Gulf partners, but sanctions and limited strikes have repeatedly failed to change the Iranian leadership’s fundamental security calculations.
Iran is not merely seeking fees. It is trying to convert geographical leverage into a recognised role in shaping how the strait is governed. Washington has no quick way for preventing harassment, selective inspections or payment demands without risking a much larger naval and air campaign. Tehran can also reduce the prospect of international isolation by targeting vessels associated with the United States, Israel and their closest partners while allowing many others to pass. Such selective coercion would raise insurance and energy costs without necessarily creating a unified coalition against Iran.
Russia further complicates this challenge. United States intelligence officials are examining whether Moscow provided targeting information or advanced technical assistance for Iranian attacks on sensitive American facilities. No final conclusion has been reached regarding particular strikes, but Russian targeting support for Iran more broadly has been reported. Moscow may effectively serve as Iran’s distant eyes, linking the Middle Eastern conflict to the war in Ukraine.
The deepest strategic divide, however, may be between Washington and Israel. During Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest visit, the two governments discussed three options: a diplomatic agreement, continued economic pressure without renewed major warfare, or a large new offensive. Israel publicly accepts that the final decision rests with Trump, but it defines success differently.
For Washington, a deal that restores freedom of navigation, protects American forces and limits Iran’s nuclear and missile programs could justify ending the war. For Israel, unrestricted passage through Hormuz is secondary. Its priority is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, destroy the missile forces capable of delivering them, and reduce Tehran’s ability to threaten Israel through direct attacks or regional partners. A rapid end to the war could also return Israeli politics to domestic pressures that the conflict has overshadowed. Israel may therefore accept temporary agreements while retaining the option of renewed strikes if Iran rebuilds.
American public opinion is narrowing Trump’s room for manoeuvre. A late-July Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only one in three Americans supported the war, while 69 per cent believed Trump had not clearly explained its objectives. His overall approval stood at 37 per cent. An Associated Press- NORC poll found his overall approval at 33 per cent, with about two-thirds considering the war not worth fighting, and recorded only 28 per cent approval of his handling of Iran. Trump is not personally on the ballot, but Republican members of Congress are. He may accept electoral losses rather than end the war in a manner he considers humiliating, yet losing either chamber would obstruct his domestic agenda and expose his administration to renewed scrutiny.
The immediate priority should therefore be to prevent tactical retaliation from replacing strategy. Clarify the minimum conditions required for a ceasefire rather than repeatedly changing America’s war aims. Establish a monitored maritime arrangement that guarantees freedom of navigation without recognising an Iranian right to impose compulsory tolls. Separate achievable limits on Iran’s nuclear and missile activities from maximalist ambitions for regime change. Coordinate any agreement with Israel and the Gulf states so that one partner cannot easily unravel it through unilateral escalation. Above all, preserve a continuous diplomatic channel. Military pressure may create a negotiating opportunity, but only diplomacy can convert a pause in the fighting into a sustainable exit.
Taiyi Sun (Ph.D., Political Science, Boston University) is Associate Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University. He is the lead author of The Myth of War in the Taiwan Strait: Elite Perspectives from Beijing, Taipei, and Washington, amid the YiZhou Dilemma (Lexington 2025), the author of Disruptions as Opportunities: Governing Chinese Society with Interactive Authoritarianism (University of Michigan Press 2023), and is a co-editor and chapter author of Teaching Civic Engagement Globally, a book published by the American Political Science Association in 2021. Sun appears regularly on domestic and international media outlets as a TV commentator, columnist, and expert analyst. He serves as the executive editor of the Global Forum of Chinese Political Scientists’ main publication Global China and is the founder of a daily political briefing in Mandarin, Inside the Beltway. Please visit his personal website for more details: www.taiyisun.com
Original URL: Trump’s Escalation Trap with Iran | Toda Peace Institute
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