Trump Has Lost the Thread on Iran

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, June 03, 2026

 

President Trump seems to think that his diplomatic efforts to resolve his war against the Islamic Republic of Iran are going swimmingly.

 

“Yeah, I’d like to meet him,” the president said of his Iranian counterpart, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, in an interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine. Trump gushed over the “respect” Iran’s new ayatollah enjoys, even if he is “missing a lot of different parts,” and Trump forecast a face-to-face with Khamenei “at some point, depending on how it all works out.” After all, he added, “we seem to be getting along quite well.”

 

Maybe the president is trying to butter up his interlocutor in his pursuit of a favorable diplomatic resolution to the war. He could also be attempting to speak what he knows to be unreality into existence, as he so often does. Or perhaps the president is simply delusional.

 

Either way, Trump’s forbearance risks sacrificing the gains that the U.S. and Israel made during Operation Epic Fury. Indeed, his bottomless well of patience with the remnants of the Iranian regime could have further-reaching consequences than even the war itself.

 

In his sit-down with Devine, Trump confirmed reporting in Axios and elsewhere that he launched into a profanity-laced tirade in a recent conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump admitted that he expressed his frustration with Bibi for “constantly fighting with Lebanon.”

 

If that’s what the president told his Israeli counterpart, Trump has a loose grasp of the facts. Israel is engaged in a fight with the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, not the Lebanese government — a fight that began when Hezbollah attacked Israel during the kinetic phase of the president’s war.

 

The Iranian regime, which had previously denied that it had any operational control over Hezbollah, has shifted its position. Today, Iran insists that the U.S.–Israeli war against Tehran and the Israeli campaign against Hezbollah are the same conflict, and they must end simultaneously. Trump’s acquiescence to Iran’s advocacy on Hezbollah’s behalf is an unreciprocated gift to the Islamic Republic.

 

Indeed, the president announced this week that he “had a very good call with Hezbollah, and they agreed that all shooting will stop.” But Hezbollah did not stop shooting, and Trump broke the taboo against direct White House engagement with Iran’s terrorist proxies for nothing.

 

Someone who prides himself on understanding the “Art of the Deal” should be expected to recognize leverage when he encounters it. But Trump seems to have gotten little out of his tacit concession to the Iranian side, humiliating himself and his Israeli allies in the process.

 

That’s only the latest embarrassment Trump is engineering for himself. To a farcical degree, this administration remains committed to the notion that there is a cease-fire in place in the region when the evidence of your own eyes tells you otherwise. Since major combat operations ceased on April 8, the U.S. and Iranian forces have periodically shot at one another’s assets. But this week has been especially hot.

 

On Monday, the United States executed limited retaliatory strikes on Iranian radar and offensive drone sites after Iran reportedly shot down an unmanned American drone. Iran responded by firing missiles at U.S. soldiers stationed inside Kuwait.

 

Each of Iran’s missiles “failed to hit their intended targets,” according to CENTCOM. But Iran’s disproportionate attacks on regional targets led the Pentagon to conduct “self-defense strikes” on key elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including a ground-control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

 

Iranian forces again responded with disproportionate force, lobbing dozens of drones and missiles at Bahrain and Kuwait. Kuwait City claims that 63 people were injured and one person was killed in the air assault on its civilian infrastructure, including the country’s badly damaged international airport.

 

Iran’s conduct suggests that it has adopted a doctrinal approach to the cease-fire in which it reacts to provocations with more than the measure meted out against it. The Islamic Republic whisperer Trita Parsi all but confirmed that impression on Tuesday when he related that his “Iranian sources” are “now striking back ‘at least 1.5x as hard’ for every attack the US against Iran.”

 

The region is once again up in arms. Representatives for the United Arab Emirates condemned “Iranian aggression.” Kuwait called the attacks on its territory “criminal” acts, declaring Iran’s diplomats in the country persona non grata and ordering their expulsion. Saudi Arabia savaged “the brutal Iranian aggression and the flagrant violation of sovereignty of Bahrain and Kuwait.” But Trump is taking the whole thing in stride.

 

During Operation Epic Fury, the region’s Sunni powers — stunned by Iran’s attacks on their civilian assets — rallied to the side of the Americans and the Israelis. Trump’s nonchalance risks altering the region’s risk calculation. They only gravitated toward the U.S. because the U.S. was the regional power actively protecting their interests. If he’s not going to hold up his end of that bargain, why should they?

 

The president’s unfailing resolve to secure a diplomatic conclusion to the war highlights the political pressure on him to avoid a return to high-tempo combat operations. But the Iranians are feeling the pain, too.

 

“Iran’s Central Bank said the consumer price index, which measures a basket of goods and services, reached 77.2 percent in May compared with the year before,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday. “Inflation in daily and general needs — like medicine, taxi fares, tobacco and communication fees — rose 113.8 percent from the year before.”

 

The economic pressure on Iran, which one think tank noted is unlike anything the country has experienced since at least World War II, may be fracturing the regime from within. One Iranian diaspora network revealed at the end of May that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered to resign. Whether or not that’s true, hardliners within the regime are attempting to discredit and sideline the accommodationists within the Iranian hierarchy.

 

The New York Times wrote last week that those hardline elements set out to impugn Pezeshkian and his ally, General Mohamed Ghalibaf, by revealing the existence of a letter to the supreme leader warning that Trump’s blockade was functioning as the president intended. “The letter warned that the economic situation was dire,” the Times related. “The government faced an acute budget crisis, and there could be mass riots, the two senior officials said.”

 

Iran’s behavior is becoming more erratic as it hemorrhages hundreds of millions of dollars per day under the weight of economic isolation. And yet, the regime continues to speak with one voice, and it retains the ability to coordinate with commanders on the ground to send coherent political signals by attacking U.S. and regional targets.

 

Nor should observers dismiss the endless talks as a total disaster for the U.S. The Atlantic’s Karim Sadjadpour recently observed that the maddening Iranian “bazaar style” approach to negotiation involves driving your interlocutor crazy. As Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in his memoir, “continuous and tireless bargaining” is designed to frustrate and bore the other side of the talks into conceding just to give the impression of progress.

 

Well, Trump is giving the Iranians a dose of their own medicine. America, Iran’s foreign minister recently complained, is “constantly changing its views and putting forward new or contradictory demands,” which will “prolong negotiations.” Trump may be bored, but he hasn’t walked away from the conflict. He may perceive that time is on his side.

 

It is, however, clear that the president hopes to avoid the resumption of hostilities for valid political and practical reasons. But even as he projects confidence in his commitment to staying the course, he’s lost sight of the course he’s on. It is no longer one that will lead to an unambiguous victory over the Islamic Republic.

 

If the war was a tactical triumph, the cease-fire has been a disappointment. If anyone should know what throwing good money after bad looks like, it’s Donald Trump. He should cut his losses, ditch the talks, and prove that his threats are more than bluster.