IS IT A WAR? A STALEMATE? A QUAQMIRE? The Wall Street Journal reports that President Donald Trump has “instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran.” The president took that action, the Wall Street Journal said, after assessing that “other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade.”
Trump made the determination in the weeks of fruitless negotiations since the ceasefire began. In that time, Trump has occasionally threatened a massive renewed U.S. attack if Iran did not give up its nuclear program. In return, Iran has given Trump the runaround, offering some immediate concessions but nothing on the nuclear issue. That has been true even after Trump settled upon the blockade strategy designed to put “maximum pressure” on Iran’s economy.
Meanwhile, with the Strait of Hormuz paralyzed, the price of gas has continued to go up. According to AAA, one year ago, the average price of a gallon of regular was $3.18. A month ago, it was $3.99. A week ago, it was $4.03. Today it is $4.30.
Gas prices are, of course, highly volatile, and Trump is betting that a hoped-for breakthrough in the war will lead to a sharp fall in prices well before the November midterm elections. But for right now, the average price of gas is more than $1 a gallon higher than last year. That is particularly bad news for Trump, who has long seen lowering the cost of energy as the key to lowering prices overall.
What to do? While the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is preparing for a long blockade, Axios reports that Trump is “vacillating between launching new military strikes or waiting to see whether his ‘maximum pressure’ financial sanctions make Iran more inclined to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program.” The war, Axios noted, “has entered a Cold War-like phase of financial sanctions, gunboat interdictions, and talks about having talks.”
All this leads to a question. Is the Iran war a war? Is it a war on hiatus? A stalemate? A quagmire? A conflict? What is it?
Not a quagmire. Just definitionally, it’s impossible for a war entering its third month to qualify as a quagmire. A quagmire is Vietnam, and this is not that. Nevertheless, at a House hearing this week featuring War Secretary Pete Hegseth, Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) said, “The president has got himself and America stuck in a quagmire of another war in the Middle East.”
Hegseth was rightly outraged. “You call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies?” he said to Garamendi. “Shame on you for that statement. And statements like that are reckless to our troops.”
What about a stalemate? Again, it is pretty soon to call the war a stalemate, especially in the sense of two sides deadlocked after fighting to a draw. In this war, the United States could resume the hellacious bombing of Iran at any time. So it’s not a stalemate.
What about a war on hiatus? That seems accurate. There is no fighting going on at the moment. Both sides could escalate in their own way if they wanted to. But both sides also seem content to pause the attacks while they figure out what to do next. And finally, “conflict” also seems reasonable, since it can cover a variety of situations in which two sides are going at each other.
The point now, for Trump and the U.S., is that the Iran conflict was not a quick victory. It was not like Trump’s 2020 hit on Qasem Soleimani, the powerful head of Iran’s Quds Force. It was not like Operation Midnight Hammer, the 36-hour bombing of the Iranian nuclear program last June. It was not like the January 2026 operation in Venezuela. And it certainly wasn’t like the wishful-thinking scenario in which the U.S. and Israel would decapitate the Iranian regime leadership and thereby cause the people to rise and change their system of government.
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So the president is making long-term plans. Maybe they won’t be needed; perhaps Iran will buckle under the economic pressure of the blockade. Or maybe they will be needed, as Iran, badly damaged by the U.S.-Israeli campaign, still manages to use its weapons, mainly the Strait of Hormuz, to frustrate the greater power.
The latter is, of course, a bad scenario for the president and the Republican Party with midterm elections just six months away. But it could be where this is headed.