THE NEW YORK TIMES:
In Ukraine, Gaza and now Iran, President Trump’s early declarations of easy wins have given way to harsh reality.
President Trump likes his military and diplomatic victories quick, clean and decisive.
On his desk in the Oval Office, he keeps models of the B-2 bombers that took out three Iranian nuclear sites in one night, not quite a year ago. In the opening weeks of the Iran conflict this year, he
talked often about replicating his success in Venezuela — “the perfect scenario,’’ he said — shorthand for overthrowing a troublesome leader with one quick commando raid, and replacing him with a pliant, American-friendly successor.
But now, Mr. Trump has hit the stalemate phase of his presidency.
The war with Iran is clearly at that stage. When he declared a cease-fire on April 7, Mr. Trump said on social media that the end of combat operations would be conditional on “the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.” It wasn’t. Even if commerce now resumes across the strait under a memorandum of understanding still under negotiation, it will still leave the future of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs exactly where they were in February: stuck in a further negotiation that the administration insists will be “time limited,” probably to 60 days.
But the Iranians sense Mr. Trump’s deep reluctance to restart combat operations that are deeply unpopular in the United States, and most Iran experts say they expect Tehran to try to stretch the negotiations for months or years — as they have with past administrations.
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David E. Sanger | David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents over four decades at the Times, and writes often on the revival of superpower conflict, the subject of his latest book. | Sunday, May 31, 2026
