The Iran War Is Now All About the Future of Hormuz

If Iranian leaders are, as Donald Trump says, “begging” him for terms to end the war, they have a very odd way of showing it. The negotiations he announced to soothe markets at the start of the week amounted to an exchange of demands that neither side could expect the other to accept. Factor in what both are actually doing — the US deploying a small ground force to the Persian Gulf and Iran legislating to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a permanent toll booth — and it seems we are in for a longer conflict.

A lot has been said, including by some of America’s most storied generals, about how the US administration went into this fight: over-confident in its conventional military advantage, over-reliant on airpower and fundamentally misunderstanding the nature and asymmetric strengths of its enemy. As a result, it now has few good options.