US-Israeli war on Iran enters third month with no decisive outcome in sight

The US-Israeli war on Iran is entering its third month, with Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and a US naval blockade locked in stalemate that neither side has been able to break. Indirect talks via Pakistani mediators — handled on the US side by Jared Kushner, White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Vice President J.D. Vance — have produced no breakthrough.

President Donald Trump has rejected Iran's offer to reopen the strait in exchange for ending the US blockade, with broader nuclear and regional negotiations deferred to a later stage, but has not publicly committed to an alternative. Reuters has reported that the US intelligence community is preparing an analysis of how Iran would respond if Trump unilaterally declared victory and pulled back. The Pentagon has named the campaign Operation Epic Fury.

Iran's regional allies have been weakened but not dismantled. Hezbollah and Hamas are diminished; the Houthis in Yemen continue to threaten shipping in the Red Sea. Israeli forces have continued bombardment of Lebanon, adding a separate strain on the Trump administration. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad have come under criticism domestically and abroad after the war failed to deliver the short, regime-toppling campaign initially promised.

Veteran US negotiators argue the war is unlikely to produce a decisive outcome. In a Foreign Policy essay this week, Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer write that the campaign has "inflicted a setback rather than a defeat" on Tehran and "achieved significant tactical gains rather than a strategic success." Drawing on five decades of US-Iran cycles, they argue this round will likely settle into "just another round" rather than a transformative break.

Iran's leverage now centres on the strait. Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations has argued Tehran treats the waterway as "its Panama Canal" and will not surrender control cheaply. That leaves Washington with three unappealing options: keep the blockade and hope Iran bends, mount a major air-sea-ground operation to reopen the strait and police it indefinitely, or cut a narrow swap that trades the strait for the blockade and defers the nuclear file.

Even a limited successor to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — which Trump withdrew the United States from in 2018 — now looks unlikely, as the war has hardened Iranian attitudes. Miller and Kurtzer characterise the US-Israeli split on a nuclear Iran as "Mars and Venus" — an existential threat for Jerusalem, not for Washington.

Drawing on political scientist I. William Zartman's framework of a "mutually hurting stalemate," the authors argue neither side yet believes the costs of fighting outweigh the costs of compromise. They also flag an asymmetry of objectives that favours Tehran: Iran's definition of victory — regime survival plus newfound leverage over Hormuz — is more readily achievable than Washington's goal of a definitive ceiling on Iran's nuclear program.

Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment, quoted in the essay, said Trump "went looking for an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez but found a few Kim Jong Uns instead." Miller and Kurtzer write that the indirect Pakistani channel cannot be sustained "part time by Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, and J.D. Vance on the back of a cocktail napkin."