Of course, anything can happen — even miracles, such as the Persians suddenly behaving rationally like Europeans and deciding to capitulate in order to spare their people the terrible consequences of American bombings. And yet this is hard to believe, because the Iranian leadership has no real motivation for such a capitulation. Paradoxically, the poorer and more devastated Iran becomes, the easier it is for the IRGC to control it.
But there is something else: Iran tends to view the United States, by inertia, as a colossus with feet of clay (much like Johnson viewed Russia back in 2022 — “press it and it will collapse”). In other words, the Iranian military leadership does not actually feel itself to be the losing side.
Just as no one in the West believed that Putin could survive mobilization, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, a complete rupture of economic ties with Europe, and an effective shift of the political regime from moderately authoritarian to advanced totalitarianism, so today neither in Iran nor among its open and covert allies does anyone believe that Trump could afford a prolonged naval blockade of Iran, let alone a ground operation. “Trump will back down” sounds like a mantra in Tehran today.
I would not be so categorical. This is not a forecast, of course, but rather an observation that Trump has options for solving the problem — whether he uses them or not is not my question. Personally, I would not rush if I were in his place. Yes, it would be awkward in front of Xi, but this is Trump — he does not know what “second-hand embarrassment” is; he has German roots. In any case, he still has time. A blockade could last several months, and by August Iran would start to feel it. Then, a couple of months before the elections, the time would come for a decisive, spectacular strike that would be electorally more timely than an “premature” end to the war now. By November, everything would likely be forgotten.
However, more likely, the Iranians’ nerves will break earlier, and they will either capitulate after all or, more likely, resort to a provocation that would give Trump a pretext to strike earlier than planned.
As they say, there is no need to rush. In any case, I would not expect a quick resolution within a few weeks just because Trump “needs it very much.” Not enough to risk losing the game through haste. We have seen with Putin that there are people capable of dragging out such situations from a losing position. One should not expect “fast chess”; rather, what awaits us is something like a Karpov–Kasparov match. A long and hot summer lies ahead. The same applies to Ukraine.
