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President Donald Trump has been stuck between a war he hasn’t decisively won and a deal he can’t easily sell as victory. Now he’s suggesting a new path.
President Donald Trump has spent more than 100 days promising either a historic peace deal or a decisive military victory over Iran. On Thursday, in the span of a few hours, he seemed to promise both.
On Thursday morning, Trump threatened to strike Iran “very hard” and announced plans to seize Kharg Island, the linchpin of Iran’s oil export infrastructure, and “assume total control” of its oil and gas markets.
By Thursday afternoon, he canceled the planned strikes and said “discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved.”
Whether that agreement holds — or exists in the form Trump described — remains to be seen. But the dramatic escalation and reversal comes as Trump has grown increasingly frustrated while searching for a tangible victory to point to, people close to the president tell MS NOW. Trump’s “annoyance” has reached an all-time high as Iran’s “erratic behavior” makes them increasingly challenging to sincerely broker with, according to a White House official granted anonymity to share sensitive details.
“The biggest mistake now would be if Trump reaches a peace deal without being able to point to a decisive victory of some kind,” the White House official said before the deal was announced. “[Trump] needs to be able to point to something, and recent negotiations with Iran in many ways have exposed a fundamental miscalculation from Trump and the White House.”
The problem isn’t just finding a deal. It’s that any agreement Iran might accept would likely resemble the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord Trump spent years denouncing — leaving him unable to claim the decisive victory he’s promised. Thursday’s announcement, if it holds, would be his answer to that trap.
Wednesday evening’s U.S. strikes — the second consecutive day of exchanged fire in what increasingly appears to be a resumed conflict and broken ceasefire — followed a Situation Room meeting where Trump convened with top security officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and White House envoy Steve Witkoff. The strikes were designed to signal unyielding U.S. resolve while nudging Iran toward the negotiating table, according to a White House official familiar with the thinking of the room.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry released a statement Thursday morning accusing the U.S. of a “flagrant violation” of international law that “effectively rendered the April 8 ceasefire meaningless.”
A central test of Trump’s claim of strength throughout the conflict lies in his ability to rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
On Sunday evening, following Iran’s missile attacks on Israel, Trump called Netanyahu with a singular message: “deter any escalation of conflict,” according to a U.S. official familiar with the phone call. Hours later, Israel bombed sites in Iran for the first time since the April ceasefire took hold.
Israeli officials aren’t worried Trump will abandon them — they believe the president remains committed to Israel’s security even when that complicates diplomacy with Tehran.
“They know our red lines,” an Israeli official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic relations, said without elaborating. “If they would be willing to cross it off or not to do it, they could have a deal, and they did not do it. They’re [consistent] with what President Trump wants to achieve, so I don’t think it would come to this.”
The sharper divide between Washington and Jerusalem may be more fundamental: whether a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program is achievable at all.
“I think that we have a difference of opinion in that we’re not sure that there is a deal to be made with Iran,” the Israeli official told MS NOW. “The president does think there’s room, maybe, to make a deal. He wants to make sure that going back to war would be the last resort. We see the Iranian regime in a more realistic point of view because we dealt with them for so many years.”
Meanwhile, as a boxed-in Trump weighs his options, the financial toll of the conflict is compounding on multiple fronts. Pentagon officials estimate the war has cost roughly $30 billion — though the real cost is likely much higher when accounting for damage to U.S. assets and bases — and the Trump administration is already struggling to push $350 billion of its $1.5 trillion defense budget request through reconciliation, facing bipartisan resistance. A move on Kharg Island, as threatened earlier on Thrusday, would likely dramatically escalate those costs, even as Trump has framed it as a path to economic gain.
On the battlefield, U.S. forces face a punishing asymmetric fight — and a costly one. Earlier this week, an Iranian drone worth roughly $20,000 brought down an Apache helicopter valued at more than $30 million. Meanwhile, U.S. forces are stretched across the Middle East even as Trump officials float potential military action against Cuba and China-Taiwan tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific.
For more than 100 days, Trump couldn’t find a way to end things in Iran. On Thursday, he said he had — twice.
Jake Traylor
Jake Traylor is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.
Julia Jester
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
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