A US President With No Cards Left – Standing at a Crossroads…

Trump has done it again — he has pushed back the negotiation deadline. This time, he did not even bother setting a new one. He said only that, at the request of mediator Pakistan, he agreed to extend the ceasefire with Iran until Tehran submits its proposal and completes the relevant consultations.

Trump has apparently grown tired of his own deadlines. So this time, he simply stopped making them. The reality is, a "deadline" that can be postponed indefinitely is not a deadline at all — and once that coercive power is gone, the other side has no reason to rush.

Trump is trapped. He has no clear path to victory if he fights, yet he is unwilling to make concessions for peace. On the military side, the original plan was to strike if no agreement was reached by the deadline — but the war has now dragged on for a month and a half. America knows its weapons and ammunition stockpiles are limited, while Iran appears to have an inexhaustible supply of missiles.

Without deploying ground troops, what real chance does the US have from long-range bombardment alone? And if ground troops are deployed, the risks are enormous — Afghanistan is a cautionary tale that needs no elaboration.

On the diplomatic front, Trump cannot stomach the conditions Iran has put forward. Caught in the middle with no way forward or back, he has become the butt of a "Donald's Art of War" joke. When Donald Trump himself does not know what his own strategy is, his adversaries certainly cannot figure it out either.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that the US and Iran are close to a deal — and the two sides have indeed narrowed their differences. But key sticking points remain unresolved. Three main areas of dispute have emerged.

First: The Strait of Hormuz

Iran's hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps demanded that the US first lift its blockade of Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz before resuming negotiations. Trump refused. That is why the second round of talks never got off the ground.

On the question of future transit rights through the strait, Iranian sources revealed that the US proposed joint management of the waterway — a proposal Iran flatly rejected. Iran insists on retaining full control and claims the right to collect tolls from vessels passing through. Analysts suggest Iran is not simply fighting over symbolic sovereignty. Because the US has refused to offer any compensation for starting the war without justification, Iran is demanding toll revenues as a form of reparations.

Reports also suggest the US floated an alternative proposal: having Gulf states pay compensation to Iran instead. Trump is not one for principles — as long as America does not foot the bill, he would likely find that easier to accept. The question is whether the Gulf states are willing to play the role of the fall guy.

Second: Unfreezing Iranian Assets

Iran initially demanded the unfreezing of its assets as a precondition for talks, but later dropped that insistence. Iranian sources indicated that the US has agreed to release US$6 billion in frozen funds held in Qatar — but Iran is asking for US$20 billion. This appears to be the area where Washington is most willing to make concessions, though Trump has not moved ahead of a final agreement.

Third: Uranium Enrichment

This is the central sticking point. Both sides have drawn their red lines, and the two positions barely overlap. The US demands Iran completely abandon its nuclear programme; Iran refuses.

Trump has suggested that under the proposed ceasefire agreement, Iran would transfer its enriched uranium abroad, with both countries cooperating on a thorough inspection of Iran's uranium stockpile. Iran, however, has made clear it will not accept any proposal to remove enriched uranium from its territory. Iran insists it is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons — but maintains it has every right to continue enrichment activities on its own soil.

Talks had once moved into the stage of exchanging draft texts — a sign that both sides were already haggling over specific wording. The gaps may not be as wide as widely assumed; for instance, there are reportedly no major disagreements over lifting sanctions on Iran. But after the US doubled down on its insistence to blockade Iranian ports last Friday, relations deteriorated rapidly. Iran hardened its stance and became unwilling to return to the negotiating table at all.

Trump now stands frozen at a crossroads, unsure of which way to turn. Most observers believe continuing this war is deeply damaging to him. Since March, his approval ratings have collapsed across the board — every key policy area has simultaneously swung negative, and the declines have been steep. If the war drags on to the November midterm elections, Republicans face not only a very strong chance of losing control of the House, but potentially the Senate as well.

The latest polls, measured by net approval ratings on specific issues, tell a grim story. On "inflation and prices," Trump's net approval has plunged to minus 35 — an outright collapse. On "jobs and the economy," it has fallen to minus 20. On "foreign policy," it sits at minus 18. Across the board, his numbers have swung from positive to deeply negative — a clear harbinger of a Republican wipeout.

The military picture is no less bleak. With ammunition supplies running low, a US victory looks increasingly remote. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson disclosed on a podcast that at an emergency White House meeting on April 18, an extraordinarily reckless proposal surfaced: Trump reportedly raised the idea of studying the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, immediately shot it down, saying the consequences would be unthinkable.

In ordinary times, such rumours would be dismissed outright. But in the Trump era, nothing is too outlandish to be real. With no viable military path to victory, there is no telling what desperate ideas might take hold. Trump has painted himself into a corner.

If America steps back, there is still room to breathe. The differences between the US and Iran are not as insurmountable as they appear. The key question is whether Washington is willing to make concessions — allowing Iran to retain a small quantity of enriched uranium on its soil, while demanding significant restrictions on its enrichment programme and accepting monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). That could be enough to get a deal done.

Whether Iran goes to war or to peace ultimately rests on a single decision by Trump.

Lo Wing-hung

Bastille Commentary

** The blog article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the position of our company. **

Watching Trump describe the war against Iran feels exactly like watching King You of Zhou light the beacon fires as a joke — a ruler squandering the last reserves of trust that kept his empire standing.

According to a 9 April report by the UK edition of the International Business Times, Trump has been conducting a blitz of one-on-one phone interviews with reporters — without consulting his White House team. The result: a stream of contradictory statements about the war with Iran. By mid-April, Trump had given nine different answers to nine different journalists on the same subject. On one occasion, he told Axios the war "could be over in two or three days," then turned around and told Britain's Daily Mail "this has always been a four-week operation." In total, Trump offered nine distinct timelines — ranging from "two to three days," to "four to five weeks," to "a six-week deadline."

This chaotic spectacle peaked last Friday, 17 April. Trump coordinated with Iran and successfully persuaded it to announce the lifting of its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had been willing to cooperate partly because the U.S. had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Trump was elated. He fired off a rapid succession of social media posts announcing the reopening of the Strait and declaring a breakthrough agreement with Iran.

But Iran's goodwill was not appreciated. Shortly after Tehran announced the Strait's reopening, the U.S. military declared it would continue blockading Iranian ports. Iran was furious. It publicly stated that America's continued blockade violated their agreement. A day later, Iran reimposed its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and opened fire on an Indian oil tanker attempting to pass through. The U.S. responded by firing on an Iranian merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman.

From the reopening of the Strait to both nations opening fire on commercial ships, barely 48 hours passed. Oil prices briefly plunged more than 10% on Friday after Iran's announcement, only to rebound 7% on Monday once news broke that both sides had opened fire and the Strait had been sealed shut again.

In hindsight, there was a second motive behind Trump's Friday manoeuvre. A Europe-led "Strait of Hormuz Freedom of Navigation Initiative" was convening in Paris at the very same time. Spearheaded by the UK and France, the initiative had mobilised 50 countries and international organisations with the aim of forming a coalition to escort commercial vessels through the Strait after the war's end.

The European initiative was a clear bid to assert Europe's standing in the post-war international order. The conference conspicuously excluded belligerent nations — meaning the United States — and Trump was incensed. While the conference was underway, he engineered the announcement of the Strait's reopening, effectively torpedoing the meeting. Yet once the conference was scuttled, the U.S. military promptly announced it was resuming its blockade of Iranian ports. The reopening of the Strait turned out to be nothing more than a pipe dream — everyone had celebrated for nothing.

The New York Times published a commentary on 12 April under the headline "Trump's War Is Weakening America in Four Ways." The piece argued that Trump's reckless war has dealt severe blows to the United States. First, it has empowered Iran by allowing it to weaponise the Strait of Hormuz and expand its influence. Second, America's global military standing has been damaged — not only has it burned through vast missile stockpiles, but Iran's asymmetric warfare strategy has ground the U.S. down. Third, it has eroded trust with America's allies, with relationships rapidly deteriorating across Western Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Fourth, America's moral authority has been undermined.

America's appeal was never based solely on its economic prosperity. It rested equally on the values it upheld. Trump has spent his entire political career chipping away at those values, and the damage inflicted recently has reached an unprecedented scale. The brutal methods of armed conflict that American leaders are now embracing are precisely the methods the world collectively renounced after the Second World War. Their use is shaking the very foundations of American global leadership.

Lo Wing-hung