Iran’s leaders believe a victory is within reach, and that time is on their side

The Strait of Hormuz is, by some accounts, named for a Zoroastrian deity destined to emerge victorious after a 9,000-year standoff with an adversary.

Iran's leaders feel their own victory is at hand and won't require the same epic patience.

They are betting that military pressure will ultimately force the United States to accept their control over the crucial waterway for global energy — and that time is on their side.

They know about the diminishing stockpiles of key U.S. weapons such as advanced missile interceptors. They know the war is deeply unpopular with Americans. They know that as long as the strait is largely closed, the price of gas and other goods will stay high ahead of U.S. congressional elections in November. They know that trying to open it by force would be costly and may require American ground troops. They know their Houthi allies in Yemen could widen the war and disrupt another major trade route.

By that logic, U.S. President Donald Trump has no choice but to capitulate.

But Iran's strategy carries risks.

Trump points to strikes that have decimated Iran's top leadership, navy and air force. He alternates between threatening escalation and saying talks are going well. Iran's own economy has been battered, in part because of a U.S. blockade. Iranians rose up in mass protests just months ago and could do so again.

And Iran's leaders need only look to how Trump's “short-term excursion” to the Middle East has bogged down to be reminded that wars rarely turn out as expected.

Iran says it is close to reaching a deal with Oman to manage the strait, which runs between the two countries. But it would be conditioned on the U.S. lifting its blockade, so even if there are no direct negotiations — as Iran says — Trump would have to approve.

It's unclear whether the deal would allow Iran to charge fees. But it would formalize its control over what had been an open international waterway before the war, one that carried a fifth of the world's traded oil and gas.

Abdolreza Davari, an analyst who once advised former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Iran's effective control of the strait has given it leverage with the U.S. and regional countries that can help guarantee its security.

“More than revenue from the strait, Iran wants to confirm its management and sovereignty over the strait,” he said by phone from Tehran.

Formal control over even part of the strait would be a clear win for Iran and a loss for the U.S., which has yet to accomplish some of its various and shifting goals in the war.

It would also deal a blow to global norms on freedom of navigation and set a precedent that much of the world would find disturbing — that nations can shut down trade choke points at will.

China, which buys oil from Iran and has influence over it, said as recently as May that “normal and safe passage” through the strait should be restored.

To borrow a phrase from Trump's own theory of geopolitics, Iran believes it holds the cards.

“They started the war, but its end was never with them. We always decide for ourselves when it ends," Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran's chief negotiator, posted on social media. “Iran is going after the enemy’s defeat — not an agreement.”

He said a surprise Iranian attack on Jordan in July “compensated” for a drop in oil prices. That contributed to the collapse of an interim agreement reached in June that had offered significant concessions to Iran, including a U.S. waiver to sell oil internationally and the promise of broader sanctions relief.

Iran has repeatedly said the Strait of Hormuz will not go back to being an open waterway, and that it will keep attacking ships trying to transit without its permission. Iran's joint military command has called it an “unbreakable red line.”

“For Iran, the Strait of Hormuz has become a strategic lever for deterrence, maintaining the regional balance of power, and reshaping the security rules in the Persian Gulf," said Mostafa Najafi, a Tehran-based security analyst.

That poses a major obstacle to ending the war, much less resolving the even more complex, long-standing dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

"The atomic issue, because of the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, has been pushed to the side, and in reality, that is in Iran’s interests,” said Rahman Ghahremanpour, an Iran-based analyst. Control of the strait would give Iran leverage if the nuclear talks resume, he added.

The economic fallout from the war has spread worldwide but is particularly acute in Iran.

U.S. and Israeli strikes have pummeled its industrial base. The U.S. blockade has choked off much of its oil exports. Iranians are grappling with triple-digit food inflation. Trump has repeatedly threatened major strikes on civilian infrastructure like water and electricity.

In December, a currency crisis sparked some of the biggest anti-government protests in the 47-year history of the Islamic Republic. Authorities responded with a bloody crackdown in which thousands were killed and tens of thousands detained.

Many in Iran, including those close to its moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian, fear it may go too far.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, who as foreign minister helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal, wrote in a recent essay that Iran's achievements in the war had opened “an exceptional window for diplomacy.” But he warned that if it doesn't strike a deal soon, then “economic recovery will be difficult, and the possibility of internal unrest or renewed aggression, especially after the U.S. elections, cannot be ruled out.”

The war has already been marked by surprises.

After the first wave of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Feb. 28 killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials, Trump suggested it would be over in a matter of weeks.

Instead, the conflict has emboldened Iran's leaders and mobilized their supporters. Tehran is using the strait “to show that it has not been defeated," Ghahremanpour said. "It can increase its legitimacy at home.”

But the strategy could also backfire. Iran's resilience has limits and there are concerns that an economic crash could trigger unrest. “Iran cannot continue with this strategy forever, and at a certain point, in reality, it has to reach a deal with America," he said.

But Davari said that for now, Iran can withstand the pressure. "It’s unlikely, despite the difficulties of the economic situation, that Iran will retreat from its positions," he said.

Associated Press reporter Hend Kortam in Cairo contributed.

Krauss has reported from across the Middle East for more than 20 years, including postings in Cairo, Baghdad and Jerusalem. Radjy is a Cairo-based journalist who has reported on Iran for over a decade.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Women walk past a banner showing portraits of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, left, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, center, and the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the U.S. and Israel strike on Feb. 28, under a bridge in northern Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People spend time at a beach as commercial vessels are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. (Amirhosein Khorgooi/ISNA via AP)

The Trump administration is once again trying to limit who can become an American, with a pair of executive orders issued this week that attempt to place restrictions on birthright citizenship and on foreigners who give birth in the U.S.

A Supreme Court decision in June struck down a previous attempt at restricting birthright citizenship, but Thursday’s orders were made with “adjustments” keeping the decision in mind, President Donald Trump said.

Still, some of the restrictions announced by the White House are expected to face legal challenges.

The 14th Amendment, which makes a citizen of anyone born in the country, and two subsequent Supreme Court decisions interpreting it provide guidelines that already exclude certain births from receiving the citizenship benefit.

Trump's new attempt to restrict birthright citizenship even after the Supreme Court loss highlights the administration's drive to limit who can become an American.

Birthright citizenship is guaranteed under current law for anyone who is born on U.S. soil, with a few exceptions.

The executive order released Thursday was narrower in scope than the previous one shot down by the Supreme Court and appeared to focus on restricting automatic citizenship to specific categories of people, including children born to adults with connections to foreign embassies or organizations as well as anyone considered an “alien enemy” of the United States.

U.S. immigration law says babies born to a “foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States” are not entitled to birthright citizenship under the Constitution, including ambassadors, ministers, chargés d’affaires, counselors, secretaries and attachés of embassies and legations, and members of the Delegation of the Commission of the European Communities.

Trump’s orders Thursday would sharply expand those exemptions.

One order disqualifies babies who are products of “birth tourism.” The other applies to children of anyone working in a foreign embassy or representing a foreign government and employees of the United Nations or other international organizations. Children of parents tied to groups that are deemed terrorist organizations, like Antifa or Tren de Aragua, are also excluded.

“How is the federal government going to decide that a child is born to a member of a designated terrorist organization?” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University. “These are not organizations that are sharing the membership lists if they even have them.”

Citizenship through surrogacy has become a concern for Republican members of Congress, some of whom proposed a bill this year that would restrict citizenship for children of noncitizen parents born to surrogates in the U.S.

García Hernández said he believes the new executive order addressing surrogacy could raise new legal questions. “Neither the 14th Amendment nor any of the Supreme Court’s decisions about how to interpret the 14th Amendment mentions or hints at surrogates,” the law professor said.

Trump’s executive order defines birth tourism as someone who enters the United States on a “nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on American soil.”

Birth tourism is already considered fraud and grounds to restrict a visa if someone seeks one specifically to come to the U.S. and obtain citizenship for a child.

Advocates said the executive order would give immigration officers discretion to deny entry to pregnant women suspected of wanting to give birth in the U.S. without providing clearly defined guidelines.

The president did not offer data indicating the scope of the problem, but said Thursday: “I’ll tell you right now, hundreds of thousands, OK? Hundreds of thousands."

Although there's no official estimate of how many births can be considered “birth tourism” cases, experts say Trump’s approximation is exaggerated.

“The hundreds of thousands just seems like an overestimate based on the sort of limited data that we have available,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in 2024 nearly 9,600 children were born to foreign mothers with an official address outside the country. Another estimate from the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for lower immigration, estimated that 20,000 to 26,000 birth tourists come to the U.S. each year.

The order provides a sweeping indictment of “birth tourism operators” with no evidence of how widespread they are or how or why anyone accused of using their services would be exempt from constitutional protection.

Those efforts are not new either. Previous administrations have also sought to prosecute so-called “birth tourism” schemes that helped women hide their pregnancies while traveling to the United States to give birth.

“Birth tourism operators use deceptive advertisements and inducements to entice foreign nationals to travel to the United States for the purpose of giving birth on American soil,” the order says.

“They promise citizenship; access to public benefits; and short-term stays in specialized facilities, hotels, or rentals, but often fail to deliver on these promises. These operators coach their clients to misrepresent the purpose and duration of their travel to consular and border officials to obtain visas authorizing entry into the United States.”

The Republican Party has embraced the mission. In late July, the office of the attorney general in Texas announced a “sweeping investigation” into potentially unlawful birth tourism schemes after some south Texas hospitals advertised birthing services in Mexico.

Asked Thursday how his orders would survive Supreme Court scrutiny when his last attempt failed, Trump deferred to White House staff secretary Will Scharf, who, like his boss, sounded alarms about “birth tourism.” He emphasized consular discretion to grant visas.

“What we’re doing is taking legally validated means that are clearly within our disposal and targeting them to this birth tourism industry. There’s absolutely nothing here that runs afoul of any of the Supreme Court rulings on the subject,” Sharf said.

Advocates against the proposed changes said they believe the constitutional amendment and Supreme Court decisions will again stop the administration's efforts to restrict birthright citizenship.

“The bottom line is that the Supreme Court already considered the Trump administration’s plea to rewrite the Constitution and rejected it,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director at the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project.

“Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, and no amount of executive orders is going to change that.”

Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin contributed.

President Donald Trump listens before signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Washington, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick watches. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump speaks before signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)