What's Trump's strategy now with Iran? To keep things as they are

President Trump’s strategy with Iran has narrowed to a single word: wait. “We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this week. “Those days have long since passed.

The shift follows two political setbacks that have sharply constrained his options. Republicans lost their majority in Congress in the midterm elections, and Vice President JD Vance publicly blamed the unpopular war with Iran, along with U.S. relations with Israel, for the losses. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s principal wartime ally, is on the verge of being ousted after elections there. With less room to maneuver at home and abroad, the administration has adopted what Secretary of State Marco Rubio described in Paris as “strategic patience”—waiting for sanctions to crack the Iranian government rather than launching major combat operations.

The practical effect of that waiting game is visible across the Gulf. Iran now requires ships to obtain permission before navigating the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that was open and free before the war. Official Iranian social media accounts regularly post videos of attacks on vessels that violate the new rules.

Military pressure remains in place even as large-scale strikes recede.

The evidence points to a strategy defined more by what Trump has rejected than by what he has embraced. Military options involving intense attacks on nuclear sites and energy infrastructure have been set aside, at least for now. Plans to send commandos to seize roughly 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity have been abandoned. Analysis of whether America’s largest bunker busters could penetrate Pickaxe Mountain, a site U.S. intelligence believes—but is not certain—houses advanced centrifuges, has been dropped. Rubio said the economic campaign is working so well that the president has no need for major combat operations, though he added that the U.S. could intervene if Iran crosses certain red lines.

Iran, for its part, remains defiant. Tehran has offered a seven-step plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume nuclear talks within two days if its demands are met, including lifting the naval blockade of its ports, repealing sanctions, guaranteeing an end to strikes, and securing a regional ceasefire.

The most likely reading of the evidence is that Trump is running out of politically acceptable ways to win the war quickly and has settled on a strategy of managed drift. Economic pressure is inflicting real damage on Iran and its Gulf neighbors alike, but it has not produced a deal, a collapse, or a clear exit. The possibility of escalation still looms, carried forward by the third carrier deployment, the continued tit-for-tat strikes, and the unresolved status of Iran’s nuclear program.