Unless this is merely negotiating tactics, fighting could flare up again once the United States has replenished its depleted arsenals. That is far from certain: American stockpiles of precision guided long range weapons are largely exhausted, and interceptor systems in Israel and the Gulf states are running low.
Militarily, there are no good options.
Iran has shown that it cannot be defeated from the air alone. It still possesses ballistic missiles capable of striking critical infrastructure in the Gulf states and in Israel. Nuclear facilities, as well as underground launch bases and weapons depots, cannot be permanently neutralized from the air.
A ground offensive is not a realistic option either.
Even limited operations, such as seizing Kharg Island within range of Iranian artillery or deploying paratroopers deep into the country to target nuclear facilities, would amount to de facto suicide missions. As a warning, during a commando operation to recover a downed F-15 pilot, the United States lost more aircraft in a single day than in any individual mission since the Vietnam War.
A large scale invasion aimed at regime change, as in Iraq, would require at least a quarter of a million troops facing a potentially million strong Iranian mobilization. Even deploying such a force would be logistically daunting. The roughly 50,000 US troops in the region are largely not combat ready for a ground offensive. Many of the 13 US bases in the Middle East are damaged or destroyed. Launching an invasion from the sea is equally implausible, as troops would come under Iranian fire before they could even land. A glance at the mountainous coastline of the Persian Gulf is enough to grasp the military risks.
Even more limited objectives, such as securing the Strait of Hormuz, are highly risky. Countering asymmetric threats like drones or clearing naval mines, whose locations are not even fully known to Iran itself, is extremely difficult from a distance. Two warships have now passed through the strait to prepare for clearing the shipping route of mines. This can only succeed as long as the ceasefire holds.
What American security experts have long warned of is now coming true: even overwhelming kinetic superiority cannot win an asymmetric conflict when a determined adversary primarily relies on economic disruption as a weapon.
Given these bleak prospects, the question arises why the United States allowed the negotiations to collapse. Reporting by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman suggests that military and intelligence assessments were deliberately overridden in the decision to go to war. If the conflict were to end in capitulation, the political survival of Donald Trump would be as much at risk as that of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Pressing on and escalating may therefore also be a strategy of political survival, not least sweetened by profits in highly volatile markets. The decision to send J. D. Vance to the first official round of negotiations, whose chances of success were slim from the outset, can be read as a power move: to bring the war skeptic Vance, who is positioning himself with the MAGA base for a presidential campaign, more firmly into line. Whether this will be enough to contain the internal conflict within the base is doubtful. On the contrary, Trump is now openly clashing with some of his former closest supporters. Yet even if the Trump administration has passed its peak, the damage to the global standing of the United States is likely to be irreparable.
For the American empire, the Strait of Hormuz could become what the Suez Canal once was for the British Empire: the moment when global power balances have shifted so far that the empire can no longer secure even its core functions, safeguarding sea lanes and access to energy, by its own means. Once the emperor is visibly naked, there is usually no turning back.
The stakes are therefore so high that neither the United States and Israel, nor Trump and Netanyahu, can afford failure. But if their only alternative is to keep postponing the problem, escalating without any realistic prospect of success because defeat is not an option, the consequences for the rest of the world would be severe.
If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and Iran continues to destroy energy infrastructure in the Gulf states, supply shortages in Asia will intensify while global energy costs rise again. It is worth recalling that tankers are still arriving that began their journeys before the outbreak of the war. The real supply shock will only hit once the strait becomes impassable for an extended period. And with the entry of the Yemeni Houthis into the conflict, the central trade route through the Red Sea is now also under pressure. If Iran destroys desalination plants, the Gulf’s glittering cities could become uninhabitable. Disruptions to fertilizer exports risk triggering a food crisis. At the same time, interruptions in helium, liquefied natural gas, and petrochemical feedstocks such as naphtha and sulfur, all essential inputs for semiconductor and battery production, threaten the global chip supply.
The consequences of these price shocks are predictable: rising inflation, declining consumption, and slowing growth. If central banks are forced to raise interest rates to combat inflation, sovereign defaults in the Global South and stagflation in the Global North may follow. If these shocks propagate through the global system, from bursting real estate bubbles in Asia to tech bubbles in the West, a new global financial crisis looms.
Time is therefore running out, and diplomatically, too, there are no good options. The best of the worst scenarios is to extend the ceasefire and strike a bad compromise in the next rounds of negotiations. Yet in the Middle East, preparations for the next military strike appear to be continuing.
In the absence of viable military options, the Strait of Hormuz can ultimately only be reopened through political means. Several states demonstrate how this can be achieved, having negotiated passage or currently negotiating with Tehran to secure transit. Chinese, French, Indian, Japanese, Pakistani, and Turkish vessels have already passed through the strait unharmed; the Philippines and Malaysia have received official assurances of safe passage; Bangladesh, Italy, Spain, South Korea, and Thailand are currently in negotiations.
Germany has resumed official diplomatic contacts but remains cautious in its own negotiations with Tehran so as not to endanger the transatlantic alliance and Israel’s security interests. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron, Giorgia Meloni, and Pedro Sánchez are acting and creating facts on the ground.
(Cover Image: Official Branding of the Islamabad Talks 2026. Credit: Government of Pakistan)
AsiaBenjamin NetanyahuDonald TrumpIranIslamabad TalksJ. D. VanceMAGANuclear TreatyPakistanPeace NegotiationsPoliticsStrait of HormuzSuez CanalUS–Israel vs Iran WarUSA