{"id":85892,"date":"2026-04-27T14:25:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T14:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/85892\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T14:25:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T14:25:21","slug":"2-months-into-the-iran-war-who-holds-the-upper-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/85892\/","title":{"rendered":"2 months into the Iran war, who holds the upper hand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two months after US and Israeli strikes began, their war on Iran<\/a> has settled into a costly stalemate.The fighting has paused under a fragile Pakistan-brokered ceasefire<\/a>, but the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, direct talks have collapsed and neither side shows signs of yielding.Last weekend, Washington\u2019s envoys cancelled<\/a> their planned trip to the Pakistani capital for further talks after Tehran declared it would not join negotiations until the US Navy ended its blockade of Iranian ports.<\/p>\n

Analysts argue that both sides are now eyeing the exit, though Tehran and Washington each think that they still have greater power to shape the war\u2019s ultimate outcome.<\/p>\n

Middle East expert Niu Xinchun, vice-president of Ningxia University, attributed this impasse to self-confidence on both sides.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth the United States and Iran believe they hold the upper hand,\u201d he said at a China and Globalisation Forum event in Beijing on April 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two months after US and Israeli strikes began, their war on Iran has settled into a costly stalemate.The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[383,30621,714,17354,34,37,22870,49,30620,16722,650,101,69,25412,153],"class_list":["post-85892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-beijing","tag-china-and-globalisation-forum","tag-gulf-states","tag-hormuz-blockade","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-jodie-wen","tag-middle-east","tag-ni-lexiong","tag-niu-xinchun","tag-pakistan","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-tehran","tag-tsinghua-university","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116477134270421252","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}