It appears Donald Trump once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by heeding the hawkish counsel of the warmongers at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.<\/p>\n
As I have argued before, the fragile ceasefire disproportionately favored the United States over Iran<\/a>: Trump secured his central objective \u2014 a swift exit from a costly war \u2014 while Iran<\/a> forfeited its primary source of leverage, namely the inflationary pressure of elevated oil prices. Tehran, by contrast, remained unable to achieve its core objective \u2014 meaningful sanctions relief \u2014 without entering a difficult diplomatic process with Washington.<\/p>\n The asymmetry was stark: Trump could afford strategic patience, whereas Iran risked squandering the most consequential gains the conflict could have yielded if negotiations faltered or collapsed.<\/p>\n In short, this emerging status quo could have constituted a quiet but decisive victory for Trump. Yes, Iran would retain control over the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz<\/a> \u2014 but it does so today as well and would do so in almost any scenario. But the status quo would have seen oil prices drop as the Iranians would allow tankers to transit in order to collect fees. And as long as oil prices came down, Trump\u2019s position at home and vis-\u00e0-vis Iran would have strengthened.<\/p>\n But then Trump committed a familiar and consequential error. Once again, he followed the advice of Israel<\/a> and one of its key supporters in Washington, the FDD advocacy group.<\/p>\n The strangulation of Iran: take 5023<\/p>\n FDD argued<\/a> that blockading the Persian Gulf would swiftly cripple the Iranian economy and coerce Tehran into capitulation, allowing Trump to achieve through economic strangulation what he had failed to secure through military force. In short, it was sold to him as a silver bullet. More on that later.<\/p>\n According to this logic, the blockade would \u201ceffectively zero out\u201d Iran\u2019s export revenues within days, inflicting losses of nearly $500 million per day. With oil exports halted, Iran\u2019s limited storage capacity would be filled within weeks, forcing the costly and technically damaging shutdown of its oil wells. This, FDD claimed, would dramatically reverse the strategic balance \u2014 transforming the Strait of Hormuz from a perceived Iranian asset into a crippling Achilles\u2019 heel, while handing Washington the invaluable advantage of time. Pressure on Iran would escalate sharply while pressure on the United States would rapidly dissipate.<\/p>\n Trump was fully on board. His long-sought subjugation of Iran suddenly appeared tantalizingly within reach. \u201cThe blockade is genius<\/a>,\u201d the president told reporters. \u201cNow, they have to cry uncle; that\u2019s all they have to do. Just say, \u2018We give up.\u2019\u201d (Notably, an FDD staffer has reportedly<\/a> since joined Steve Witkoff\u2019s team.)<\/p>\n Predictably, the opposite occurred. FDD\u2019s confident calculations and tidy logic were, as so often, rooted more in wishful thinking than in hard reality. By its own projections, Iran should have exhausted its storage capacity nearly a week ago. Yet satellite imagery shows Tehran still actively loading oil onto tankers at Kharg Island. While the blockade has undeniably increased economic pressure, there is no sign of the acute storage crisis \u2014 or the cascading collapse \u2014 FDD confidently promised Trump.<\/p>\n But by targeting Iran\u2019s oil exports, Trump did more than complicate an already fragile diplomatic pathway \u2014 he tightened global supply and drove prices upward. In fact, thanks to the blockade, oil prices now exceed the levels seen during the war itself.<\/p>\n Exxon\u2019s CEO told shareholders today<\/a> that gasoline prices are poised to rise even further, noting that \u201cthe market hasn’t seen the full impact of [the Iran conflict] yet.\u201d Meanwhile, Joe Kent, Trump\u2019s former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, cautions<\/a> that \u201cthe blockade is now triggering a global fertilizer shortage that will cause major food security crises and potential famines.\u201d<\/p>\n In short: the desperately needed pressure release Trump secured through the ceasefire has been entirely undone by FDD\u2019s vaunted silver-bullet blockade.<\/p>\n The lure of the silver bullet\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a pathology in U.S. policy on Iran that transcends administrations and party affiliations: The incessant search for an escalatory silver bullet that brings Iran to its knees, forces it to capitulate, and enables the U.S. to assert its superpower dominance and avoid a compromise with the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n Across 47 years, the hunt for this fabled silver bullet has echoed on \u2014 yet nothing answers back. Countless diplomatic opportunities have been sacrificed, and face-saving exit ramps have been burnt in the process. Yet, the quest continues. <\/p>\n The demand for Iranian capitulation and the enduring faith in elusive silver bullets are deeply intertwined. In January, Trump believed that the mere threat of military force would compel Tehran to surrender. After issuing a series of increasingly explicit warnings that Iran pointedly ignored, he proposed a calibrated strike \u2014 one to which Tehran should respond symbolically by targeting an empty American base. Iran refused outright, making clear that any attack would trigger a full-scale war.<\/p>\n Interpreting this defiance as a failure of credibility rather than a rejection of coercion, Trump escalated. He ordered a substantial buildup of military assets in the region, convinced that a critical mass of force would finally deliver the decisive breakthrough \u2014 the long-sought silver bullet. It didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Indeed, Witkoff revealed in an interview that Trump was frustrated<\/a> that, despite his military threats, Iran had still not \u201ccapitulated.\u201d <\/p>\n Clearly, more escalation was needed. The next imagined silver bullet was the assassination of Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Midway through the war, a GCC official told me that Trump had assured regional leaders the conflict would last no more than 100 hours. Israeli media<\/a> similarly reported<\/a> that he told Britain\u2019s Keir Starmer it would be over within three days. The logic was stark: the killing of Khamenei would trigger either the regime\u2019s rapid implosion or its immediate capitulation. It proved to be yet another illusory silver bullet.<\/p>\n Nor did the sweeping bombardment of Iran\u2019s civilian infrastructure deliver the long-sought breakthrough. A Bloomberg analysis<\/a> found that only 32% of the damaged buildings were linked to military targets \u2014 the overwhelming majority were civilian. Even this devastating and indiscriminate campaign failed to produce the decisive outcome its architects had promised.<\/p>\n The blockade-on-the-blockade is merely the latest in a long line of delusional silver bullets that American presidents have chased instead of pursuing far less costly and far more effective diplomacy. I suspect that a stunning number of those silver bullets were cooked up by FDD.<\/p>\n