President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, both resist the idea that ostensibly weaker powers fought them to a stalemate, with the two leaders leaning on negotiations to win the capitulation that they failed to secure in battle.<\/p>\n
Iran and Ukraine have pushed back robustly against this \u201cmight makes right\u201d mentality, with top officials adopting an even more defiant tone in recent days.<\/p>\n
In an open letter<\/a> to Mr. Putin this month, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine derided Mr. Putin for clinging to power as he aged. \u201cYou did not expect full-scale resistance from Ukraine, and you did not foresee that things would go this far,\u201d Mr. Zelensky wrote.<\/p>\n After Iran unleashed a missile barrage against Israel last week in retaliation for attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Parliament and Iran\u2019s top negotiator, threatened<\/a> more. \u201cUntil there is a sincere commitment to restoring trust, Iran\u2019s response will not change,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n Their recalcitrance reflects the reality of two wars in stasis, with a profound lack of trust all around stymying progress.<\/p>\n Talks to find peace in Ukraine hit an impasse right before the Iran war started, with Ukraine demanding more robust security guarantees for ceding territory than Russia was willing to accept. Diplomacy has mostly produced prisoner swaps<\/a> between the sides. The United States, once trying to play the main mediator, has shifted its focus to Iran.<\/p>\n American and Iranian officials now say a peace deal with Iran could be at hand. But it appears that it will initially consist of a framework for negotiations that will push the thorniest issues, like Iran\u2019s nuclear program and sanctions relief, down the road. It is expected to allow for at least the temporary reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to shipping.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth conflicts have produced a similar outcome: a weaker power has trapped a stronger one in a costly confrontation,\u201d Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, wrote in a policy paper<\/a> for the Brookings Institution this week. \u201cLike Putin, Trump did not have a plan for what would happen next.\u201d<\/p>\n The root of the issue is that both presidents sparked wars with limited understanding of the opposing side, Ms. Hill said in an interview. \u201cBoth projected their own centralized views of their own roles onto Iran and Ukraine, so they thought if they could decapitate the system it would fall,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Mr. Putin did not anticipate fierce Ukrainian resistance, for example; Mr. Trump ignored admonitions that Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz, and appeared to underestimate Iran\u2019s capacity to retaliate and inflict damage on America\u2019s allies in the region. Nor did the Iranian people rise up against their authoritarian leaders, as Israel and the United States had urged them to do.<\/p>\n While the bombing campaigns of the United States and Russia have had devastating effects, analysts noted, air power alone has not proved decisive.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough Russia\u2019s aggressive invasion of its neighbor differs from Washington\u2019s goal of reining in Iran\u2019s expansionist threat, both states are finding it equally hard to align their end goals with the means available to achieve them,\u201d James F. Jeffrey, a fellow at the Washington Institute and a former Middle East envoy, wrote<\/a> in Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n Ukraine managed to halt Russian troop advances in part by producing next-generation drones, changing the face of modern warfare, while the United States has shown no desire to deploy troops inside Iran.<\/p>\n Lack of compromise has prolonged both wars. The United States and Russia have presented extensive demands to the other side, but the list of what their adversaries get in return is short. Mr. Putin, in particular, has not budged from his maximalist demands, which include taking land his army has been unable to capture.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has also repeatedly revised terms<\/a> already agreed with the mediators, frustrating the Iranians.<\/p>\n The United States harmed the process \u201cwith contradictory messages, frequent changes in positions and demands, as well as repeated violations of the cease-fire,\u201d Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman for Iran\u2019s Foreign Ministry, said last week after fighting sputtered back to life.<\/p>\n Each revision erodes a little more of Iran\u2019s confidence that Mr. Trump will stick to an eventual deal, analysts said.<\/p>\n Yet Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared that a resolution is just around the corner, as he did Thursday after calling off yet another offensive.<\/p>\n None of the shifting set of goals<\/a> that he predicted at the beginning of the conflict \u2014 which he said would take only a few weeks to achieve \u2014 has been realized.<\/p>\n The same is true for Mr. Putin. Invading Ukraine, the Kremlin had expected it would quickly seize Kyiv, install a pliant regime and be welcomed by the Ukrainian people. That was more than four years ago. Despite a death toll<\/a> estimated at more than 350,000 soldiers, Moscow has not fully occupied three of the four Ukrainian provinces that it now claims. <\/p>\n