The US HAS paused the major attacks against Iran….
The word is ‘diplomacy ‘?
The whisper is the US military is running out of stuff....
The fact is Iran IS still throwing BACK at Gulf states that house US assets…..
The conjecture IS Donald Trump, The President of the United States IS STUCK in a situation he CANNOT get to go ‘His’ Way…..
He HAS met his match with the Iranin’s. , who HAVE out mannered him on EVERY term….
The might of the US military simply has been ineffective against a determined adversary….
Trump’s action have actually helped Iran extend their control across the Middle East….
Oh?
The ongoing ‘War’ isn’t any more popular after 13 weeks…..
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President Trump often celebrates his unpredictability, declaring that it keeps allies and adversaries alike off balance.
By his telling, his willingness to bomb Iranian nuclear sites 13 months ago, and send Delta Force commandos in to snatch President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela from his bed in early January, reflected his determination to execute military operations that would have made his predecessors blanch. He told The New York Times he was limited only by “my own morality,” as he wielded the world’s biggest hammer.
But in recent weeks, he has seemed trapped, his presidency gradually consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of.
He has discovered limits on his power that he could have scarcely imagined as he began full combat operations on Feb. 28, when he set out goals for a swift end to Iran’s nuclear program and the overthrow of the country’s government.
Five months later, those goals remain almost entirely unaccomplished. And Mr. Trump, once confident that overwhelming force would enable him to pursue in Iran what he proudly called the “Venezuela model” — a change of government to one amenable to U.S. control — is now hesitant to plunge back into major combat operations that his intelligence agencies assess are unlikely to work as well in Tehran.
He has been unable to control surging oil prices, or their effects on the stock market. The shipping that crawled to a stop in the Strait of Hormuz, then was opened for a few short weeks, is back to a trickle, with a second choke point, between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, now threatened. And while the president has threatened to take Kharg Island, where Iran ships oil, or to seize its underground stores of enriched uranium, he has said publicly that he knows there is no appetite for sending in ground troops.
Those limits have left him deeply frustrated, his aides say, and have made him more erratic, even by Trumpian standards. Last week alone, Mr. Trump’s energy secretary signed a historic pactwith Saudi Arabia to provide civil nuclear power to the kingdom, before the president undercut the deal less than 24 hours later, stunning the Saudis by declaring that the agreement, negotiated over 18 months, was dead unless the country joined the Abraham Accords and recognized Israel.
Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat with long experience in the Mideast, said that Mr. Trump again “alienated the Saudis, delighted Benjamin Netanyahu and gave Iran strong talking points as to why cutting deals with U.S. is a fool’s errand, bound to be betrayed.”….
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ISW….Iran Update Special Report, July 26, 2026
- The current level and type of US strikes have likely failed to meaningfully affect the Iranian regime’s willingness to pursue and secure its strategic objectives with force, including long-term control over the Strait of Hormuz.
- Iran is continuing to illegally claim control over the Strait of Hormuz and use the threat of naval mines to deter commercial vessels from using non-Iranian-approved routes through the strait, which illustrates that Iran still seeks to control the strait.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated on July 25 that Russia is providing Iran with satellite imagery of US bases in the Gulf to support Iranian attacks and battle damage assessments. Zelenskyy’s statement is consistent with ISW-CTP’s previous assessment that Russia is helping Iran increase the accuracy of its targeting of US military sites in the region.
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“The Pentagon updated its war casualty database Saturday, recording more than 140 additionally wounded and restoring the four soldiers killed due to Iranian strikes last weekend,” CNN reports.
“When the new Pentagon data is combined with updated totals for Operation Epic Fury, 18 troops have died and another 624 have been wounded since the U.S. launched its war against Iran on Feb. 28. The number of wounded is a significant increase from the previous peak of 482 observed by CNN last week.”
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