Trump keeps bidding for the war to end. Iran keeps raising its price

Patience is a virtue. And Donald Trump is an impatient man.

The war between Iran and the United States is not over because the U.S. President has for months been signalling his growing desperation for it to be over. Iran’s leaders have responded accordingly.

Back in the 1980s, late-night TV infomercials on how to get rich through real estate told you to find “a motivated seller” – someone in a hurry to unload their property. Mr. Trump keeps telling Iran that he is that motivated seller. His alarm clock is loudly ticking down to the midterm elections in November.

That’s why the Iranian regime keeps raising the sticker price of what Mr. Trump wants: a reopened Strait of Hormuz, and cheaper gasoline at American pumps.

Iran and Oman have held negotiations to reopen the strait, and last week the White House signalled that Mr. Trump would embrace the pending agreement – even though Washington wasn’t part of the talks, and the arrangements would put Iran in a position to enrich itself by taxing its neighbours’ oil exports.

It would have been a humiliation for the U.S. – and yet for Tehran, it wasn’t enough. On Saturday, a senior Iranian official announced that “until America corrects its behaviour, the Strait of Hormuz will not open.”

He demanded that the U.S. lift sanctions, release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian funds, lift the naval blockade, pay reparations and more.

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This may not be the Iranian bottom line, but Tehran is throwing it out there and seeing what sticks.

Mr. Trump meekly responded that “we are low-keying it” on Iran. There was none of the usual bluster threatening massive attacks. The U.S. is facing a widely reported shortage of munitions, and in any case the war has made clear that more bombs and missiles won’t reopen the strait.

Tehran believes that it can absorb more punishment than Mr. Trump, who started the war without public support, without a strategic objective and without a plan.

The irony is that the ongoing blockade of Iranian ports, which Mr. Trump indicated on Sunday is now the core part of his plan (this could change by Tuesday, and change again Wednesday), is the only one with any hope of achieving a peace that does not involve a U.S. climbdown and a windfall for Tehran.

The best strategy would be to have never launched a war on Iran on Feb. 28. The U.S. should have continued squeezing Iran’s economy through sanctions, while dangling relief in return for Iranian concessions.

An economic war between Iran and the U.S. is unwinnable for Iran. A shooting war is far less unequal, as Mr. Trump has discovered.

The blockade largely prevents Iran from exporting oil, its only significant source of funds. However, the U.S. allowed Iran to export oil during the first six weeks of the war, even as Iran shut the strait to U.S. allies, because the White House wanted to moderate oil prices. The June memorandum of understanding also granted Iran the freedom to export several billion dollars of oil, until it restarted the war in July.

American allies in the Gulf are harmed by the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, but the price is far less than what a U.S. blockade imposes on Iran. For example, Saudi Arabia built a pipeline decades ago to Yanbu on the Red Sea, bypassing the strait. When the war began, it quickly filled it with seven million barrels a day of crude, or roughly two-thirds of the country’s prewar production.

A look at the financial statements of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, the kingdom’s state-owned oil monopoly otherwise known as Aramco, shows the surprisingly mild impact of the war on Saudi oil revenues.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, before the war, Aramco pumped 11.1 million barrels of oil and other liquids. Faced with wartime shipping constraints, it chose to produce just 7.6 million barrels in the second quarter of 2026.

However, its average realized price in Q4 2025 was US$64.10, compared to US$108.10 in the second quarter of 2026. Despite lower production, Saudi Arabia’s oil receipts rose.

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A strategy of economic blockade rather than bombing plays to the economic strengths of the U.S. and its Gulf allies, and leans on Iran’s weakest point.

But for it to yield a peace that doesn’t involve some level of American surrender will call for months of patience. And patience is in shorter supply than Patriot missiles. Mr. Trump wants to have washed his hands of his war yesterday, as do most American voters. Iran knows this.

That’s why Iran retains the strategic initiative. It recently enticed its Houthi allies in Yemen to undermine the utility of Saudi Arabia’s Hormuz-bypassing pipeline by trying to close the Red Sea to Saudi traffic.

This war will end eventually. How it ends depends on which side has more patience and willingness to absorb punishment. Tehran believes, not unreasonably, that it can win such a contest, and compel Mr. Trump to pay a richer ransom that he agreed to back in June.

Until the Iranian regime changes its mind, or until Mr. Trump proves it right by crying uncle, the strait will stay closed. And the conflict will remain open.