Even for those who follow Donald Trump’s antics closely, Tuesday was an abrupt reminder of just how quickly the US President can change his mind and throw supposed policy and strategy out of the window, leaving those in the US and the rest of the world scrambling to try to keep up.
But the President’s latest U-turn on Iran shows his growing desperation and just how few options he has right now in trying to end the unpopular war he started two months ago.
On Sunday, Trump announced “Operation Project Freedom” would start the very next day. The US Navy, he said, would guide ships trapped by the Strait of Hormuz to freedom, on humanitarian grounds. Details were sketchy, and the plan seemed to rely on simply threatening Iran with unspecified consequences if it did not allow ships through.
Unsurprisingly, the first day was less than a triumph. Iran claimed – seemingly falsely – to have successfully attacked a US Navy ship. The US reported it had destroyed several Iranian small boats. Civilian ships reported being fired upon. Almost no ships successfully traversed the strait.
On Tuesday, Pete Hegseth, the self-styled Secretary of War, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both gave press conferences trying to explain and defend the operation, only for Trump – with a grim inevitability – to announce it was “paused” shortly after. It is unclear when or even if it will be restarted again.
Iranian state media quickly described the move as a “retreat” from Trump.
The President, meanwhile, tried to claim that the pause was because negotiations were going so well that “a Complete and Final Agreement” between the US and Iran might be in sight. He has claimed this several times before, without anything to show for it.
In fact, neither the US nor Iran even bothered to turn up to the last round of negotiations, which were set to take place in Pakistan. Trump tried to argue that future negotiations would take place by “telephone” to save on 15-hour flights.
The USS George H.W. Bush in the Arabian Sea on 3 May, 2026. US forces have been deployed in greater numbers to the Middle East in recent months (Photo: US Navy/AFP via Getty Images)Across the world, experts have warned of economic catastrophe and major shortages if the strait is closed even for a few weeks. But stock markets have barely fallen, and while oil and gas prices are up, they are nowhere close to reflecting the scale of the shortages set to hit Europe and most of Asia.
The situation has been likened to Wile E. Coyote running over the edge of the cliff but not yet falling because he hasn’t looked down.
For Trump, the clock is ticking. The rising price of petrol and the cost-of-living crisis comes at an awful time, with November’s US midterm elections on the horizon. He is clearly desperate to declare victory – which he has tried to do on several occasions already, including by saying there has been regime change in Iran since the former Supreme Leader’s son is now in charge – and move on.
The latest about-face for Trump is embarrassing, but it will only become worse if the conflict with Iran drags on. At the moment, it is unclear if the White House has any exit strategy that is remotely feasible, or if it is just relying on wishful thinking and aggressive posturing on the part of the President.
Trump and his team speak of a deal that would fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow the US to seize Iran’s nuclear material and secure a promise of no further enrichment for a decade or more. Iran, meanwhile, says it is negotiating only to reopen the strait – with it able to levy a toll on all ships traversing it – and end the immediate conflict, with any nuclear deal to take place at a later stage.
This would arguably put the US in a worse situation than before the conflict began.
A man holds a picture of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, in Tehran (Photo: Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency via Reuters)Global markets are in denial about how damaging the prolonged standoff between the US and Iran could be, and Trump seems to be taking the same approach – hoping something will come along that will solve the problem he’s caused, while doing almost nothing to actually make that happen.
Wars never end themselves. Even just claiming victory and walking away without a deal requires Trump to ultimately make a decision. Anything else requires serious and sustained diplomacy.
Trump’s ever-changing approach to the standoff with Iran, like those around Operation Project Freedom, point to his unwillingness to grapple with the complexities of the problems he has created. Instead, he is staying in his comfort zone of trying to govern via social media post.
Iran’s leaders will have taken note of his latest climbdown. Trump has taught them not to take his announcements seriously. With the life and death stakes at play, few things could be more dangerous than that.
Trump cannot simply wish his way through a military, geopolitical and economic crisis of his own making. The alarming thing is that it increasingly seems like no one around Trump is willing to tell him this. For any of this to end, Trump needs an actual plan. The question is whether he’s capable of producing one of those any more.
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