ANALYSIS: Trump and Iran — A Man in a Hurry Who Is Running Into a Wall

Fordow isn’t being destroyed. It’s being damaged.

Military analysts at the RAND Corporation published a classified assessment in March 2026, excerpts of which were leaked to The New York Times on April 15: a U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan—would delay the enrichment program by twelve to eighteen months. No destruction. No dismantling. A delay. A wound. Enough for Trump to claim victory. Not enough for the threat to disappear.

And yet, twelve to eighteen months is precisely the narrative Trump would need for the midterms. Political logic devours strategic logic. Iranian Shahab-3 missiles have a range of 2,000 kilometers. U.S. bases in Iraq—at Ain al-Assad, in Erbil—are within their range. 2,500 U.S. soldiers are stationed there. These are not geopolitical abstractions. They are twenty-two-year-old men who sleep in barracks on hot concrete, who call their mothers on the weekends, and who would be the first targets of retaliation.

People talk about nuclear sites. They talk about centrifuges. They talk about enrichment levels. But no one ever mentions Corporal Tyler Morrison, 23, from Columbus, Ohio, who has been stationed at Ain al-Assad for six months, who has no opinion on the Iranian nuclear issue, and who could die in the line of fire.

Israel: Ally or Catalyst

Benjamin Netanyahu met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on April 7, 2026. The meeting lasted three hours. No joint statement was released. According to three separate sources cited by Axios on April 18, Netanyahu reportedly advocated for a strike “in the coming weeks” before Iran crosses the 90% enrichment threshold. The CIA estimates that at this rate, Iran could have enough fissile material for a bomb in four to six weeks. Not a functional bomb. Not a ballistic missile. Just the raw material. The difference is technical. It is also politically explosive.

Israel has its own imaginary B-2s: the F-35I Adir, modified for long-range strikes with in-flight refueling. The Israeli General Staff conducted simulated attack exercises against Iranian sites in February and March 2026. This is not theater. It is calculated pressure on Washington. Netanyahu is using the threat of unilateral Israeli action to force Trump to choose: act first and control the narrative, or let Israel act alone and face a regional war that the United States did not start but will be unable to avoid becoming embroiled in.

Witkoff in Oman: Selling Real Estate to Ayatollahs

Steve Witkoff, 68, made his fortune in real estate development in New York. He has bought hotels in Las Vegas. He has renovated high-rises in Miami. He is accustomed to negotiations where the other party wants an honorable exit, where price is the only variable, and where a signed agreement benefits both sides. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a struggling real estate developer. It is a theocratic regime whose political identity is based on resistance to America.

On April 12, the first session took place in Muscat. On April 19, the second session. In between, Tehran continued to enrich uranium to 60% according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. No freeze. No pause. No gesture of good faith. The centrifuges are spinning while the diplomats talk. This has been Iran’s traditional stance in every round of negotiations since 2003: negotiate to buy time, and use that time to make progress. Witkoff isn’t the first American to fail to understand this pattern. He’s just the least equipped to deal with it.

What I don’t understand—what no one really explains—is how Trump, who boasts of being the greatest negotiator in history, sent a real estate developer to negotiate with a regime whose survival strategy is based on never striking a deal with the United States.

The Iranian Conditions That America Cannot Accept

Tehran laid out three non-negotiable conditions right from the first session in Oman. First: the immediate and complete lifting of sanctions, including the oldest ones dating back to 1979. Second: recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium on its own territory, without any externally imposed limits. Third: legally binding non-aggression guarantees, ratified by the U.S. Congress. Each of these three conditions is politically impossible for Trump. Lifting sanctions without verifiable nuclear concessions? Senate Republicans would block it. Recognizing an unlimited right to enrichment? Netanyahu would denounce the agreement live on Fox News. Guarantees ratified by Congress? Trump doesn’t even control his own party on foreign policy issues.

And yet, Tehran knows these conditions are impossible. That is precisely why they were set. Iran does not want a deal. Iran wants the negotiations to last long enough for the centrifuges to cross the 90% enrichment threshold. At that point, the balance of power shifts. The theoretical bomb becomes an imminent threat. And a U.S. president in the midst of a midterm election campaign must choose between a war he doesn’t want and a capitulation he can’t afford.

February 2025: The Letter That Started It All

On February 4, 2025, barely two weeks after his inauguration, Trump sent a personal letter to Ali Khamenei via Omani intermediaries. The exact contents were never made public. But according to sources familiar with the matter cited by the Wall Street Journal on March 10, 2026, Trump proposed direct negotiations “without preconditions” on the nuclear program in exchange for a freeze on enrichment. It took Khamenei six weeks to respond. His reply, delivered in late March 2025, rejected direct negotiations but left the door open to “technical” talks through third parties. Trump interpreted this as a sign of openness. He should have interpreted it as a statement of procedure.

The Iranian approach has not changed since Rouhani, since Ahmadinejad, since the first Geneva agreement in 2013. Accept the frameworks for discussion imposed by the adversary in order to strip them of their substance. Agree to “technical” meetings to turn every step forward into a new starting point. Use every American concession as an acknowledgment of legitimacy rather than as a reciprocal commitment. Trump read “openness.” Khamenei had written “tactic.”

Trump has often been compared to Reagan, to Nixon, to presidents who spoke with their enemies and achieved results. The comparison is lazy. Nixon went to China because Mao wanted a counterweight to the USSR—a real, documented, strategic mutual interest. What could Khamenei possibly want from an agreement with Trump in 2026? I’m still searching for the answer.

The “force” rhetoric that shut all doors

Between February 2025 and April 2026, Trump called Iran a “condemned terrorist regime” (March 24, 2025), a “state that will no longer exist in a year if it continues on this path” (June 12, 2025), and the “cancer of the Middle East” (September 3, 2025). These statements were made before American audiences, recorded, broadcast, and archived. They now constitute constraints. An agreement signed with a “doomed terrorist regime” is politically defensible only if that agreement resembles an Iranian surrender. And an Iranian surrender is not on the table—it never has been.

Rhetoric has destroyed the space for compromise. This is the exact mechanism trapping Trump: the louder he spoke, the higher the bar for diplomatic “success” was raised, and the wider the gap grew between what Iran will accept and what Trump can sell as a victory. Words preceded strategy. Words have devoured strategy. All that remains are words, and the B-2s at Diego Garcia, and the concrete baking in the sun.

A Vice President Who Asks the Questions No One Wants to Hear

On April 16, 2026, during a National Security Council meeting—a partial transcript of which was leaked to Politico—JD Vance reportedly questioned the military leadership about the “day after” scenario: What would happen in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and the Strait of Hormuz within 72 hours of a U.S. strike? The generals presented three scenarios. The optimistic scenario predicted “limited and manageable” retaliation within 48 hours. The middle-of-the-road scenario predicted attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Hezbollah missile strikes on Israel. The pessimistic scenario was not disclosed. It was simply described as “difficult to manage politically” by an unidentified participant.

Vance, 41, the son of an Ohio family ravaged by the opioid crisis, elected on a platform of non-intervention, represents within the administration the faction that voted for Trump precisely to avoid “nation-building” wars in the Middle East. His constituents in Middletown, Ohio—the town he described in Hillbilly Elegy—have no opinion on 60% uranium enrichment. They have lost brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vance knows this. Trump knows it, too. And yet the machinery keeps turning.

JD Vance is asking the right question at the wrong time—that is, at a time when there is no longer a right answer. The question about “the day after” should have been asked in February 2025, before the letter to Khamenei, before the ultimatums, before the B-2s. Asking the right question too late is almost the same as not asking it at all.

The Isolation of the Hawks—and Their Names

Mike Waltz, a national security adviser, advocated for a strike “in the coming weeks” during at least two internal meetings in March 2026, according to three sources cited by The New York Times on April 20. Pete Hegseth, at the Pentagon, shares this position. On the other side, Marco Rubio and Vance advocate for the diplomatic route—not out of ideological conviction but out of political calculation. The divide is not between hawks and doves. It is between those who think war can be sold to the American people and those who are certain it cannot.

Trump, in the middle, makes the call. Or rather: Trump, in the middle, postpones the decision. Every NSC meeting ends with the same directive, according to several participants quoted anonymously: “We’ll continue negotiations, keep up the pressure, and see what happens.” ” “We’ll see” has become the U.S. policy toward Iran. It is the policy of a man who created a crisis without having decided where it was supposed to lead.

Riyadh, Abu Dhabi: Allies Quietly Packing Their Bags

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Iranian envoy Ali Bagheri-Kani in Jeddah on April 8, 2026, four days before negotiations began in Oman. The meeting lasted two hours. No public statement was issued. The normalization of Saudi-Iranian relations, which began in March 2023 under Chinese mediation, has radically altered the regional calculus. Riyadh does not want a war on its borders. Mohammed bin Salman wants his NEOM tourism projects, his investments in AI, and his economic diversification—none of these ambitions would survive a regional conflagration.

Abu Dhabi follows the same logic. The United Arab Emirates has direct commercial interests with Iran—estimated at $20 billion in annual trade flows according to the International Monetary Fund in 2025. Dubai is the main re-export hub for companies circumventing Iranian sanctions. This is no secret. It is a reality that everyone knows but no one officially acknowledges. America’s Gulf allies spent the year 2026 saying one thing to Washington and doing another in Tehran. And yet Washington continues to count on their support as if they had no interests of their own.

There is something dizzying about watching the United States adopt a confrontational stance toward Iran while its closest allies in the region sit down with Iranian emissaries. The map of the Middle East that Washington uses in its briefings is no longer the same as the one the region’s actors inhabit.

China is fanning the flames—and raking in the oil

China buys about 90% of the oil Iran exports despite U.S. sanctions—roughly 1.5 million barrels per day, according to Energy Information Administration estimates for the first quarter of 2026. These purchases are made at a discount—between $10 and $15 per barrel below the market price. For Beijing, the Iranian crisis is an economic windfall coupled with a strategic opportunity. Every hour Trump spends threatening Tehran is an hour China uses to consolidate its partnership with a regime that the West cannot normalize relations with.

Xi Jinping does not want war. He wants a stalemate. A permanent American stalemate in the Middle East ties up resources, attention, and military capabilities that Washington cannot deploy elsewhere—in the South China Sea, in Taiwan, or in the Sea of Japan. From Beijing’s perspective, the Iranian crisis is the best diplomatic investment of the decade at no cost. All it takes is to sell sanctioned oil, discreetly discourage any agreement, and watch.

The program continues—even after a strike

Iran has dispersed its nuclear facilities since 2003. Fordow is underground. Natanz was partially rebuilt after the 2021 sabotage. Satellite facilities exist in Isfahan, Arak, and Bushehr. A U.S. strike would destroy the known facilities. The unknown facilities—those that the Mossad and the CIA assess but cannot confirm—would survive. The program would survive. In a different form, in other caverns, with other teams, fueled by Iranian national anger that a U.S. strike would transform into political fuel for decades to come.

This is not a pacifist argument. It is a cold, strategic argument. Analysts who advocate for a strike do not deny this problem—they are betting that a twelve- to eighteen-month delay will be enough to shift the political landscape in Iran, allowing a weakened regime to collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions. It is a gamble. Not a certainty. The difference between a gamble and a certainty is not measured in NSC meetings. It is measured in the bodies of American soldiers repatriated in coffins draped with the Stars and Stripes.

What the history of “surgical” strikes teaches us is that they are rarely surgical and never definitive. They create martyrs, narratives of resistance, and generations of avengers. Saddam Hussein survived Desert Storm politically for twelve years. Can we afford twelve years of an Islamic Republic strengthened by the sense of having survived America?

The bomb as a tool for survival, not as a weapon of war

The lesson from North Korea has never been properly learned in Washington. Kim Jong-un conducted his first nuclear test in October 2006. Since that day, no U.S. president has seriously considered a military strike on Pyongyang. The bomb did not make Kim more dangerous to his neighbors—it made him untouchable. This is precisely what Khamenei has been observing for the past twenty years. The Iranian bomb would not be an offensive weapon. It would be an insurance policy. A guarantee of the regime’s survival in the face of the calls for regime change that Washington has been making since 1979.

This logic is perfectly rational. It is also completely impervious to Trump’s threats. You don’t threaten someone with a strike to prevent them from protecting themselves against a strike. The circularity is complete. The wall is real. And Trump is racing toward it at increasing speed, surrounded by advisors who cannot agree on the direction, the speed, or what to do once the wall is reached.

Hezbollah: 150,000 Missiles Aimed at Northern Israel

According to estimates by the Israeli General Staff published in the January 2026 annual national security report, Hezbollah possesses between 150,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles of various ranges, including several thousand capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Haifa. The 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah degraded these capabilities without destroying them. Weapons stockpiles have since been replenished from northern Lebanon via land routes through Syria. A U.S. strike on Iran would almost automatically trigger an order from Tehran to Hezbollah to open a second front.

Two million people live in northern Israel. Naama, 34, a mother of two children aged 4 and 7, has lived in Haifa her entire life. She returned after the 2024 evacuation. She repainted the children’s room sky blue. The bunk bed is new. The plaster in the shelter has been redone. She says she won’t leave a second time. No one in the Oval Offices and meeting rooms of Oman and Washington talks about Naama. No one counts the times she has watched her children sleep while mentally calculating the time it would take to get down to the shelter.

When people talk about “regional escalation,” they’re talking about Naama. They’re talking about Corporal Tyler Morrison in Ain al-Assad. They’re talking about nineteen-year-old Iranian conscripts in Tehran who don’t yet know they’re pawns on a chessboard that old, rich men are moving from palaces and air-conditioned negotiating rooms.

Iraq: A Battleground for a Proxy War That Everyone Pretends to Ignore

Since January 2026, pro-Iranian Iraqi factions—Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq—have ceased their attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq in exchange for a tacit commitment from Washington not to target their commanders. This informal ceasefire is fragile. It holds as long as Trump does not strike Iran. If the B-2s from Diego Garcia take off, the Iraqi factions will resume their operations within hours of the announcement. That is what their commanders have said—publicly, in Arabic, on Iraqi television channels that Washington monitors but whose statements it translates only for internal reports.

Iraq itself is in an untenable position. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani leads a government that depends on the United States for security and on Iran for domestic policy. A U.S.-Iranian war would turn Iraq into a direct battleground. Baghdad would burn. Not metaphorically. Shiite neighborhoods, embassies, military bases. Twenty years after the 2003 invasion, the United States would find itself defending positions in Iraq against militias funded by the very country it had just struck. The wheel turns. It has turned before. It would turn again.

60%: The Threshold That Changes Everything

According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency published on April 18, 2026, Iran is currently enriching uranium to 60%. The military threshold is 90%. The technical gap between 60% and 90% can be bridged in a matter of weeks using the IR-6 centrifuges Iran has at Fordow. Every day of negotiations in Oman is a day of centrifugation at Fordow. The Iranians know this. The Americans know this. The two delegations continue to shake hands in Muscat. The stockpile of 60% enriched uranium reached 4,000 kilograms in January 2026, according to the IAEA—enough, in theory, to produce fissile material for several devices if further enriched.

Meanwhile, IAEA inspectors were partially expelled from Natanz in December 2025. The agency is monitoring 30% less than it was a year earlier. What the IAEA cannot see, the CIA cannot certify. What the CIA cannot certify, Trump cannot use as a casus belli before Congress. Iran’s opacity is a weapon as effective as its missiles. It presents America with an impossible choice: strike based on incomplete data (something everyone promised never to do again after the 2003 Iraq War) or wait for complete data that may never arrive.

4,000 kilograms at 60%. That’s a number. A cold, hard number. A number that, in twenty or thirty years—if this crisis ends badly—will be the one historians cite as the moment when everything changed. 4,000 kilograms. And the negotiators shake hands in Muscat.

Congress: Neither for nor against, but actively passive

No resolution authorizing the use of force against Iran has been submitted to the U.S. Congress since the crisis began. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 gives the president 60 days to conduct military operations without congressional authorization—but requires prior notification. Trump did not notify Congress. He did not seek authorization. He simply deployed bombers and issued ultimatums. Republican senators stand by and watch. Democratic senators protest half-heartedly. No one is pushing for a vote.

Mitch McConnell, 84, before his retirement from the Senate in January 2025, had warned that “any military action against Iran without a solid legal basis would be politically and legally catastrophic.” His successors have taken that warning to heart. They have chosen silence. The U.S. Congress’s silence on matters of war is itself a decision. It is the decision to let one man alone manage a crisis of potentially massive destruction—without a framework, without a mandate, and without shared responsibility. If it goes well, everyone was there. If it goes wrong, it was Trump.

What Will Happen If Nothing Changes by October 2026

The baseline scenario—which nonproliferation experts at the Arms Control Association describe as the most likely as of April 21, 2026—is that negotiations in Oman continue without tangible results until the summer. Iran crosses the 90% enrichment threshold in June or July. Trump is faced with the choice he himself has created: strike before the midterms or admit the failure of his “maximum pressure” strategy. A third option exists—accepting a minimal, cosmetic agreement that Tehran will call a victory and that Trump will call a victory as well. The centrifuges keep spinning. Inspectors remain partially barred from access. Fissile material is accumulating. And in four or five years, another U.S. president will inherit the same crisis, but with an Iran that is technically closer to the bomb.

And yet it is this third option—the facade agreement—that increasingly appears to be the emergency exit both sides are quietly considering. An agreement on a “temporary freeze on 60% enrichment,” verifiable for six months, in exchange for a partial lifting of certain economic sanctions. Not the JCPOA. Not an Iranian capitulation. A band-aid on an open wound. Something marketable to both Fox News and the Iranian state media simultaneously. Something that pushes the problem back a few years. Something that, from a distance, resembles diplomacy.

I don’t know if Trump will strike Iran. No one knows—probably not even Trump himself. What I do know is that every possible scenario—the strike, the sham agreement, the status quo—leaves the world in a more dangerous state than before. This isn’t pessimism. It’s a description of a trap that someone has been building, brick by brick, ultimatum by ultimatum, since January 2025.

The wall is real

The phrase uttered by the anonymous former adviser on April 20, 2026—"he’s heading for the wall"—is not a political metaphor. It is a physical description of a mechanical process. A man running. A wall. The impossibility of stopping, the impossibility of backing down without losing face, the impossibility of moving forward without destroying himself. The wall is called Iran. It is called 85 million people, forty-five years of a regime that has survived everything, a nuclear program scattered throughout underground caverns, militias in five countries, and an 85-year-old Supreme Leader who has decided that the death of his regime is less unbearable to him than capitulating to America.

The B-2s are still on the tarmac at Diego Garcia. The concrete is still baking under the Indian Ocean sun. The mechanics are still waiting. And somewhere in Haifa, Naama has repainted her children’s bedroom sky blue, and she stares at the ceiling at night, calculating the descent time to the shelter, and she doesn’t yet know if that calculation will soon become reality or if she can still allow herself to forget it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist