The war has cost the United States more than $37.5 billion. That is the figure that matters as the US-Israel campaign against Iran reached its six-month mark on Friday, August 28, the Associated Press reported, and it sits awkwardly beside what President Donald Trump once promised: a “little excursion” that would last a matter of weeks.
It did not. Trump now says he is “not in a hurry” to bring Iran back to the table, and the same war that has drained the Treasury has also hurt his standing with voters before the November elections.
From bombs to sanctions
This week the administration said its focus would shift from military action to economic pressure. The plan is to threaten any country or company that keeps doing business with Tehran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled the effort, which the White House calls “Operation Economic Outcast,” but so far he has issued only warnings. No secondary sanctions have been announced.
There is a second reason for the pivot. After months of fighting, US munitions stockpiles are running low, and officials worry that a long war could weaken American readiness elsewhere in the world.
China, Iran’s largest trade partner and oil buyer, answered by opposing what it called “illegal unilateral sanctions.” Asked on Thursday why he had not already targeted Chinese banks, Trump gave nothing away. “Who said I’m not? You don’t know if I’m doing it,” he said. “I don’t have to announce everything, do I?”
Trump’s read of the war
Trump insists the combination of bombs and blockade has already crippled Iran. “They’re not paying their troops. They’re in deep trouble. They have very little capacity,” he told reporters Thursday. On talks, he was blunt: “We’re not looking to meet or anything.”
He also posted an AI-generated image this week captioned “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED 2026.” The picture showed Trump above smaller portraits of George W. Bush and the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died in an Israeli strike in the war’s opening salvos. The echo is hard to miss. Bush was widely mocked for a 2003 “Mission Accomplished” banner that came to stand for a premature victory declaration in Iraq, a war that ran nearly nine more years.
Trump has pushed back on any comparison with Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that no American troops have deployed into Iran. He campaigned on keeping the military out of “endless wars.”
Hormuz and the stalled diplomacy
Iran’s leverage is the Strait of Hormuz. Trump again said Thursday that the strait is open and that 24 vessels passed through the day before. Before the war, roughly 130 vessels made the transit every day. Iranian officials put the country’s own damage, direct and indirect, at $270 billion.
Qatar and Pakistan keep pressing both sides for an off-ramp. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, was in Tehran on Thursday to discuss an Iran-Oman plan to increase traffic through the strait. Trump has shown little appetite for the preliminary deal struck in June, which aimed to reopen the waterway and start nuclear talks. That agreement collapsed within weeks once Iran began attacking ships.
“We have control and we have the blockade,” Trump said. “Iran is not getting anything. Nothing is going through.”
Analysts are split on whether the squeeze will work. Aarathi Krishnan of RAKSHA Intelligence Future said Iran has spent decades adapting to sanctions and that “this administration has completely underestimated the Iranian resolve.” Richard Goldberg, a former National Security Council adviser on Iran now at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, takes the opposite view: if Washington follows through, he said, Iran is in “uncharted waters.”
