Six months. More than $37.5 billion. Iranian officials put their own losses at $270 billion. Those are the figures hanging over the U.S.-Israel war on Iran as it reaches its half-year mark, and President Donald Trump says he is “not in a hurry” to end it.
Trump once called the war a “little excursion” that would last weeks. Now he says he does not want Iran back at the table. “We don’t want to speak to them. We’re not looking to meet or anything,” he told reporters on Thursday. In his telling, Iran’s leaders are failing: “They’re not paying their troops. They’re in deep trouble. They have very little capacity.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, he said he had “no time schedule at all.”
From bombs to sanctions
This week the administration said it would lean on economic pressure instead of military action, with threats against any country or company that keeps doing business with Tehran. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled the campaign, which the White House calls “Operation Economic Outcast.” So far it has produced warnings, not secondary sanctions. Bessent said countries should get a chance to move away from Iran first, and he acknowledged the plan carries economic risk for the United States as well.
On Friday the Treasury Department said it was taking steps that could eventually cut Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, off from the U.S. financial system. It accused the bank of acting as an economic lifeline for Tehran’s leadership. China, Iran’s biggest trade partner and oil buyer, said it opposes “illegal unilateral sanctions.” Asked why he was not already sanctioning Chinese banks, Trump said: “Who said I’m not? You don’t know if I’m doing it.”
The shift comes as the administration weighs smaller munitions stockpiles, which has raised concern about U.S. readiness elsewhere.
The Strait of Hormuz count
Trump says the strait is open and that 24 vessels passed through on Wednesday. Before the war, about 130 vessels crossed every day. He also says the U.S. naval blockade is stopping Iranian oil from reaching market. “We have control and we have the blockade,” he said. “Iran is not getting anything. Nothing is going through.”
Aarathi Krishnan, a geopolitical risk analyst at RAKSHA Intelligence Future, agrees the strikes and decades of sanctions have hurt Iran. She doubts more pressure will get Trump the outcome he wants. Iran sells discounted oil through opaque shipping and financial networks, she said, and “this administration has completely underestimated the Iranian resolve.”
In the run-up to the war, the International Monetary Fund said Iran’s economy was mired in surging inflation, and World Bank data show income per person falling from about $8,000 in 2012 to $5,000 in 2024.
Qatar and Pakistan are still pushing for a diplomatic exit. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, was in Tehran on Thursday to discuss an Iran-Oman plan to boost traffic through the strait. Trump has shown little interest in a preliminary deal from June, which fell apart within weeks after Iran began attacking ships.
Trump spent Friday in Houston honoring the Artemis II crew. Days earlier he shared an AI-generated image headed “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED 2026.”
Sources
- Six months into Iran war, Donald Trump says he’s in no hurry to end it
- Trump says he’s ‘not in a hurry’ to end Iran war
