Trump-Iran war at six months: goals shift, Hormuz remains shut, no end in sight

Six months after President Donald Trump launched the war with Iran in late February, there is still no clear way out, despite his repeated claims that the war has been won or that a deal is close. Trump had initially said the conflict would last four to five weeks, but a June memorandum of understanding meant to help end it has since fallen away.

As the conflict has stretched on, the US has seen stockpiles of key weapons diminish and has shifted more towards economic pressure on Iran rather than fresh strikes. The war’s aims have also changed, with reopening the Strait of Hormuz now a central goal, even though it was not among Trump’s original objectives.

The strait had been a vital shipping route through which about 20% of the world’s oil passed. Since the war began, it has been largely closed after Iran turned it into a chokepoint for the global economy, pushing up prices of fuel and fertiliser and adding economic and political pressure in the US.

The US has had tactical success in damaging Iran’s military capabilities, but several objectives set out by Trump at the start of the war remain unmet, while others have shifted over time.

On Iran’s nuclear programme, Trump said last June that the US had “obliterated” it. But when the war began, his aides had argued that Iran was only weeks away from developing a bomb. One of the main unresolved questions is what will happen to about 970 pounds, or 440 kilograms, of enriched uranium that Tehran could potentially use for a weapon. The material is believed to be buried under three sites bombed by the US and Israel last year.

In a social media post on May 29, Trump said the uranium would be retrieved by the US “in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED”. Iran has not said whether it would agree. Experts have said that, without Iran’s permission, taking it would be a dangerous mission that would require a sizable deployment of US troops into the country.

Officials said Tehran reaffirmed in the June memorandum of understanding that it would not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The deal also called for Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. But many other details were left for future talks, and it is unclear how much progress was made before negotiations quickly broke down.

On the Strait of Hormuz, Trump has said a proposed deal with Iran would reopen the waterway and lead the US to end its blockade of Tehran’s ports. At other times, he has suggested the strait would somehow become American territory and that the US could charge a toll on passing ships.

Trump has also repeatedly said the strait is open. In an interview on Wednesday on conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s radio show, he said: “It’s a functioning strait. Yes, every once in a while, there’ll be a drone or a rocket or something shot, but it is a very functioning strait.”

Another stated objective was to “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground”. In late March, Trump said Iran’s missiles were “mostly decimated” and that 90% of its missiles and launchers had been knocked out. By mid-May, he gave a lower estimate, saying 82% of Iran’s missiles were gone.

Iran, however, has continued to show that it can launch attacks in the region, including drone strikes on ships passing through the strait. As recently as July, the US military was still striking Iranian targets. US Central Command said those attacks were aimed at “Iranian military command centres, air defence and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and communications networks”.

The destruction of Iran’s defence industrial base was sometimes presented early in the war as a separate objective, though it later appeared less often in official messaging. US Central Command has said its targets included weapons production facilities and missile and drone manufacturing sites. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in early June that Iran had suffered “massive destruction” to its defence industrial base and “80 to 90% of attrition. It will take years for them to rebuild it.”

On Iran’s navy and air force, the US and Israel quickly established air superiority over Iran and operated there with little resistance. Rubio told lawmakers that Iran still has drone capabilities, but no longer has the ability to carry out swarm attacks as it did at the start of the war. He also said Iran no longer has a navy and now relies on small boats fitted with machine guns that harass ships and sometimes drop mines in the water. Trump said on Wednesday that Iran’s navy and air force are “totally gone”.

Trump later added another goal in a March social media post: “Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others.” The US keeps thousands of troops at bases and other sites in the region, but Trump has not made clear how far he is prepared to go in the long term to defend those allies.

In June, after the US said Iran had fired missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain, Washington responded with strikes on Iran. But Oman has stood apart from the other allies mentioned by Trump. It has instead faced his anger over the deal it was negotiating with Iran on the Strait of Hormuz. In mid-August, Trump threatened in an interview that the US would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way”, using an expletive for emphasis.

Cutting off support for Iranian proxy groups was also repeatedly described by Trump and his administration in March as a key objective. Over time, officials have offered fewer updates on that goal, which Trump described as ensuring that “the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces” and “ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders”.

Early in the conflict, the US struck Iranian-aligned militia groups in Iraq. But the biggest focus has been Israel’s war in Lebanon against the Iran-backed Hezbollah. Iran has said that the fighting in Lebanon must stop as part of any deal with the US. Israel and the Lebanese government later announced a US-mediated agreement under which Israeli forces would leave southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah’s disarmament. An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment on the record, described that as a “huge step”. Hezbollah, however, has refused direct talks, and its leader has said the group will not disarm.

Six months into the war, the US says it has badly damaged Iran’s military strength, but several of the aims set out at the start remain unresolved. With the June understanding no longer in play and the conflict’s goals continuing to shift, there is still no clear end in sight.

With PTI Inputs