The week began with President Donald Trump saber-rattling like we’ve never seen before. He threatened apparent war crimes and to end a “whole civilization” if Iran didn’t meet his demands.
It is ending with Trump looking like he’s losing leverage, out of ideas — and increasingly anxious for an offramp.
The economic news Friday was especially grim for Trump’s ability to keep prosecuting this war and drive a hard bargain with Iran in upcoming negotiations. Let’s briefly recap:
- The oil shock created by the ongoing logjam in the Strait of Hormuz pushed inflation up 0.9% in March alone, which was the highest one-month jump in nearly four years.
- Inflation is now at 3.3% on an annualized basis, which is the highest rate since Trump became president.
- The price of gasoline rose 21.2% in March, which was a record.
- The much-watched University of Michigan consumer sentiment index — a measure of how confident Americans are in the economy — just hit a record low, in data stretching back to 1952.
And perhaps most troubling for Trump, this could just be the beginning. As CNN’s David Goldman notes, the oil shock means inflation is likely to keep rising for months, even if the war is brought to a quick end and the Strait of Hormuz is reopened (if the war continues and the strait doesn’t open in the next several weeks, this could get much uglier).
That means a gloomy economic outlook could come dangerously close to the November election, when Republicans already face an uphill battle to keep control of the House.
Undoubtedly, that creates pressure on Trump to cut a deal to end the war and reopen the strait. And that reduces his leverage in Iran negotiations — a reality that’s been reflected by Trump’s recent behavior.
The ceasefire announcement Tuesday spurred plenty of debate about whether Trump had backed down — or, in the parlance of the day, TACO’d. He had set a deadline for 8 p.m. ET for Iran to agree to a deal and reopen the strait; otherwise, he was supposedly going to attack Iranian infrastructure in ways that, as Trump put it, would end a civilization.
It’s looking more and more like the ceasefire was rather hastily assembled in the name of avoiding making good on that promise.
For one, the two sides can’t even seem to agree on the terms of the ceasefire. They’ve offered very different versions of events on some of the central issues. That includes what Iranian 10-point plan is supposed to guide the negotiations, whether Iran gets temporary control of the strait and if Israel stopping its strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon were part of the deal.
In the aftermath, Trump and his team have appeared more anxious than Iran is to cut a deal — willing to give Iran more leeway on two major problems, as Tehran officials repeatedly threaten to walk away.
One is that Israel kept hitting Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Iran and Pakistan say violates the ceasefire (the US and Israel dispute this). Iran is the primary sponsor of Hezbollah, providing the terrorist group with substantial financial and military assistance.
Second is that the Strait of Hormuz is decidedly not very open – despite Trump’s having said the ceasefire was contingent on “the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.”
But the two sides have responded to these apparent stumbling blocks in very different ways.
On Lebanon, the Trump administration has tried to massage the issue away. Vice President JD Vance suggested the dispute over whether those continued attacks were violating the ceasefire was a mere “misunderstanding.” And after Iran demanded that Israel back down in Lebanon, Trump personally appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to smooth things over.
There’s more evidence that Iran has directly flouted the terms of the ceasefire when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz. Yet the Trump administration’s tone on the issue has been fairly forgiving at times and certainly hasn’t approached the tenor of the president’s threats earlier this week.
The day after the ceasefire was announced, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about nearly nonexistent traffic through the strait. She replied that “privately” they had seen an “uptick” and that it would “take time” for ships to begin crossing the waterway in large numbers again.
By Thursday, Trump was starting to get frustrated, saying on social media that Iran was “doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz.” But even that allows that maybe Iran is just failing rather than flouting the deal.
Trump added Friday that the Iranians “have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”
But if Iran has no cards, the Trump administration has a funny way of showing it.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the situation right now is that Iran has repeatedly threatened to walk away from the negotiating table in ways the Trump administration has not.
On Friday, the administration was still sending Vance to Pakistan for in-person negotiations, despite Iran’s apparent noncompliance in the Strait of Hormuz. While Vance was aboard Air Force Two, the Iranian representative, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said in a statement on X that the Lebanon situation and another issue must be solved “before negotiations begin.”
The combined picture is that one side (Trump) appears a lot more anxious to negotiate a deal than the other side (Iran) does. This despite Trump initially having said the war would only end with Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”
It makes sense in context.
Iran has surely taken a beating militarily. But economically, its ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz gives the country an upper hand.
In fact, setting the precedent of locking down the strait is theoretically a huge deterrent for future attacks against the country. Strategically, Tehran officials have good reason to dig in.
By contrast, this war was always on the clock in the United States. The American people never had much interest in it in the first place (in part because Trump never bothered to make the case for it or build a base of support). And Americans have shown little interest in Trump’s repeated demands that they embrace short-term pain for long-term gain.
The meager support for the war has only lessened as negative economic news compounds. And Republicans are increasingly worried about the fallout costing them dearly in the 2026 midterms.
That doesn’t mean Trump will fold — and there are plenty of reasons this could drag on. He might ultimately feel compelled to drive a hard bargain. At the top of that list is his relationship with Israel, which won’t want to let an antagonistic regional power get off easy.
But as US officials head to Pakistan for negotiations, it doesn’t look like Trump’s extraordinary threats bought him the leverage he wanted.
