“I suggested a little bit of a ceasefire, and I think he might do that,” President Donald Trump told reporters this week after a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “There’s so many people being killed, it’s so ridiculous.”

Putin has proposed “little” ceasefires before, but more than four years since its full-scale invasion, he shows little sign that he’s planning on ending the war that has killed nearly half a million people.

The war in Ukraine, and US diplomatic efforts to negotiate a ceasefire, have both been getting far less attention in the US in recent weeks, with the focus firmly on the crisis in the Middle East. It appeared initially that Russia might end up as the unexpected beneficiary of the Iran conflict, with global oil prices spiking, the United States lifting sanctions on some Russian energy exports, and crucial US munitions, including all-important missile interceptors, diverted from Europe to the Middle East.

But if Russia is reaping a windfall, you wouldn’t know it from events on the battlefield in recent weeks. The Russians made almost no territorial gains in March, and may have even lost a small amount of territory since mid-March, despite launching a widely anticipated spring-summer offensive. The Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, assesses that Russia is unlikely to be able to take Ukraine’s “fortress belt,” the heavily fortified Ukrainian-held portion of the eastern Donbas region that has become one of Russia’s central war aims. Ukraine estimated Russia’s casualties at a record 35,351 per month in March, 96 percent of them caused by drones. 

Russia continued to bombard Ukrainian cities throughout the cold winter months, but Ukraine has gotten better at defending against these attacks, with its air defense systems taking down a record 33,000 drones in March, according to the Ukrainian government. The Ukrainians have become more effective at launching long-range strikes deep into Russia as well. Lately, their attacks have focused on preventing Russia from reaping an energy windfall from the Iran war: In late March, Reuters estimated that 40 percent of Russia’s oil export capacity had been taken offline by Ukrainian strikes on pipelines, ports, and refineries.  

Though Ukraine still relies on the fickle US government for key systems — like Patriot interceptors as well as targeting intelligence — European countries are now providing most of the country’s military aid, and Ukraine’s indigenous capacities are growing as well. In fact, the expertise Ukraine has acquired in producing drones and coordinating multilayered air defense allowed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ink a series of lucrative defense deals in recent weeks with several countries in the Persian Gulf and Europe. As Trump might put it, after years of heavy dependence on foreign defense aid, Ukraine now has “cards” of its own to play. 

Certainly after years of slow but relentless Russian advance, which gave ammunition to critics of Ukraine aid who argued the country’s defeat was inevitable, there’s some more confidence from Ukrainian leaders and their supporters these days. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha recently argued that because of its advances in drones and air defense, Ukraine’s frontline position is now the “strongest” it’s been in a year. Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general and prominent military commentator, recently argued that “The strategic scales are beginning to tip in Ukraine’s favor.”

It’s probably too soon to say Ukraine is winning the war, but at the very least, it doesn’t appear to be losing. 

Drone swarms and stalemate  

According to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russian forces have advanced an average of 15 to 70 meters per day since 2024, slower than almost any military offensive in the past century, and those gains come at a steep cost. Ukrainian figures suggest that more than 300 Russian troops are now killed or injured for every kilometer captured.

“The Russians have sustained enormous casualties — they’re losing quite a few soldiers and quite a bit of equipment, and the Ukraine line is not really in danger of breaking,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, an Austrian military analyst who frequently visits the front lines, who adds that “the Russian strategy remains ‘attrition, attrition, attrition.’” 

Looking at the war in terms of territory held can be misleading. Much of the “front line” in Ukraine is now a sparsely populated no-man’s land, dominated by drones. The manpower and recruiting problems on both sides, along with the fact that drone surveillance has taken away the element of surprise, has made it extremely difficult to mount large-scale attacks. (For humans at least: Zelenskyy recently claimed that for the first time a Russian enemy position had been entirely captured by robotic systems and drones, without any human soldiers.)

It’s possible this trend could change in the coming months: Winter tends to favor defense because the lack of foliage makes it hard to hide, and infrared sensors work better when the ground is colder. But for the moment, neither side appears able to make major advances, and when they do — such as when Russia seized the town of Pokrovsk after months of heavy fighting in December — they’re unable to translate it into much strategic momentum. 

“The advances we’re seeing aren’t what will change the future of the war,” said Olga Oliker, director for European Security at Crisis Group. “Both sides are still fighting in the expectation that the other will break politically.”

Who will break first?

In what is probably a sign that not all is going according to plan, the Kremlin recently announced that it is dramatically scaling back this year’s May 9 “Victory Day” parade, the annual commemoration of victory over Nazi Germany that doubles as a chance to display Russia’s military might. For the first time in decades, there will be no military hardware on display at the parade this year — perhaps a sign that the tanks that usually rumble through Red Square are needed on the front lines, or that there are concerns about Ukrainian strikes. The Russian government has also been throttling the country’s internet service, perhaps a sign of insecurity, prompting a rare wave of publicly voiced discontent. Putin himself has been in even greater isolation than normal due to fears of assassination. 

But public opposition to the “special military operation” itself is still rare, and despite the economic headwinds, there remains little sign that Putin believes the war is unwinnable or that he’s inclined to wind it down. 

On the Ukrainian side, recruiting and manpower remain concerns, as they have been since early in the war. The government recently faced an outcry and promised reforms after photos circulated showing emaciated troops on the front lines who had been on rotation and under fire for months. But fears that Russia would eventually roll over Ukraine simply by virtue of its larger population have faded. 

“I think everything is proving more resilient than people anticipated,” said Jeffrey Edmonds, a former Pentagon staffer, now a senior analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses. “The Russian economy is proving more resilient; Ukrainian critical infrastructure, although it’s really taken a shot of the face, has proved more resilient; and I think that the front lines have proved more solid than people anticipated.”

Coupled with that resilience, US-led efforts to mediate a ceasefire have effectively been put on hold as US envoy Steve Witkoff and other senior US diplomats have been focused on Iran. Ukrainian leaders still publicly support calls for a ceasefire, but hopes are fading that new talks could actually deliver one. 

For the moment, fears that Ukraine’s slow, grinding defeat was inevitable seem to have been premature: It’s in a better position today that many would have anticipated, even a few months ago. But it’s also increasingly hard to see how this uniquely deadly and destructive war will end. 

“We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” President Donald Trump mused earlier this month during remarks about the war in Iran, one of a number of times in recent weeks that he has implied Cuba will be “next” on the administration’s regime change agenda. 

The administration amped up its “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba in January, shortly after the capture of Venezuelan president and key Cuban ally Nicolas Maduro, severely restricting oil imports to the island as it was already suffering from repeated nationwide blackouts. Now the Pentagon is preparing a range of military options for taking action on the island. Senate Democrats are alarmed enough by the saber-rattling that they’ve sponsored legislation to block military action against the nation. 

Amid the threats, talks are ongoing as well. A US State Department delegation visited Havana earlier this month, the first time a US government aircraft had touched down in Cuba since the short-lived rapprochement under the Obama administration. The American delegation brought a list of demands including economic reforms, the release of political prisoners, compensation for US residents and corporations whose properties were seized in the Cuban revolution, and allowing Starlink internet connectivity on the island. 

Ever since Fidel Castro took power in 1959, every US president has struggled with the question of what to do about the regime Castro founded 90 miles off the US coast. Fresh off decapitation operations in Venezuela and Iran, Trump seems confident that he’s the one who can solve the problem. 

“All my life I’ve been hearing about the United States and Cuba: When will the United States do it? I do believe I’ll be the honor, having the honor of taking Cuba.” he has said.

But what does “taking” Cuba actually mean? The dream for opponents of the regime in both Cuba and the United States is the removal of the communist regime followed by the lifting of the US embargo. But it’s probably more likely to be something short of that. 

This administration seems to have a capacious understanding of the concept of “regime change” that does not appear to imply regime removal. The US has left Maduro’s former Vice President Delcy Rodriguez in power in Venezuela under implied threat of further military action if she steps out of line. After the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and scores of other top officials in Iran, Trump has said the country’s new government is “less radical and much more reasonable,” though unlike Rodriguez, they seem far less amenable to his demands.    

So how might Trump actually “change” the Cuban government, and what would that mean for the Cuban people? 

Will the Venezuela model work in Cuba? 

Cuba has been under a US embargo since the early 1960s, but in Trump’s second term, the pressure campaign against the island has significantly escalated. In early January, after Maduro’s ouster, the US cut off supplies of oil to Cuba from Venezuela, which had previously been its main supplier. Later that month, Trump threatened tariffs against any country supplying oil to the island, prompting countries like Mexico to halt shipments. This is the closest thing to an outright “blockade” of the island since the 1962 missile crisis — exacerbating the nation’s already dire economic situation. Food prices have been rising, trash has been piling up on the streets, and even Cuba’s once vaunted health system is on the verge of collapse, with hospitals canceling surgeries and struggling to keep ventilators running because of power cuts. 

“This is a different level of desperation,” said Chris Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House. But the Cuban regime has weathered economic crises before, notably the “special period” in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its longtime patron. Despite Trump’s suggestions that the Cuban regime might simply collapse on its own, there’s little evidence that economic pressure alone would cause that to happen.

“What’s not different is the Cuban regime’s almost genetic need to survive and defend itself, and its resistance to anything that could potentially weaken its all-consuming power,” Sabatini added. “They’ve always been willing to just let their people suffer as long as they remain in power.”

There are in fact some signs that the Trump administration is easing up on the oil restrictions. The US allowed a Russian tanker carrying 100,000 tons of crude to reach Cuba at the end of March. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has also indicated her country may restart shipments.

If Cuba’s current leaders won’t accede to Trump’s demands, no matter how much economic pressure is applied, could they be replaced by new ones? Trump may be hoping for a repeat of the Venezuela scenario in which an anti-American leader was replaced by a more pliant one, but that may not be an option in this case. Even if current President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who became communist Cuba’s first non-Castro president in 2021, could be forced into exile, it’s not clear if there’s a more cooperative alternative waiting in the wings. 

“The Venezuelan government was a very different beast,” said Michael Bustamante, a professor of Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami. Whereas the Venezuelan government was splintered into fiefdoms and camps, some of which had long pushed for better relations with the US, the Cuban leadership is much more ideological and unified. “There’s no one who has a consistent track record of having stood for economic liberalization, even in a modest way.”

The State Department has reportedly been negotiating with former Cuban leader Raul Castro’s 41-year-old grandson, also named Raul. “El Cangrejo,” or “the crab,” is seen as relatively business-friendly as well as a conduit to his 94-year-old grandfather, who is officially retired but still widely seen as influential. But “Raulito” is generally seen by experts as a useful go-between rather than a potential new leader. 

In any event, cutting a deal with Cuba that leaves a member of the Castro family in power would violate the spirit if not the letter of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which prohibits the lifting of the embargo on Cuba as long as a government that includes either Fidel or Raul is still in place. 

Do Cubans want American intervention?

Even as the administration’s plans for Cuba have remained somewhat unclear, Trump’s attention to the island has raised hopes among opponents of the Castro regime. Graffitied messages reading “Viva Trump” and “Make Cuba Great Again” have been appearing more often, Boris González Arenas, a prominent journalist and human rights activist in Havana, told Vox.

González Arenas cautioned against trying to analyze Cuban politics on a traditional right-left spectrum. The support for Trump, he said, is because “people perceive that pressure from the president of the United States could change the government in Cuba, and they know that the government is the cause of their situation — of the famine, the lack of medicine. They don’t have access to elections.”

He believes the talks would produce change in the Cuban regime only if they are accompanied by the credible threat of military force. “If Castroist leaders don’t feel that their fate, properties, and even lives, are in real danger, they are going to engage in negotiations without any compromises and real transformations.”

González Arenas said he would support military intervention “only to give sovereignty back to the Cuban people” rather than simply to replace a Castroist dictatorship with a pro-American one. “Cuba is not a country incapable of self-governance; Cuba is a nation kidnapped by a criminal group,” he added. 

In Marco we trust?

In some ways, Cuba seems like a strange target for Trump. Unlike Venezuela, it does not sit atop the world’s largest oil reserves. Unlike Iran, it does not have a nuclear weapons program. While it has long supported other left-wing governments and paramilitary groups in Latin America, it’s hard to argue that it poses an imminent national security threat to the US today. And democracy promotion has never been a major priority for this administration, even in the countries where it has sought to topple regimes. 

Trump may be enticed by the notion of solving a problem that has bedeviled his 12 predecessors in office, but if there’s a driving force behind the current US pressure campaign, it’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Though Rubio has played a conspicuously low-profile role in managing the crisis in Iran, the secretary of state — whose parents were born in Cuba — has long prioritized US efforts to topple the Cuban government, was a leading critic of Obama’s efforts to normalize relations with the Castro regime, and has been the face of this administration’s more assertive posture toward Latin America. 

“The only person in office today, in the whole political landscape in the United States, who would care enough to make Cuba a priority for the United States is Marco Rubio,” said Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the US-based Cuba Study Group. “This makes him both the chief threat, but also the chief opportunity that Cuba is facing.”

He’s an “opportunity” for Cuban leaders because he may be the only person in the United States capable of getting the more than 60-year-old embargo lifted. Rubio has left open the possibility of lifting the embargo in a situation where there were “new people in charge” and major economic reform. But he’s also said Cuba “doesn’t have to change all at once…everyone is mature and realistic here,” suggesting that something short of a complete toppling of the communist government would be acceptable in the near term. 

Depending on what it means in practice, that would be a tough pill to swallow for opponents of the regime on the island, Cuban American exiles, and members of Congress who would have to lift the embargo. It might also be tough to square with the Helms-Burton Act, which sets the holding of free elections and the dismantlement of Cuba’s state security department as conditions for lifting the embargo. 

But in a “Nixon-to-China”-like situation, Rubio’s Cuba hawk bona fides may give him unique credibility for selling a deal both on Capitol Hill and in Miami.  

“It would be a hard sell, but I also think the Cuban American community doesn’t really have any other options,” said the University of Miami’s Bustamante. “‘In Marco we trust’ is sort of the vibe.”

But there won’t be any deal for Rubio to sell if the Cuban government is unwilling to make major compromises. And as the Iran crisis drags on without a resolution in sight, it’s also not clear how much Rubio’s boss will actually prioritize yet another regime change project. 

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

It’s been just over eight weeks since the US and Israel started a war with Iran for contradictory and incoherent reasons. Virtually nothing about the conflict — except maybe its stakes — has gotten clearer since then, and there’s still no end in sight: US-Iran talks, set to take place in Pakistan over the weekend, fell apart on Saturday. In a social media post, President Donald Trump said of Iran that “Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none!”

I figured some of you might have questions, so Vox’s senior foreign policy correspondent, Joshua Keating, is stopping by to field a few reader-submitted questions about the Iran conflict.

Here’s what you wanted to know, and what Josh had to say:

I continue to hear people on the right defend the decision to attack Iran as a necessary measure to prevent the regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Is there any truth to that?

Iran has a stockpile of around 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which in theory could provide enough material to make 10–11 nuclear weapons. Iran had denied that it wanted to build a bomb, and the last Ayatollah Ali Khamenei famously issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, but there’s no credible civilian use for the level of enrichment it carried out. 

At the same time, it’s also possible that rather than building a bomb, Iran believed that staying as a “threshold” nuclear state gave it leverage in negotiations with the West and a form of deterrence. This proved to be a serious miscalculation. 

As far as we know, Iran still has this material — the “nuclear dust” Trump keeps talking about — buried underground at one or more of its main enrichment sites. Whether the Iranians could actually excavate the material and make it into a usable weapon before this activity was detected and attacked by the US or Israel is an open question. But having now been bombed in the midst of nuclear negotiations twice in the past year, Iran probably has even more incentive to build a nuke than it did before.  

How likely is it that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed/mostly closed indefinitely?

Depends what you mean by “closed” and by “indefinitely.” Trump’s extension of the ceasefire last week might suggest he has little interest in launching military action to open the strait, or just that he’s waiting for more military assets to arrive in the region. 

Either way, both sides clearly have an economic incentive to reopen the strait — though Iran may have a greater incentive to inflict enough of a disruption on its adversaries that they won’t consider attacking again in a few months. Experts believe Iran has planned for months of economic pressure and is calculating that the US has a lower pain tolerance. 

It’s equally hard to imagine a world in which other countries, particularly Iran’s neighbors across the Gulf, tolerate it continuing to charge tolls for use of an international waterway. But we’re in unprecedented territory here. It’s hard to say anything for certain. 

Aren’t there any options for bypassing the Strait of Hormuz? Why can’t Saudi Arabia or someone come up with a solution?

In fact there is. The East-West pipeline, built in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War with exactly this kind of scenario in mind, runs from Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil fields to the port of Yanbu on its western Red Sea coast. It has quickly become arguably the most important piece of energy infrastructure on the planet and was targeted several times by Iranian missiles and drones.  

The pipeline is now operating at its full capacity of 7 million barrels a day, which has been an important relief valve for the global economy, but isn’t enough to replace the 20 million barrels that normally flow through Hormuz. 

Gulf countries are now considering a number of other pipeline projects, but probably not on a timeframe that will do much to help with this crisis. 

Ultimately, Hormuz isn’t like other “chokepoints” in the global economy. The geography of the region’s oil fields and the Persian Gulf means there’s really not an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. 

I understand that the war in Iran has depleted America’s stockpiles of key ammunition. How long will it take to rebuild those stockpiles, and how much of a problem is that? (Put differently: Don’t we plan for stockpiles to be used and rebuilt?)

It’s a serious problem. The New York Times reported last week that the US has used more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles in this war, and it produces only about 100 per year. We’ve burned through about 50 percent of our THAAD missile interceptors — around 200 — and we only buy about 11 per year. This has led to diversions of these very in-demand systems from Europe and East Asia. 

This would not be a great moment for the US to get into another major war, particularly with a peer adversary like China. But how serious a problem it is depends on how much longer this war lasts and how many targets the US still wants to hit. It is, certainly, a good time to be in the missile business. The Pentagon wants to invest another $30 billion into critical munitions, including interceptors. 

I’m concerned about how Iran might retaliate against the US by means of cyberwarfare. Is there any evidence that their ability to do so has been affected by the US/Israel attacks?

Iran doesn’t appear able to launch the kind of major cyberattacks that would seriously disrupt Americans’ daily lives, but attacks by pro-Iranian “hacktivist” groups have been increasing, with targets including the medical device maker Stryker, the social network Bluesky, and the Los Angeles Metro. These attacks are a concern, but not on the level of the kind of damage that is feared from ongoing Chinese hacking campaigns like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon. 

Are the US and Iran on the verge of a full peace agreement — or a return to all-out war?

On the one hand, President Donald Trump has told multiple reporters in recent days that Iran has effectively agreed to all US conditions and that talks are going well, with Vice President JD Vance set to land in Pakistan for more this week. On the other hand, after briefly declaring it reopened last week, Iran once again declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, firing on ships transiting the waterway over the weekend, and the US continues to maintain a partial blockade on Iranian ports, seizing an Iranian vessel on Sunday. It’s unclear if Iranian negotiators will even be there to meet Vance in Islamabad. 

There may also be a third option: The current status quo — definitely not peace, but not quite a return to war either — could simply continue for the time being. At the moment, that’s an outcome that both the US and Iran would probably prefer over making what each would view as a humiliating compromise. But the costs of that state of affairs continue to grow every day that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and the region remains under the threat of a return to war. This outcome appeared more likely after Trump announced an indefinite extension of the two-week ceasefire on Tuesday, despite previously saying he was unlikely to do so and despite the fact that the ceasefire isn’t really holding in the first place.

In some ways, the dynamic is not all that different from what it was throughout the weeks of the US-Israeli bombing campaign: a competition to see which side can endure pain the longest. The difference in this new phase of the war is that when it stops is now primarily Iran’s decision. 

Can the US and Iran get to yes?

The main dynamic at the moment is that the US has incentive to end the war but isn’t sure how. Iran has the means to end the war but isn’t sure if it wants to. 

Prior to the war, the US was seeking to pressure Iran to fully give up its nuclear program, with hawks hoping for a broader deal that also included Iran giving up its support for foreign proxy groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen and accepting limits on its ballistic missile program. Trump’s most confident statements to reporters notwithstanding, the latter two goals have mostly fallen by the wayside. This is now a negotiation about Iran’s nuclear program and future control of the Strait of Hormuz — something that wasn’t an issue at all before this war started. 

If Iran had an actual nuclear weapon right now, it would probably not be in this situation, but it’s clear that its enrichment program did more to paint a target on the country than protect it. Even before the war started, Iran was reportedly considering agreeing to major concessions on its nuclear program, including diluting its 400-kilogram stockpile of highly-enriched uranium. The US-Israeli bombing campaign may have made a nuclear deal more likely, but not quite in the way that was promised. 

“The fact that [the Iranians] now have the Strait of Hormuz, thanks to the US-Israeli attack on Iran — that’s nice leverage, which means that they have a freer hand now on making concessions on the nuclear issue,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute. 

Last week, Axios reported that the United States was considering a deal to release $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for Iran turning over or diluting its 400 kilogram stockpile of highly-enriched uranium. This would be a tough deal for Trump to sell politically, though, considering that even this week he has continued to attack the Obama administration for “1.7 Billion dollars in ‘GREEN’ cash” released to Iran as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. But, if coupled with inspections and verification, it would constitute more progress on the Iranian nuclear issue than seemed possible just a few weeks ago, and Iran’s more confident position as a result of taking Hormuz is at least partially to thank for it. 

The issue of the strait may be harder to resolve than the nuclear issue. Iran’s proposal to impose tolls on ships exiting the strait will be unacceptable not only for the United States but for its trading partners as well. The strait is an international waterway, and Iran’s attempt to take control of it challenges the principles of free navigation that underlie the global trading system. But that doesn’t mean Iran will let go of its new economic weapon without getting anything in return. 

The Iranian regime’s main goals in this conflict have been, first, to survive and second, to impose costs on the US and its allies so severe that they wouldn’t be tempted to attack the country again in a few months. By seizing the strait, Iran has succeeded on the second goal, perhaps even more than it expected. But a debate has now opened up over whether it’s time for Iran to compromise and move on from the conflict or to continue to inflict punishment on its enemies. 

In an interview on Iranian state television over the weekend, parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s main negotiator with the United States, defended the talks, saying that while Iran would drive a hard bargain, US military capabilities should not be underestimated, and Iran’s position should not be exaggerated. Ghalibaf was likely responding to criticism from newly ascendant hardliners within Iran’s Republican Guards and to the large nightly rallies in Tehran by regime supporters calling on the government to not to compromise and continue the fight. 

Would $20 billion — in “GREEN” cash or some other form — be enough to get Iran to part with both its uranium and its control of the strait? Perhaps. But as Ali Vaez, Iran director at the International Crisis Group puts it, “the strait has provided Iran with a weapon of mass disruption that certainly has deterrence value. But the new hardline leaders of Iran might want to combine that with a weapon of mass destruction nonetheless.” 

In other words, rather than substituting an economic deterrent for a nuclear one, Iran may simply decide it should have both. 

What happens in the meantime?

Privately, according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump is concerned about the prospect of using military force to reopen the strait, telling aides that US troops sent to occupy the strategic Kharg Island would be “sitting ducks” for Iranian reprisals and comparing the situation to Jimmy Carter’s failed rescue of US hostages in Iran in 1979. Despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warning that the US is “locked and loaded” to follow through on Trump’s pre-ceasefire threat to destroy Iran’s electricity grid, a return to full-scale combat like we saw in March seems unlikely. 

Even if the ceasefire does formally end at some point, that doesn’t necessarily mean the US will resume airstrikes against Iran or that Iran will resume its missile and drone strikes against the Gulf. The strait may simply remain mostly closed, with periodic skirmishes, a situation some have compared to the 1980s “Tanker War” in the strait that went on for years on the sidelines of that decade’s Iran-Iraq war. 

The difference today is that the Tanker War never disrupted more than 2 percent of the ships passing through the strait. The current crisis is disrupting more than 90 percent. 

“As much as it likes to portray itself as not caring whether the Strait is open or not, the United States can’t afford to have the strait closed for much longer,” said Gregory Brew, Iran and energy analyst at Eurasia Group.

Trump has so far benefited from the fact that the US is less exposed to the shortages and disruptions caused by the strait’s closure than other regions, particularly in East Asia. And the stock market and oil futures markets have been volatile but less affected than one might expect. But a world where Europe is running out of jet fuel in a matter of weeks is not one that’s going to leave the US economy unaffected indefinitely. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is already saying US gas prices are likely to remain above $3 a gallon until after 2027 — after this year’s midterm elections. The relatively bullish markets are responding to expectations of an imminent deal, but they are likely to change if the administration appears to have settled for a permanently closed strait or even an Iranian toll booth. 

Iran’s rulers, for all their newfound bravado, also badly need time and money to reconstitute their regime, replenish their defensive arsenal, and begin the process of rebuilding what the US and Israel have destroyed.  

Both sides have incentive to prevent the strait crisis from escalating further. But the two sides’ positions are still far apart, and as long as the crisis continues, risk of miscalculation remains. 

Though the 1980s Tanker War may have been on a far smaller scale than the current crisis, it notably included an infamous incident of a US warship accidentally shooting down an Iranian civilian airliner, killing nearly 300 people. This war has already included a notable example of faulty US targeting leading to a mass tragedy.

Both the US and Iran may want to keep this next phase of the war as a low-intensity conflict, but that doesn’t mean it will stay that way.  

Update, April 21, 5:30 pm ET: This story has been updated to include information regarding Trump’s indefinite extension of the two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump’s fast pivot on Iran — from “a whole civilization will die tonight” to a benign return to negotiations — has a whipsawed world scratching their heads. What was he up to?

One possibility: Many Western analysts believe that Russian nuclear doctrine includes a concept called “escalate to de-escalate,” in which Moscow would use a tactical nuclear weapon early in a conflict to shock a stronger adversary into backing down from a conventional conflict. (The Russians deny this strategy exists.)

On Tuesday, Trump may have carried out a kind of Truth Social version of “escalate to de-escalate,” cranking up the rhetoric and threats to a fever pitch in order to get himself out of a war where the United States enjoyed an overwhelming military advantage, but found itself at a strategic disadvantage.

Nuclear use was never actually in play, but given Trump’s rhetoric — and the immensity of American military power — the comparison does not feel far-fetched. After Trump’s threats to destroy “a whole civilization” on Tuesday morning, speculation about how far he’d go reached the point that the White House had to deny reports it was planning to use nuclear weapons. Some of Trump’s erstwhile supporters accused him of threatening “genocide.” 

Did the ploy actually work?  The Russian version is supposedly intended to get a stronger enemy to back down. In this case, it’s unclear to what extent the adversary has actually surrendered. 

Subsequent tick-tock reporting may later reveal just how far Trump was contemplating going, and just how close he got to carrying out his threat. But for the moment, what we can say is that the dramatic escalation in rhetoric — and some very real attacks by the US and Israel on Iran’s railways and oil infrastructure — served as a framing device, allowing Trump to take an exit ramp that was likely already available to him, and portray it as a response to his threats. 

According to Trump’s Truth Social statement, posted about an hour and a half before his declared deadline, his decision to agree to a two-week ceasefire with Iran came at the urging of the government of Pakistan, which has been acting as an intermediary to the two sides. Trump said that a 10-point proposal received from the Iranian side was enough to serve as the basis for negotiations. That proposal was received yesterday, before Trump’s most dramatic threats. Iran’s government has also said it agrees to the ceasefire. 

As reported by the New York Times, the Iranian proposal includes a guarantee that Iran will not be attacked again, an end to Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the lifting of sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz. It does not include Iran surrendering its remaining uranium stockpile or halting future enrichment, which had been core US demands at various points in this conflict. 

Iran’s foreign minister said Iran would allow safe passage through the Strait for two weeks for international ships, so long as they coordinate with the Iranian military. Tehran, for its part, is portraying Trump’s announcement as a complete victory, saying Trump agreed to its terms in full, though it’s basically impossible to imagine the US actually agreeing to terms that would effectively give Iran carte blanche to build a nuclear bomb.

It’s also hard to imagine that an outcome in which the Iranian regime remains in place, and Iran retains its stockpile, would have been considered a victory for the US in the early days of this war, when Iran’s air defenses proved utterly unable to stop the US and Israel from devastating its infrastructure and killing its leaders. Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz changed the strategic balance in the conflict, effectively weaponizing the global economy and giving Tehran a new and potent source of leverage even as it continued absorbing blows. Even if it reopens the Strait now, it will retain the threat to close it again, potentially a more flexible and effective deterrent than its missiles and proxies. 

But Iran is in a precarious position as well; its defenses are badly depleted, its senior ranks decimated by targeted strikes, and more vulnerable than ever to challenges from abroad and within. Experts and officials in Israel always suspected the war would continue only as long as Trump allowed it to, and are probably satisfied for now with the damage they’ve inflicted on Iran’s missiles and economy. 

Rather than the clear win some would like, or a definitive de-escalation, this may turn out to be another episode of another, more familiar strategy in the recent history of the Middle East: “mowing the grass.”

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Donald Trump warned in a Truth Social message on Tuesday, the most extreme threat the president has issued yet in nearly 40 days of war with Iran.

The latest message was a follow-up to post over the weekend in which he instructed Iran to “open the Fuckin’ Strait” of Hormuz by Tuesday night or he would make good on earlier threats to destroy all bridges and power plants across the country. (Notably, it’s been less than a week since Trump claimed not to care about the Strait and promised it would open on its own once the war ended in a couple of weeks.)

He has threatened attacks against Iran’s desalination plants and the oil export facility on Kharg Island as well. On Tuesday, US strikes on Kharg Island began ahead of Trump’s deadline, though Fox News reported they were focused on military targets.

Asked Monday by reporters at the White House whether his planned attacks would constitute a war crime, Trump replied that the Iranian leaders who had killed “45,000 people in the last month” were “animals.”

Trump’s renewed threats to target Iranian infrastructure that supplies civilians with basic necessities like power and water, and his increasingly harsh rhetoric — like threatening to send Iran’s government “back to the Stone Ages where they belong” — have led to accusations that he’s violating domestic and international laws of war.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned Sunday that Trump was “threatening possible war crimes.” Even some Republican allies are growing concerned: On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said on a podcast that he was “hoping and praying” that Trump’s threats to attack civilian infrastructure were “bluster” because it would immiserate the same ordinary Iranians the White House was purportedly seeking to liberate.

To this point, most of the US strikes in Iran appear to have followed a pre-determined target set and focused on degrading the country’s nuclear, missile, and naval capabilities — all legitimate military aims. The killing of a head of state like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is probably also lawful, even if extremely unusual, though Israel’s apparent targeting of diplomatic officials involved in negotiations is harder to justify. The strike on a girls’ school in Tehran that killed around 150 students on the first day of the war appears to have been the result of negligence rather than intent.

A shift toward the deliberate targeting of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, however, could mark a hard turn into deliberate lawbreaking, as well as a dramatic escalation of a conflict the president has been promising is close to over. And while not every attack on energy or bridges is inherently a war crime, the scale of destruction Trump is threatening, if carried out, would have dire implications — sending a signal that the nation that helped institute and police the modern rules of warfare is now proudly and openly flouting them.

What makes a bombing illegal?

Under international law, also codified in US military regulations, a military target is legal if it meets a two-part test: The target must “make an effective contribution to military action” and its destruction or capture must “offer a definite military advantage.”

Legal experts who spoke with Vox said that while there are definitely cases in which a power station or bridge, and possibly even a desalination plant, could be a legitimate military target, those determinations would need to be made on a case-by-case basis, as opposed to Trump’s threat to destroy them en masse in order to pressure Iranian leaders into concessions. On Monday, Trump specifically threatened to destroy every bridge and every power plant in Iran if his demands were not met.

“The targeting is not being driven by considerations of military advantage, but to politically coerce the opposing party and inflicting pain, things which would not be legitimate aims,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser now with the International Crisis Group. 

The United States targeted electricity grids in previous bombing campaigns in Iraq during Desert Storm and Serbia in 1999. In both cases, it used specially designed graphite bombs designed to cause short-circuits without permanent damage. There was a deadly and controversial bombing of a civilian bridge in the Serbia campaign as well. 

But “indiscriminate attacks” like the ones Trump is describing not only be a violation of the laws of armed conflict by the US but could arguably be considered “war crimes by those who are involved in the strikes,” said Michael Schmitt, a former US Air Force judge advocate who now teaches at the University of Reading in the UK. Though the two terms are often used interchangeably, “war crimes” are violations serious enough that the political leaders and military commanders involved could face criminal charges.

By the prevailing standards, many of Iran’s own strikes — from hitting gas fields, desalination plants, and data centers in the Gulf to using cluster munitions in Israel — are also illegal, clearly meant to impose economic costs or terrorize populations rather than gain military advantage. 

Enforcing violations is a more complicated story. Neither Iran nor the United States recognizes the authority of the International Criminal Court — and in fact the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on it — but Schmitt notes that war crimes are matters of universal jurisdiction, meaning any country could theoretically launch a prosecution for them. 

For his part, he is hopeful that whatever the rhetoric coming out of the White House, “at the military level, cooler heads will prevail, and there will be a very surgical by the numbers assessment of every target meant to be struck to ensure that it’s a military objective, that harm to civilians is justified under the rule of proportionality, and that every effort that’s feasible has been taken to avoid civilian harm.”

Collective punishment

Thus far, Trump has generally made a distinction between the Iranian population and its regime. The escalation toward this war began, after all, when Trump threatened strikes against the Iranian government for its mass killing of protesters in January. And while it’s nearly impossible to gauge public opinion in Iran right now, it’s clear that at least a significant segment of the population is hoping these strikes, regrettable as they might be, could still bring down the regime. 

Trump had made a point in the first few weeks of the war of saying he was avoiding targeting Iran’s power infrastructure. After Israel bombed a major gas field, spiking global energy prices, Trump promised it would never happen again. In his public statements, Trump appeared to be hoping to allow a more pliant and militarily-weakened new Iranian government to rebuild its economy after the war. 

More recent strikes, however, have begun to test these boundaries. Last week, a US airstrike destroyed a major Iranian highway bridge. US officials suggested it was used to transport drone and missile parts, though other reports suggest it was still under construction and hadn’t been opened to traffic. The United States and Israel have also, in recent days, been stepping up attacks on nonmilitary targets, including steel and petrochemical plants.

Trump appears, in his rhetoric at least, to be shifting toward a strategy of collective punishment of Iran as a whole for the actions of its government. When he threatened to bomb Iran back to the “Stone Age” in his address last week, that did not sound like just a reference to its nuclear enrichment facilities. 

Intentionally or not, Trump’s description of Iranian leaders as “animals” evokes Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s 2023 description of Hamas as “human animals” to justify the “complete siege” of Gaza. The consistent Israeli government justification for the harm inflicted on civilians was that it was the result of the actions of Hamas. 

This is not to say that the level of physical destruction in Iran will come anywhere close to Gaza. But aside from questions of legality and morality, the comparison raises troubling strategic questions for the US.

Trump often appears to be vacillating between a plan to simply pack up and leave Iran once a certain set of military objectives are complete, and continuing the war until Iran’s leaders agree to concessions. The latest threats seem to suggest the latter, but there’s little to indicate that Iran’s leaders are close to making concessions, particularly on the Strait of Hormuz, which has emerged as their main form of deterrence and leverage in this conflict. 

A government that, as Trump noted, is willing to kill tens of thousands of its own people to stay in control, is probably not one that is likely to surrender because its people are suffering without power. 

Update, April 7, 10:45 am ET: This piece was originally published on April 6 and has been updated with Trump’s latest comments.

The Iran war of 2026 will continue, but it appears to be entering its final phase. Or at least, that’s what President Donald Trump hopes.

Claiming that the “hard part is done,” Trump made the case in a televised address on Wednesday night that America has “beaten and completely decimated Iran” and suggested that the conflict was “very close” to completion and would wrap up over the next two to three weeks. 

“Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating, large-scale losses in a matter of weeks,” Trump said, noting the damage inflicted to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Navy, and missile program. 

Trump said he would prefer to make a deal with Iran, and would launch attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure and energy facilities if it did not agree to one. But he appeared to suggest that the US would wrap up operations soon either way.  Trump seemed to be asking Americans for patience, noting that the war was far shorter than previous conflicts like World War II and Vietnam. 

There are a number of ways the situation could still change dramatically in the next few weeks, but if Trump is, in fact, starting the process of winding down the war, there are a few lessons we can already take from it. 

The war may not really be ending

One military cliché has been getting a workout over the past month: In any war plan, the enemy gets a vote. That’s just as true in any withdrawal plan. Iran may not stop fighting just because the United States stops bombing. Given that its air defenses proved completely incapable of stopping the US and Israeli bombardment, Iran could look to raise the costs to the US and its allies to the point where they will be deterred from simply coming back and bombing Iran again in six months. 

In particular, Iran may not be in a rush to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — the vital global energy chokepoint it has effectively shut down. Hormuz has emerged as Iran’s main point of leverage in this conflict, and leaders in Tehran will be reluctant to give it up. Over the weekend, Iran’s parliament passed a measure authorizing the collection of tolls from ships transiting the Strait, though it’s not clear how that would work in practice. 

Trump suggested in his speech that he was unbothered by this, saying that the Strait would “just open up naturally” once the war ended, but also calling on countries that rely on it to show some “long delayed courage” and reopen it themselves. 

A group of European countries is reportedly preparing a diplomatic push to do that, with military options possible as a last resort. Some Persian Gulf countries, notably the United Arab Emirates, are also reportedly pushing for a military coalition to open the Strait by force. 

It’s also worth noting that US forces are still heading to the region. A second Marine Expeditionary Unit, consisting of about 2,200 Marines and three warships, is due to arrive in a few weeks to join another MEU as well as elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, who were deployed to the region last week. These forces, designed for rapid deployments to seize and hold territory, could be a form of negotiating leverage for the US as it winds down the conflict, or could give the president additional military options if he changes his mind.  

Then there’s the “axis of resistance”: Iran’s regional proxies, badly weakened by Israel’s post–Oct. 7 offensive, seemed like a non-factor in the war’s early days. But lately they’ve made their presence felt. Yemen’s Houthis, who sat out most of the war’s first month, have begun firing missiles at Israel. Iraqi militias have been stepping up their attack on US interests, and appear to have kidnapped an American journalist. Hezbollah, fighting Israeli forces in Southern Lebanon, has shown it can still fire barrages of hundreds of rockets into Israel. These groups aren’t as powerful as they used to be, but they’re not eliminated, and they may not halt their attacks when the war ends.    

If it is ending, nobody won

It’s important to remember that while Trump’s immediate justifications for this war have shifted over time, the one consistent case he has made is that, as he put it on Wednesday, I “would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” It’s notable that in his speech, Trump did not refer to Iran’s stockpile of 450 kilograms of enriched uranium. As long as that stockpile remains, the US cannot credibly claim to have eliminated Iran’s nuclear threat, though Trump did vow to launch new airstrikes if any new nuclear activity is detected. 

If the war winds down in the coming weeks, Iran will doubtless claim victory on the grounds that it is still in power, despite the onslaught, and was able to fight back more effectively than many expected via its missile and drone attacks throughout the region and its closure of the Strait. But we shouldn’t overstate that case either. 

In addition to dozens of senior leaders, including its most prominent figures like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and security chief Ali Larijani, Iran’s conventional armed forces, navy, and missile forces have sustained heavy damage. Its strikes across the Gulf have enraged the Gulf Arab nations with which it had reached a tentative detente in recent years. It’s unlikely to find many partners anxious to invest in its rebuilding effort. 

Israeli airstrikes have also targeted the Basij militia, which led the efforts to crush anti-regime protests in Iran earlier this year. It’s hard to know yet what effect the war — which is estimated to have killed more than 1,500 civilians — has had on public opinion in Iran. But it seems likely that the regime’s opponents, whether on the streets of major cities or in ethnic minority regions, might soon want to test just how much it’s been weakened. 

Trump is still allergic to big ground wars

The relative success of “Operation Midnight Hammer” last June — Israel and America’s so-called 12-day war on Iran that targeted its nuclear facilities — and, even more so, the US operation to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January appear to have increased the military confidence of a president who, until recently, was campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize. If Trump were running for office again, it would be hard for him to again campaign as the “pro-peace” candidate, but there do still appear to be some lines he’s reluctant to cross. 

In recent weeks, there has been widespread reporting that the administration was considering risky operations to seize islands in and around the Strait of Hormuz to break Iran’s blockade or to deploy special forces to seize Iran’s uranium stockpile. Extracting 450 kilograms of radioactive material buried deep under rubble while taking heavy enemy fire always seemed like a tall order. The Hormuz operations may have been doable but would also raise the risk of American casualties — thirteen American servicemembers have been killed in the war, already — and prolong an already unpopular conflict. The escalations that Trump discussed in his speech involved bombing Iran “back to the stone age” — not sending in troops. 

This may be the closest Trump has come to the sort of Mideast military quagmire that has bedeviled the US for the past 25 years, but despite his claims that the “doesn’t have the yips” when it comes to boots on the ground, he still seems intent on avoiding large-scale ground operations that would see a large number of Americans coming home in coffins. 

Colin Powell’s famous “pottery barn rule” is no longer in effect: The US is fine just breaking things and moving on.  

Chokepoints matter

One of the main questions likely to perplex future historians of this war is why its planners did not anticipate and prepare for Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz — a scenario that has dominated US strategic thinking about the region for decades. (A Marine Corps veteran I spoke with recently recalled war-gaming an amphibious operation on Iran’s Qeshm Island in the 1980s.) Ensuring the free flow of energy from the Gulf is one of the main justifications for having a large military presence in this region in the first place. 

It’s true that Iran was able to effectively close the Strait more easily than many expected, with just a handful of demonstrative strikes on tankers rather than a large deployment of mines. But that could have been anticipated when the Houthis did the exact same thing in the Red Sea in 2024. 

There are some parallels to how this administration escalated trade tensions with China last year, seemingly not anticipating that Beijing would leverage its dominance over the global supply of rare earth minerals — a scenario also discussed ad nauseam in Washington for years.  

For years, the US leveraged its control of chokepoints in the global economy — the use of the dollar in international financial transactions; the global tech industry’s reliance on semiconductors made by US allies — to punish its rivals. Over the past year, we’ve seen those rivals learn to play the same game. 

Closing the Strait has resulted in global shortages in food, fertilizer, and other commodities — the reverberations of which could be felt for months after the fighting stops — and those worst-affected by it will be those living in the world’s poorest countries, who had nothing to do with this war. 

American military power has limits

Much of this war has been a display of absolute tactical and technological dominance by the American military and its Israeli partners. They’ve been able to strike Iran seemingly at will, pulled off incredible intelligence coups in the targeting of senior leaders, and intercepted the vast majority of missiles and drones fired by Iran. 

But we’ve seen the limits as well. In recent days, it’s been becoming clear that the Iranian strikes on US bases were more damaging than initially reported and that they’ve been having more success penetrating Israel’s air defenses as well. Whether that’s because Iran was learning how to evade those defenses (perhaps with Russian assistance) or because it has been saving its more sophisticated hardware for later in the war remains unclear. 

The US and Gulf Countries were never really in danger of running out of vital interceptors, but their heavy use in this conflict, along with other sophisticated systems like Tomahawk missiles, has forced tough decisions about how to allocate them, and the reduced stockpile may be felt in future conflicts, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. 

The fate of the USS Gerald Ford, which in recent months has had its deployment twice extended as it was diverted from the Middle East for operations in Venezuela, then sent back for the war in Iran, then finally docked in Croatia after its laundry room caught on fire and its toilets began malfunctioning, may serve as a cautionary tale.   

We’ve learned once again that even the most powerful and best-funded military in the world faces military constraints when the president is launching new major military operations every few months.

Israel is on a permanent war footing

If not for Iran, Israel’s escalating war in Lebanon, which has killed more than 1,200 people and displaced more than a million, would have been the biggest story in the Middle East for the past month. Israeli leaders are discussing what sounds like a long-term occupation of parts of Southern Lebanon and are invoking Gaza as a model as they destroy buildings in the area.

As for Gaza itself, Israel appears to be fortifying its military presence within the enclave, aid has been severely restricted from entering the Strip, and talk of moving to a new phase of reconstruction feels like a distant memory. 

Even as the Iran war was never popular in the United States, it was overwhelmingly so in Israel, despite much of the population spending the past month in and out of air raid shelters. Even if Trump forces the war to a close short of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultimate goal of regime change in Tehran, the Israeli expectation has always been that they would simply continue to degrade Iran’s capabilities as much as possible for as long as the US would allow. As for what remains, there’s always the next time — a regional expansion of the “mowing the grass” strategy that Israel has long employed in Gaza. “If we see them make a move, even a move forward, will hit them with missiles very hard again,” Trump said on Wednesday, suggesting that the US may again take part int he mowing. 

The war may have done serious damage to Israel’s standing in the US — and not only among Democrats, who were already a lost cause from Netanyahu’s perspective, but among Republicans looking for someone other than Trump to blame for this war. But that’s a concern for another day: For now, Israel sees its regional enemies on the back foot and will look to continue to press its advantage.     

The rules are changing

If there has been a clear winner from this war, it is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has benefited from both an economic shot in the arm from high oil prices and from the further strain that the conflict has put on the transatlantic alliance. (The Financial Times reports that Trump had threatened to halt aid to Ukraine if European countries didn’t take part in an effort to reopen the Strait.) Trump is once again talking about pulling the US out of NATO, in light of the alliance’s reluctance to allow their bases to be used for military operations or to join a fight to reopen Hormuz. Given the skepticism Trump is voicing about the alliance’s all-important mutual defense obligation, it’s fair to ask if the alliance is effectively dead already. That’s a cause for concern in a world where interstate wars are starting to become more common again. 

Not every country has access to something like the Strait of Hormuz, but other countries are likely to try to learn from Iran’s example of weaponizing chokepoints in the global economy to fight a more powerful adversary. Iran’s targeting of Amazon data centers may also portend a world in which tech firms are considered legitimate military targets.

Khamenei’s killing broke a precedent: There are very few modern examples of heads of state being deliberately killed in war. Given that new advances in precision targeting and drones have made “decapitation strikes” easier to carry out, this could make future wars a lot more dangerous for the leaders waging them. 

Iran clearly has more incentive than ever to actually build a nuclear weapon — though whether it would actually be able to do this with much of its weapons program in shambles and its government penetrated by spies is another question. What’s more clear, though, is that the attack on Iran, the second launched by the US and Israel in the past year in the midst of ongoing nuclear negotiations, will convince many countries that it’s worth having a nuclear weapon and not trusting future efforts at nuclear diplomacy. 

Iran itself may be weaker than it was a month ago — but its tolerance for risk and desperation are also higher. The damage inflicted on the regime in this war may have satisfied leaders in Washington and Jerusalem, but the world itself has likely gotten more dangerous.