President Donald Trump has pushed to bring the war with Iran to a speedy end: He stepped up bombing raids. He threatened to wipe out infrastructure. He has attempted diplomacy and ordered a naval blockade. But Tehran is in no rush to cut a deal.
Despite the assassinations of its leaders and the damage to an array of military sites, Iran’s regime seems to have benefitted politically from the attacks started by the U.S. and Israel, according to a Western diplomat with knowledge of the conflict and five Western officials, all with knowledge of intelligence assessments on Iran. The regime is, improbably, more stable now than before the war and slightly more hard line, five of the officials said.
The mass anti-government protests that rocked the country in the weeks before the war have, at this time, receded. The so-called moderate or reformist faction inside the regime has been marginalized, because heavy U.S. bombing and Trump’s frequent ultimatums have undermined their arguments that a more accommodating approach with Washington could produce benefits, five of the officials said.
In the U.S., the political costs are mounting; the midterms are drawing near, a critical meeting between Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping is on the horizon, and gas prices are rising. According to new polling, majorities of voters disapprove of Trump's handling of Iran.
“The Iranians don’t seem to be in a rush to negotiate,” one of the Western officials with knowledge of intelligence assessments on Iran told NBC News.
The president on Thursday denied he was under any time pressure to end the conflict.
“Please be advised that I am possibly the least pressured person ever to be in this position. I have all the time in the World, but Iran doesn’t — The clock is ticking!” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
Trump has previously said called the war a “little excursion” that would be over roughly five weeks after it started, then said the U.S. was ahead of schedule. He told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday that he didn’t want to rush anything.
“I want to take my time. We have plenty of time and I want to get a great deal,” he said, laying out how long the U.S. was entangled in other foreign wars, including Vietnam, World War II and the Korean War.
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But as the war drags on, voters are souring on how Trump is handling the war and the economic repercussions of the conflict. A new poll this week of registered voters from NBC News Decision Desk found that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war, with one-third approving.
A recent Fox News poll also found Democrats with new advantages over Republicans on inflation and the economy.
Regional analysts disagree about whether time is on Iran’s side in the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial chokepoint for 20% of the world’s oil and gas supplies. Richard Haas, an outspoken critic of Trump’s foreign policy, has said he supports the U.S. blockade on Iran.
But Iran’s leaders believe the Trump administration and the American public do not have the stomach to tolerate a protracted war and will back off as the economic and political costs rise, according to Daniel Byman, a professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
“For the Iranian regime, the conflict is existential, while for most Americans, it is best over and forgotten, with the hope that prices at the pump will fall soon,” Byman wrote in a recent commentary for Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
“This divergence shapes expectations about escalation. If Iranian actors assume that Washington will ultimately seek an exit, they have incentives to prolong the confrontation, betting that incremental pressure will yield concessions,” Byman wrote.
“Bluffing, which Trump is apt to do, only risks convincing the Iranians that U.S. red lines are not real,” he added.
The president has extended his deadline on coming to a deal with Iran five times now, always accompanied by severe threats. There’s an internal debate at the White House about whether to publicly set another firm deadline only to blow past it, according to a person familiar with the White House discussions.
Weeks ago, the president vowed to “obliterate” power plants if Iran did not “fully open” the Strait of Hormuz. Two days later, the president announced a five-day pause on those strikes, citing progress in the diplomatic negotiations. Two days after that, he pushed it back further, and then did so again on April 7.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that only President Trump can set the next deadline on an Iranian proposal to end the war.
On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance prepared to travel to Pakistan for a second round of talks after the first session failed, only for the trip to be postponed. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner were summoned to the White House to discuss possible next steps, only to return to Florida after it was decided that the negotiating team would not be traveling to Islamabad imminently.
Trump is gambling that a U.S. naval blockade on Iran’s ports will force Tehran to make concessions at the negotiating table and reopen the strait. Iran heavily depends on oil exports to keep its economy afloat, and U.S. officials and advocates of the blockade believe it will eventually trigger hyperinflation and a serious financial crisis in Iran, forcing Tehran to relent.
Since Trump declared the blockade, U.S. forces have boarded at least two ships associated with Iran that it says were carrying oil and have turned away 33 that approached the strait.
The blockade could, over time, change Iran’s calculus, as it will eventually need to export oil. But Iran is also hoping to continue to charge fees for ships transiting the strait which could provide revenue in the meantime, the Western officials said.
Meanwhile, Iran maintains its own stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz — it attacked three ships on Thursday. Already, the closure of the waterway, which has disrupted shipments of oil, fertilizer and other goods, is triggering economic shocks around the world.
Iran is betting it can hold out longer because it has years of experience absorbing economic punishment and could generate revenue by selling off oil it has in storage beyond the blockade, off the coast of Malaysia and China, as well as exporting gas by pipeline and printing money, the Western officials said.
The Western diplomat said the Iranians had clearly been in a weaker position before U.S. and Israeli military operations in late February, as exhibited by the dramatic shift in Tehran’s willingness to compromise from then until now. The offer put previously forward by the Iranians included significant concessions to their nuclear program, which had, according to the diplomat, long been their greatest source of leverage.
Now, with effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has found a far more effective global advantage for “peanuts” of the previous cost, the diplomat said, leaving Tehran with little reason to capitulate.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf suggested on Wednesday that Tehran would not cave to any of Washington’s demands.
“A complete ceasefire only makes sense if it is not violated by the maritime blockade and the hostage-taking of the world’s economy,” and if the “warmongering across all fronts is halted,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.
“Reopening the Strait of Hormuz is impossible with such a flagrant breach of the ceasefire,” he added, saying that the U.S. and Israel “did not achieve their goals through military aggression, nor will they through bullying.”
Despite repeated U.S. and Israeli bombing, Iran retains plenty of missiles, drones and mines to maintain control of the strait. But even beyond its military capabilities, the regime has found that it does not take much to drive up insurance costs for shipping companies and discourage commercial traffic in the waterway.
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