President Trump keeps looking for the magic formula that will deliver him victory in Iran.<\/p>\n
First was the airstrike last June intended, he said, to \u201cobliterate\u201d Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Then came the intense February air campaign carried out with Israel and designed, he said, to deliver regime change and a popular uprising. Then he bet on a blockade of Iranian shipping to end the Iranian stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Now, in a new effort to break Iran\u2019s control over the strait, Mr. Trump has announced<\/a> a plan with few details to help guide stranded ships out through it. Iran responded<\/a> on Tuesday with missiles and drones, and given the risks, most tankers are unlikely to dare<\/a> crossing the strait for now.<\/p>\n But Mr. Trump\u2019s conviction that these tactics will bring about Iran\u2019s capitulation is deeply flawed, officials and analysts say. They say it is a misreading of the Islamic Republic\u2019s strategy, psychology and capability for adaptation. The Iranian government believes that it has the upper hand for now, and that it can withstand economic pressure, as it has in the past, longer than Mr. Trump can tolerate rising energy prices brought about by the halting of traffic through the strait.<\/p>\n If anything, Iran\u2019s positions have hardened. But Mr. Trump\u2019s tactics have not changed.<\/p>\n \u201cAt every point when pressure has not delivered the intended result, he\u2019s sought a new tool of coercion which he believed would magically conjure victory,\u201d said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. \u201cHe always believes he\u2019s one little turn of the screw away.\u201d<\/p>\n Pressure can work over time, \u201cbut pressure without an open door is an exercise in futility,\u201d Mr. Vaez said. \u201cTrump doesn\u2019t understand that no matter the pressure, so long as you don\u2019t give them a face-saving way out and a mutually beneficial agreement \u2014 not capitulation or surrender \u2014 you won\u2019t get a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n Experts are dubious that time will work in Mr. Trump\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n The United States \u201ccan certainly do more damage to the Iranian economy, but they have withstood more pressure than any other economy in history, and that hasn\u2019t produced the collapse of the regime or more reasonable positions,\u201d said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist and director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.<\/p>\n Iran is such an authoritarian state that the kind of political drivers that might push compromise don\u2019t exist, she said, with the regime already executing protesters on a regular basis. Mr. Trump, too, seems uninterested in compromise for now, despite the economic pain from high energy prices.<\/p>\n In any case, she said, \u201cI\u2019m skeptical that the blockade will succeed in the time frame we would need for the global economy and for Trump\u2019s prospects in the midterm elections.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz had been \u201camazing,\u201d saying, \u201cnobody\u2019s going to challenge the blockade.\u201d He also reiterated his claim that \u201cIran wants to make a deal,\u201d but he said its leaders were \u201cplaying games\u201d by talking to him and then saying on television that they had not.<\/p>\n The conflict is a test of wills between Iran and the United States. The two sides have only limited knowledge of one another, having rarely been in the same room with one another, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. \u201cThey have culturally very different approaches to deal-making and they talk past each other,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think President Trump doesn\u2019t really understand what drives the Iranians,\u201d she added. \u201cThey don\u2019t make decisions based on their GDP, because if so, they would have done a deal years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the economic stakes are high for Iran, Mr. Trump appears to have miscalculated how dire they are. He seems to be betting that Iran\u2019s capacity to store the oil it is pumping but cannot export will soon run out and force Tehran to make major concessions.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they don\u2019t get their oil moving, their whole oil infrastructure is going to explode,\u201d Mr. Trump said late last month, adding, \u201cThey say they only have about three days left before that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n