When U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran in mid-June, he promised to broker a final deal that will “bring peace and security to the whole region.” Since then, however, negotiations have stalled, fighting has resumed, U.S. sanctions have been reimposed, and U.S. warships have once again blockaded Iran. In short, we’re back to the same stalemated war we thought we were done with a month ago.
This all raises an important question: Can Trump bring the peace he’s promised?
If history is any guide, it’s unlikely. U.S. presidents are virtually never able to end the stalemated wars they start. Trump could overcome these precedents if he taps into his more pragmatic side or Congress presses him to do so. Both are long shots, however—meaning that a final peace is more likely to come from Trump’s successor, who will be better positioned to admit this war was a failure and make the kinds of concessions to get a deal that Trump should, but likely won’t, do.
What history shows us is that when presidents take the nation to war, they feel they have a unique stake in the conflict, whether politically, psychologically, or reputationally. Things like sunk-cost thinking (“we’ve invested so much, we need to show some kind of gains”) and worries about credibility (“backing down will hurt our image abroad”) push out good cost-benefit thinking and lead them to try to salvage something that approximates a win before making peace.
Especially when facing a highly resolved foe like Iran, this usually means the stalemate drags on as the clock runs out on the president’s term.
This pattern has played out in every stalemated U.S. war since World War II. After the Korean War deadlocked in the summer of 1951, President Harry Truman’s concerns about looking tough on communism at home, U.S. credibility, and sunk costs pushed him to pursue rigid terms in armistice negotiations. He left office with no peace treaty.
After the 1968 Tet offensive, President Lyndon Johnson’s concerns about his standing at home, sunk costs, and U.S. credibility pushed him to likewise take a rigid position in peace talks. “I can’t get out, I can’t finish it with what I have got,” he bemoaned. “So what the hell do I do?”
After President Barack Obama’s promised escalation to end the war in Afghanistan failed, he halted a withdrawal of all troops in 2015. Obama worried, in part, about being the president to “lose” Afghanistan, as well as a repeat of the political damage that followed the Iraq withdrawal in 2011 and which contributed to the rise of the Islamic State.
Trump faces similar challenges in ending the Iran war, which stalemated when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in early March. As with prior U.S. stalemates, the costs of this war are significantly higher than the benefits to U.S. security, which remain few given reduced U.S. interests in the Middle East and the rise of more important challenges elsewhere, especially in Asia.
Like his predecessors, Trump is piling pressure on himself to get the right kind of deal.
Above all, he wants a better nuclear deal than Obama achieved with Iran, having repeatedly denounced that “horrible one-sided” deal that “should never ever have been made.” Trump is now feeling sunk-cost pressures to prove he was right to abandon Obama’s nuclear deal in 2018 and start his policy of maximum pressure.
More broadly, Trump wants to transform the Middle East in ways former presidents tried and failed to do. “Look, for 47 years, no president was willing to do what I’m doing” on Iran, Trump said recently.
Since the Iran war stalemated, these reputational concerns have had a big impact on negotiations. The MOU talks dragged on for weeks, in part because Trump—who lost considerable leverage with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz—couldn’t come to terms with a deal that made him look bad.
Trump repeatedly told aides he needs something that looks like a “victory,” such as an expansion of the Abraham Accords or an Iranian pledge to give up its highly enriched uranium. Two weeks before the MOU was signed, he turned down a final draft hammered out by negotiators and agreed to by the Iranians because he said it resembled the “pallets of cash” in Obama’s nuclear deal.
Trump’s reputational concerns carry even greater weight at this stage.
For starters, unlike the MOU—which was a cease-fire and mostly agenda-setting in nature—the two sides are now trying to hammer out terms on concrete issues that are especially near and dear to Trump’s reputational concerns. With his legacy on the line, Trump is showing less willingness to bend in these talks; he can’t as easily spin the terms of a final deal the way he could the less concrete MOU. That compels him to the same maximalist demands as before the war—something we’ve seen hints of since talks began.
The easing of economic pressure in the United States—which could be reversed if renewed fighting persists—with the signing of the MOU hasn’t helped in getting a deal, either. With fuel prices,dropping after the MOU went into effect, Trump has been less under the gun to get a final agreement than he was to negotiate the MOU. That means reputational factors have had more room to roam, so to speak, in his decision-making.
In fact, this has already directly scuttled negotiations on at least one occasion.
When the terms of the MOU were released on June 17, Trump took a lot of heat from critics who claimed it—and, by extension, Trump—was weak, conceding too much to Iran. He’s been especially enraged at comparisons to Obama. To counter that impression, Trump wrecked the first round of high-profile talks by issuing a tough statement about how he would “blow the shit out of” Iran and take it over. The Iranians walked out, talks have gone nowhere since, and Trump’s recent return to war appears to be yet another classic case of a war-initiating president desperately trying to save face amid an embarrassing failure.
Stalemated wars don’t last forever, of course. But it’s generally the successor to the war-initiating president who brings about a resolution.
Why? Because successors tend to be freer from the constraints of their predecessors. They didn’t start the war, so they feel less obligation to continue it, find more space to admit failure, and can more easily adjust negotiating terms to get a deal. Trump and former President Joe Biden both campaigned on ending the unpopular Afghanistan war, then followed through on their pledges when they came to office.
Given that Trump is arguably the most unconventional president in U.S. history, he could break the mold of his predecessors. Last year, for instance, he set aside concerns about credibility and looking weak when he ended the futile air war with the Houthis, and he has refused to insert U.S. ground troops into the Iran conflict. In both instances, Trump rightly focused on costs and benefits to U.S. national security.
History is still more likely to prevail than not on Iran, however. Trump seems far more invested personally in a victory here than against the Houthis. Furthermore, his weak national security-making process means checks on his decision-making are few. Trump seems uninterested in fresh perspectives, even if available from his team.
Though also fraught, the best hope for near-term de-escalation and peace probably lies with outside pressure from Congress, which should start by challenging Trump’s new claim to another 60 days of unfettered warmaking authority under the War Powers Resolution.
Congress likely won’t stop the war entirely—that has never happened under the resolution. But it could exercise more oversight through hearings, limit funding, and set conditions on future funding that helps break the fever of war inside the administration, push Trump back to peace talks, and limit escalatory military action. Even as Congress continued to authorize war funding, this kind of legislative intervention helped eventually force peace in Vietnam and limited the 2007 surge of troops into Iraq. It also prevented escalation in El Salvador in the 1980s by making policy “like walking through a swamp,” according to former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz.
There should be no illusions here, though. Trump won’t give up the fight easily, and historically, the tug and haul between the executive and legislative branches on warmaking has allowed space for conflict to drag on. Congress increased oversight and pressure to end Vietnam in 1966. Still, a peace deal didn’t come until 1973.
Chances are, then, Trump leaves office with no peace agreement, and his successor will need to fix the mess of Iran.
Whoever that is, hopefully the unpopularity of the war and congressional pressure generate the pragmatism to do two things that Trump won’t: Admit failure and loosen terms to get a deal to permanently end the conflict. President Richard Nixon showed that kind of pragmatism to end direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, as did Trump to broker peace in Afghanistan.
With Iran, that kind of pragmatism will likely mean accepting its red lines to enrich uranium and ensure some kind of Iranian authority over the Strait of Hormuz, which is the primary reason Tehran restarted conflict recently. While these concessions likely won’t be as painful as many make them out to be, given those limited U.S. interests in the Middle East, they will still be a tough pill to swallow. But that’s the unfortunate consequence of losing a war that should have never started in the first place.
