Thinking about how to get out of the dire strategic predicament that U.S. President Donald Trump has created with his ill-considered war in Iran brings to mind the old joke about the lost traveler who asks in a remote Scottish pub how to get from there to Aberdeen, to which the bartender replies: “Well, sir, if I were trying to get to Aberdeen, I would not start from here.”
Trump’s reckless war, which has only empowered Iranian hard-liners and given them a stranglehold over the world economy in the Strait of Hormuz, has left the United States with no options other than different versions of catastrophic failure. If Trump concedes to Iran’s main demands—including massive financial relief and sovereignty over the strait—he will have sacrificed the globally vital principle of freedom of navigation, empowered a determined and ruthless adversary, and potentially sown the seeds for future confrontations. Iran’s angry, vengeful leadership will not only use the new revenues to rebuild the country’s missile and drone programs and air defenses but also use its control of Hormuz as leverage on other issues, including Lebanon, relations with other Gulf states, and future nuclear negotiations.
Thinking about how to get out of the dire strategic predicament that U.S. President Donald Trump has created with his ill-considered war in Iran brings to mind the old joke about the lost traveler who asks in a remote Scottish pub how to get from there to Aberdeen, to which the bartender replies: “Well, sir, if I were trying to get to Aberdeen, I would not start from here.”
Trump’s reckless war, which has only empowered Iranian hard-liners and given them a stranglehold over the world economy in the Strait of Hormuz, has left the United States with no options other than different versions of catastrophic failure. If Trump concedes to Iran’s main demands—including massive financial relief and sovereignty over the strait—he will have sacrificed the globally vital principle of freedom of navigation, empowered a determined and ruthless adversary, and potentially sown the seeds for future confrontations. Iran’s angry, vengeful leadership will not only use the new revenues to rebuild the country’s missile and drone programs and air defenses but also use its control of Hormuz as leverage on other issues, including Lebanon, relations with other Gulf states, and future nuclear negotiations.
The alternative to U.S. military escalation, however, is even worse. Having already struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran, the United States is unlikely to solve the problem with more bombing. Iran has thousands of long-range drones and missiles it can use to threaten ships in the strait from deep in its own territory—and thus keep it shut. Attacking Iran’s power plants and civilian infrastructure, as Trump has repeatedly threatened to do, would constitute a probable war crime, cause further suffering among the Iranians Trump had promised to help, and further destroy Washington’s global standing. It would also have little impact on Iranian policy, given the regime’s disregard for the welfare of its people and conviction that caving to such attacks would only invite more of them.
Another military option being discussed, seizing Iran’s Kharg Island, would set back the country’s oil export potential, but it would also put more U.S. service members at risk and do nothing to help open the strait, some 370 miles away. U.S. escalation would instead lead Iran to resume its attacks not just on shipping but on its neighbors’ energy infrastructure. It could also prompt the Iran-backed Houthis to close export routes via the Red Sea by attacking shipping there, with Trump unable to do anything about it. With global oil reserves and natural gas storage drawn down and Russian refineries being taken offline by Ukrainian drone attacks, this would drive up oil and gas prices far more than it has to date, destabilizing stock and bond markets, stoking inflation, and threatening a global recession. Pursuing an extended military campaign in Iran despite all these and other costs and consequences is more likely to lead to chaos, civil war, and sectarian violence—as in Iraq, Syria, and Libya—than to Iranian capitulation.
Trump has also tied his own hands by alienating allies that otherwise might help him get out of this mess. Under normal circumstances, rallying an international coalition to oppose a country that is targeting civilians, shooting missiles and drones at commercial shipping, attacking its neighbors, and closing down an international waterway should not be difficult. A different U.S. leadership could build a coalition to oppose it. George H.W. Bush did so when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Barack Obama rallied others to put the pressure on Iran that led to the 2015 nuclear deal. But after 18 months of treating U.S. allies like vassals, threatening their territorial integrity, imposing unilateral tariffs, raising doubts about long-standing security commitments, and then launching a war without consultations, which countries could be expected to risk their service members’ lives to rescue Trump? U.S. allies in Europe and Asia have an interest in opening the strait, but their leaders would have trouble explaining to their publics why they were putting their service members at risk—or imposing pain on their own economies—for a war they had opposed and were not consulted about.
As a Democrat who opposed this war, I feel no obligation to apologize for not having good ideas on how to end it. For more than a decade, Trump and others criticized those of us who had worked on and supported the 2015 nuclear deal and insisted that they could do better. They said we were too squeamish about the prospect of conflict with Iran and that with “maximum pressure” and a “credible threat of force,” they could negotiate a better deal without a war. Once in power, they failed to get the better deal, but they did get the war. And the entire world is paying the price.
There are no good ways out of this mess, but there is one that is less bad than the others: pay Iran off to end the conflict and open the strait now while accelerating efforts to reduce reliance on it and bolstering U.S. leverage for future negotiations down the road.
In the short term, that means allowing Iran significant economic relief in exchange for refraining from attacking shipping or its neighbors and freezing its nuclear program. That would take pressure off the U.S. and world economies, avoid the catastrophe of global recession, spare the lives of Americans and others who would likely die in an escalating conflict, and buy time. It would not prevent Iran from starting to rebuild its missile and drone programs, but those have been set back significantly by four rounds of heavy U.S. and Israeli strikes since 2024—and Iran can threaten its neighbors and close the strait with what it currently has anyway. Nor would such a deal permanently resolve the nuclear issue, but that could be managed at least for a limited time with an Iranian commitment to maintain the status quo—including no enrichment—as it did in the recent memorandum of understanding, while the United States used satellites and intelligence to ensure Iran did not access the nuclear material buried underground by last year’s strikes. If Iran resumed suspected nuclear weapons-related activities, the entire deal would be off.
Over time, the United States and others could enhance their future leverage by diminishing their reliance on the oil that transits the strait. That process is already well underway, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates advancing plans to expand pipeline capacity to carry an additional 4 million barrels per day, on top of the 5 million barrels that have already been rerouted. Just last week, it was reported that Chevron is exploring construction of a pipeline to connect Iraqi oil fields with Syria’s Mediterranean coast, one of seven different pipeline projects planned or actively under construction. Iran would still have the capacity, of course, to directly target regional energy infrastructure beyond the strait, but instigating a new war against its neighbors and the world is different from closing a waterway off Iran’s shore.
Accelerating the use of alternative energy sources—a process Trump is unlikely to support but is also underway elsewhere—will help as well. China has already begun to reduce its oil consumption since the start of the Iran war, with consumption in 2026 projected to drop by 4.9 percent year-on-year, and its exports of solar panels and other clean energy technologies are booming. Since the Iran war began, more than 20 countries across five continents have made new clean energy announcements, including the fast-tracking of renewable projects and incentives for households to adopt alternative energy technologies. Sales of electric vehicles are soaring. None of this will eliminate global reliance on the strait, but it will remove Iran’s ability to use it as a global stranglehold, should future confrontation become necessary.
The United States and its allies in the Gulf could also use this period to build up their depleted military capacities, including their stockpiles of missiles and interceptors that the war revealed to be dangerously insufficient, and invest further in advanced air defenses and hardening energy infrastructure, as well as reconsider their basing footprint. The vulnerability of the Gulf states and U.S. bases in the region is one of the main reasons for the need to end this war largely on Iran’s terms, and they should work to reduce that vulnerability as quickly and comprehensively as possible.
With the immediate conflict over and reliance on the strait reduced, better conditions would exist to return to a diplomatic process—using remaining sanctions, incentives, and international coalitions to influence Iranian behavior. That would require returning to the kind of sustained, multilateral diplomacy that Trump abandoned first by leaving the 2015 nuclear deal and then by launching this catastrophic war. A weakened, isolated Iranian regime will have emerged from that war more or less intact and with a revenue flow that would help it compensate for the massive losses it suffered. But if it genuinely wanted to recover economically, avoid future conflicts or domestic rebellions, and find a modus vivendi with its neighbors, it would have to make verifiable commitments about its nuclear program and refrain from threatening the region. If it did not, the option of resuming the war would still exist but this time in a context of reduced global dependency, an improved military balance, and firmer moral high ground than when the United States and Israel launched an unnecessary war with no legal basis or international support.
There would be many downsides to this approach, and there is no guarantee that process would succeed, especially after all the damage Trump has done. But sometimes when you have created a terrible mess, the best option going forward is to refrain from making it worse—which is exactly what doubling down on a failed war would do.