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By Shane Croucher
Senior Editor
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After nine months of conflict, and repeatedly claiming Tehran was close to making one, President Donald Trump has declared a deal with Iran unnecessary. "We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
Trump is fickle, so this could well reverse itself tomorrow, next week, next month. Time will tell. But, taking Trump at his word, dispensing with a deal is not the same as finding that elusive ending to the Iran war.
The same post asked Vice President JD Vance to focus on alleged corruption in Democratic-run states. That was barbed. A day earlier, Vance—who has said "the reason we lost is the war"—was emerging as Washington’s lead negotiator with Tehran.
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Trump also claimed the U.S. already holds Iran’s money, by his count hundreds of billions of dollars, and the Strait of Hormuz. Both boasts carry asterisks.
Iranian officials have said at least $100 billion of their assets is frozen abroad—other estimates run far lower—and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is still claiming attacks on ships in the strait, driving up the cost of commercial shipping through a major route.
Here are five ways the war, now in its ninth month, could go—from settlement to escalation.
1. The Deal After All
As we know, Trump’s categorical statements on Iran have a short shelf life. In June, for example, he declared a deal with Tehran complete. Within weeks, it had collapsed.
On Monday, after hosting Qatar’s prime minister, Trump spoke of momentum toward ending the conflict. In this telling, his latest post is intended to be leverage—in keeping with Trump’s usual dealmaking style—and any agreement is sold as Iranian capitulation.
The framework for a deal exists. A Qatari two-day plan would have Washington lift its blockade and release some frozen funds as Iran admits U.N. inspectors to bombed nuclear sites, with Hormuz reopening on day two, Axios reported.
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Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state news agency IRNA on Tuesday that Tehran’s own two-day proposal remains on the table. Tehran’s posture is the usual defiance: security chief Mohsen Rezaei this week told Washington on X to "FOLD YOUR HAND."
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio bets that the severe economic pain from the U.S. blockade will focus Tehran’s minds toward a deal.
"Eventually, you have to eat, you have pay your own fighters, your own security forces and so forth," Rubio said. "Eventually, economic realities penetrate the skull of the most radical lunatic. So, I think as time goes on, that will have an impact."
Trump says the U.S. doesn’t need a deal. Perhaps he’s right. But he would certainly prefer one. And Iran needs one before the economic strain becomes too much to bear.
2. The Deal Without a Deal
This scenario perhaps fits Trump’s latest rhetoric best.
There is no signing ceremony and no grand bargain. Instead, the two sides trade quiet, reciprocal steps. Iran eases attacks on shipping, Washington eases enforcement, tankers move, and the nuclear file is deferred.
Sometimes, progress is only made when done privately and without the pressures of political theater.
"Let’s just have a timeout," Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, said last month.
One preliminary proposal, Middle Eastern officials told The Wall Street Journal, would see the U.S. move its carriers farther from Iran and partially ease the blockade in exchange for Iran letting 25 tankers through the strait.
Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute has suggested Trump could keep the blockade on paper while letting it "imperceptibly wither away," so the situation eases and everyone saves face. Trump could then say, truthfully, that he never made a deal.
3. The Forever Blockade
This is the policy Trump appears to have chosen. No war, no deal. Rubio told Group of Seven counterparts on Tuesday that Trump had weighed resuming the war or cutting a deal, then picked a third option: to keep strangling the regime economically.
Central Command’s Task Force Iron Gate aims to extend that squeeze to Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea, cranking the pressure on Tehran to compromise on the nuclear issue and free passage for commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
"Iran, militarily, is effectively over. We’re just keeping it the status quo," Trump said on Monday. That status quo still involves a fair amount of shooting. U.S. forces have hit air-defense sites on Iran’s Qeshm Island at least twice this month.
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Trump says Gulf allies prefer this, and it spares Washington another bombing campaign. But the weakness is that it needs Tehran’s acquiescence to the current situation, either because they accept it willingly or have no other choice but to.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, says Iran is determined to escape "no war and no peace," suggesting it plans to continue armed resistance of the U.S. in the strait and beyond.
Iran has even threatened Europe, and plots against the lives of Trump administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have driven them to live in the security of military bases.
4. The Shadow War
Iran is unlikely to accept slow strangulation quietly—but nor does it want to invite another full U.S.-Israeli air campaign. The middle course is calibrated pain. Mines, drones, proxies, sabotage, and cyberattacks, answered by limited American strikes branded self-defense.
Much of it is already happening. Maritime monitors counted at least 37 attacks on ships in and near the strait in October, a wartime monthly high, and the Revolutionary Guard said three tankers hit mines on Tuesday.
The same day, the Justice Department charged three alleged Iranian-backed operatives over nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks in the U.S. and Europe, including a plot at RAF Fairford in England.
Rubio’s plea to G7 allies to help guard shipping drew no commitments.
An analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes Iranian doctrine as prizing "calibrated escalation," short of full-scale war. We may already be seeing that with the cyberattacks on European supermarkets, for example.
5. The Big War Returns
The administration says it doesn’t need this—for now. But the road back to full-scale war runs through catalyzing events, not the whims of mercurial leaders. Things like a mass-casualty strike on U.S. forces, one tanker attack too many, or signs of a rush for a nuke.
The nuclear file is the big tinderbox here, the central reason for the war. U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council last month that his agency had seen no rebuilding at bombed sites.
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But Grossi could not verify the fate of the estimated 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent that Iran held before the June 2025 strikes, and was the source of serious concern about its nuclear intentions.
On Thursday, Iran’s Assembly of Experts, which chooses the supreme leader, said reviewing withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty had become an "unavoidable necessity."
Trump says the U.S. is "locked and loaded," and has repeatedly said he would not allow Iran to move any closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Rezaei warned that Iran would hit U.S. bases as far away as Europe if used against it.
Winning Without an Ending
Trump’s post redefines victory as a kind of possession: of Iran’s money, of its strait, and of time. But this is not an end state. Every path above runs through choices Tehran also gets to make, even if its options are more limited than those of the U.S.
The five scenarios are also not mutually exclusive. The likeliest near-term future blends the middle three. It would mean a blockade that tightens on paper while leaking in practice, punctuated by shadow-war flare-ups that could tip into the fifth.
The most revealing outcome, though, would be the second. A president who says he no longer needs a deal settling for something that does nearly everything a deal would—without ever calling it one. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for right now.
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