islamabad, pakistan —
With peace talks stalled and US President Donald Trump giving no deadline for ending the war with Iran, the question on everyone’s lips is who can endure the pain of this war the longest. There is growing evidence that it is Iran.
Although there is no immediate threat of returning to a punitive bombing campaign, Iran is achieving its central objective of the war, which is to raise oil prices, and is pressuring President Trump to accept some of its demands.
Trump, on the other hand, has not acknowledged any disadvantage. “In the world I have all the time, but in Iran I have no time. The clock is ticking!” he wrote on social media on Thursday. “Time is not on their side!”
Meanwhile, Iranian state media publicly pondered what the Iranian government might attack next. The semi-state news agency Tasnim claimed that “at least seven” undersea data cables serving Persian Gulf countries were clustered along a narrow underwater route in the Strait of Hormuz.
Such asymmetric warfare is costly and time-consuming, as NATO found in its fight against Russia’s alleged cable cutting in the Baltic Sea.
Iranian forces have also signaled the possibility of conventional escalation if Tehran’s demands are not met, threatening specific targets in neighboring Gulf states that are repairing damage from previous attacks.
Targets included the Ruwai refinery in the United Arab Emirates and Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil processing plant.
Iran’s trolling of its adversaries is not new. What is new, however, is a scenario in which Iran emerges as an unlikely leader in a game of chicken with the mighty United States.
Most of Iran’s navy may be at the bottom of the ocean, as US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claims. However, small naval boats with crews of two to six people have been attacking cargo ships and tankers near the Strait of Hormuz with apparent impunity.
There is no doubt that the U.S. military will take its time to quell the swarm of Iranian speedboats, but time is a luxury that President Trump does not have. And while Iran may play against the B team, they appear to have home advantage against the world’s strongest military at the moment.
Trump, who usually praises his ability to intimidate opponents with a mix of bravado and abuse, has become less vocal about Iran. Last week, his erratic posts claiming a deal was near and Iran would hand over “nuclear dust” and end uranium enrichment landed a shock on his face.
Iran countered with claims from Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the seemingly powerful speaker of parliament, who posted on X that President Trump was “lying.”
The rest is already history. Iran did not appear at the talks in Islamabad, and tensions across the Strait rose again. The powerful US military has seized more than 30 ships since it began a blockade of Iranian ports and related vessels.
Iran shelled at least five ships around the disputed maritime trade route at a place and time of its own choosing.
As Iran’s chief negotiator, Ghalibaf, said this week, Iran believes it has the upper hand. In a recent speech, he declared that the enemy had been “strategically defeated.”
Iranians are masters at slicing salami to get what they want. Obama administration negotiators witnessed this firsthand as Iran quelled resistance to some of its demands throughout the years of negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal.
This week, Iran displayed some of the same diplomatic maneuvering that worked for it in 2015, insisting it was not seeking an extension to the ceasefire that President Trump announced late Monday. And since then, they have clearly refused to give an official response to this.
Some diplomatic orders in Islamabad suggest otherwise. However, if they did make a request, it was by no means an overt official operation. Instead, it was hidden in the subtext of chief negotiator Ghalibaf’s statement at X, posted as Trump refused to extend the ceasefire and Vice President J.D. Vance prepared for the next round of talks: “We will not accept negotiations under duress.”
It would have been obvious to Iran that the expiration of the ceasefire would be used as pressure to extract concessions from Iran at the negotiating table.
No matter how weakened or divided Iran’s leadership was, Iran would never fall into that trap. Diplomacy and the pragmatic duplicity that comes with it are entrenched at all levels of Iran’s political class.
Iran’s diplomatic superpower is being able to see around the corner, predict what will happen next, and know how to position itself to take advantage of it.
Knowing how to get something without being seen asking for it, then bagging it and moving on to the next part of the request has become an art form for them.
Their next target was for the United States to lift the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but President Trump has steadfastly refused to do so in public.
In Islamabad, whispers of nearly indecipherable leaks turned into crickets. This behind-the-scenes mediation stage is so delicate that no one who knows about it seems willing to risk what calculations are at work to soothe emotions and restore confidence.
There is a deafening diplomatic silence here, filled by the march of global markets.
