Nobody wants to say it out loud: the United States has painted itself into a corner in Iran, and the only exit involves writing a very large check.
Philip H. Gordon, a former White House Middle East coordinator under Biden, laid out the argument in Foreign Policy this week with the kind of frankness that rarely survives inside government. The title says it all: “There’s Only One Way Out of Trump’s Reckless War.”
The numbers are staggering. The US has already struck 13,000 targets inside Iran. Thirteen thousand. And the strait is still effectively closed. Iran still has thousands of long-range drones and missiles capable of threatening ships from deep inside its territory. The Houthis, emboldened by the widening war, have announced a “maritime embargo” on Saudi Arabia.
“The United States faces only different versions of catastrophic failure,” Gordon writes.
His proposed solution is simple and politically radioactive: pay Iran to stop.
The short-term deal Gordon envisions would give Iran significant economic relief in exchange for three things: refraining from attacks on shipping and neighbors, freezing its nuclear program at current levels, and accepting satellite verification that it does not access buried nuclear material. If Iran resumes enrichment work, the deal collapses.
The cost of this deal is real. Iran would use new revenues to rebuild its missile and drone programs. It would retain its ability to threaten the strait. It would emerge from the war with its regime intact and its hand strengthened.
But the alternative, continued bombing, potential strikes on civilian infrastructure, a ground war, global recession, is worse.
Gordon is blunt about the allies problem. Trump spent his first two years in office treating NATO allies like vassals, threatening their territorial integrity, imposing tariffs on them, and launching this war without consulting them. No country is going to send its soldiers to rescue the United States from a conflict it started alone.
“Thinking about how to get out of the dire strategic predicament,” Gordon writes, “brings to mind the old joke about the lost traveler who asks in a remote Scottish pub how to get to Aberdeen, to which the bartender replies: ‘Well, sir, if I were trying to get to Aberdeen, I would not start from here.'”
The longer-term strategy Gordon proposes is more palatable but slower: reduce global dependence on the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are already expanding pipeline capacity to carry an additional 4 million barrels per day, on top of the 5 million already rerouted. Seven pipeline projects are planned or under construction. China’s oil consumption is projected to drop nearly 5% this year. Electric vehicle sales are soaring.
These shifts will eventually drain the strait of its strategic significance. But “eventually” is cold comfort to a president who needs a win now.
The uncomfortable truth Gordon raises is one Republicans do not want to hear and Democrats find awkward to say: the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump tore up was not a perfect agreement, but it was better than a war. Trump promised a better deal through “maximum pressure” and a “credible threat of force.”
“He failed to get the deal,” Gordon writes. “But he got the war.”