Trump's new Iran threats could mean all-out war but there are options

Four and a half months ago, US President Donald Trump and his key regional ally Benjamin Netanyahu set the Middle East down a path of war, opening fire on Iran after weeks of threats and posturing.

At the time, senior members of the US administration and its military were keen to say this would be a short conflict. A few weeks, they said, and the US would have made its mark.

Trump repeatedly spruiked his country's successes and the crushing blows inflicted upon Iran. He says its navy, for example, lies at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Many of Iran's leaders were killed — supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chief among them —  killed hours into the war as missiles ripped through his Tehran compound.

Now, not only is the war not over, it is once again at a dangerous inflection point, which is all the more concerning, given the prospect of peace talked up in recent weeks.

How did this happen?

Some critics of Trump will say it is because he entered the war without a clear sense of what he wanted to achieve and without a clear path out.

For all of the public declarations about stopping Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, that was seemingly just one in a grab bag of goals for the US.

The White House insisted it was not pursuing regime change, while also saying it had achieved it by killing senior officials.

Weeks before the war, Trump promised help was on the way for Iranians bravely taking to streets to protest against the regime, tens of thousands of whom had paid the price for dissent with their lives.

The US said it wanted to degrade Iran's missile capabilities, but then left any reference to those same capabilities out of the interim deal to end the immediate hostilities.

That frustrated its partners in the Gulf states, who had borne the brunt of Iranian missile attacks.

And most importantly, given the return to strikes which have occurred in recent days, the US either dismissed or did not consider the prospect that the Strait of Hormuz could be shut down by an angry Iran wanting to inflict pain on the world in response to US and Israeli attacks.

Dispute over deal led to 'spiral of escalation'

For analysts closely watching how this has played out, there is a sense that the US president is not being realistic about how the Middle East will look after this war.

On February 27, the day before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz was an open and free-flowing shipping channel through which large volumes of the world's oil, gas and fertiliser supplies passed through daily.

After the war began, Iran brought shipping to a standstill, placing the strait in an effective chokehold.

The interim deal signed by the US and Iran just three weeks ago explicitly stated that while the strait needed to be reopened to traffic at pre-war levels, its future management was still up for negotiation.

The two countries have very different views on what that will look like, with the US wanting a return to pre-war conditions, while Iran wants to enforce what it describes as its "sovereignty" over the strait.

That all leads to the situation yhat has developed in recent days: Iran attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz which do not abide by its rules, the US opening fire on Iran in response, and Trump labelling the Iranians "scum" and declaring the ceasefire deal over.

"What's problematic is that both sides have different interpretations of this memorandum of understanding," Sanam Vakil, director of Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa program, told CNN.

"And secondly, negotiations are not consistent enough to move this process forward."

Danny Citrinowicz, from Israel's Institute of National Security Studies, a former head of the Iran division of Israel's military intelligence establishment, accused the Trump administration of failing to understand Iran's intentions.

"Iran has no intention of returning to the status quo that prevailed in the Strait of Hormuz on February 28," he posted on social media platform X.

"As long as Washington continues to insist on restoring the previous situation in the straits, it is likely that Tehran will respond and even intensify its responses.

"Once a spiral of escalation begins, it is very difficult to stop it."

So what comes next?

While Trump is promising to hit Iran hard, once again raising the idea of bombing power and desalination plants, it is worth remembering and considering the trajectory of his rhetoric throughout the war.

At one stage he threatened "a whole civilisation will die tonight" if Iran did not agree to a ceasefire.

He did not follow through. The ceasefire was extended.

Trump spent weeks claiming the Iranians were about to agree to terms to end the war. CNN counted 38 declarations before the deal was struck.

Even as his frustration boiled over at the NATO summit in Ankara, where he called the Iranians liars and said he did not want anything to do with them, he also noted his negotiators would still be talking to Tehran.

The 60-day timeframe they had set to reach a deal, which is almost at the halfway point already, was always going to be ambitious, but the president is still dangling it as a possible avenue for an outcome.

None of this is to say that a return to all-out war is off the agenda. But it puts the next steps into some sort of context.

One thing that is clear is the resolve of the Iranian regime and its supporters to hold firm.

It was on clear display during the week-long funeral of Ali Khamenei.

As his coffin was brought to the city of Mashhad for his burial this week, a massive banner unfurled in the crowd.

It read: "We will kill Trump."

It is a message of defiance from an oppressive regime — both for domestic consumption as it seeks to galvanise support amongst the population, and to combat perceptions internationally that it is a country on its knees.