A war of regression: how Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran

Analysts fear Iran has played a weak hand well and America has blundered into a defining strategic failure Middle East crisis – live updates Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m (£225m) a day, America is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025 . Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way America demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, the US is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow (with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq). Continue reading...