(This article is part of the View From India newsletter curated by The Hindu’s foreign affairs experts. To get the newsletter in your inbox every Monday, subscribe here.)Three months after Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched the war on Iran, Mr. Trump is still negotiating a temporary ceasefire extension and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for economic concessions to Tehran. A deal is yet to be reached. Considering their originally stated aims of regime change in Tehran, the dismantling of Iran’s missile and nuclear programmes and the curbing of its support for regional non-state allies as their major objectives, it is clear that this war has gone rather badly for Washington, as The Hindu’s editorial today points out.“Mr. Trump’s military campaign has failed to achieve any of its declared objectives. By striking U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf and taking control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran widened the conflict regionally and economically,” it noted, contending that if Mr. Trump is serious about a negotiated settlement, a deal is within reach. “But if he seeks to achieve through diplomacy what he failed to secure through war, he risks entangling the U.S. in yet another forever war,” the editorial said.Meanwhile, the United States said on Thursday (May 28, 2026) that it had shot down five drones launched by Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and struck a ground control station in Bandar Abbas, while Iran fired ballistic missiles at an American base in Kuwait, threatening ongoing negotiations to end the war, Stanly Johny reports.The waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea has emerged as the most consequential battleground of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, with Tehran effectively taking control of the route and rattling energy markets and the global economy. As the only gateway to the high seas from the Persian Gulf, the Hormuz Strait has remained one of the world’s most important waterways for centuries, writes Stanly Johny, in this timely profile of the narrow strait, 50 km wide at its entrance and exit, connecting the Persian Gulf waters to the Gulf of Oman, which joins the Arabian Sea. “One of Mr. Trump’s key demands for a deal today is that Iran should reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was fully open before Mr. Trump and his ally Benjamin Netanyahu launched this war on February 28.”Quad meet