WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has played this hand before during the 5-month-old Iran war.It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that he’s on the cusp of ordering U.S. forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to U.S. terms to end the war. It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.The hardball strategy — one that Trump honed during his years competing in New York’s real estate scene and has employed in politics — aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.While Trump has reveled in the U.S. military decimating layers of Tehran’s leadership and devastating its air force and navy, Iran is betting it can outlast Trump as he faces diminished stockpiles of munitions and the difficulty of executing a war that is unpopular with the American electorate ahead of November’s midterm election
The latest episode began on Friday when Trump, surrounded by his Cabinet, grimly declared that he was “losing faith” in negotiations with Iran and warned that the U.S. military “ will be hitting them very hard.” Hours later, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt heightened speculation in Washington — and around the globe — with an ominous statement asserting “Iran will continue to pay until they come to the table in, what President Trump deems, a meaningful way.”
