Iran Plays Trump's Game to Deepen His War Dilemma

President Donald Trump appears to be facing fierce resistance from Iran, which is employing his own diplomatic tactics against him. On Monday, 13 July 2026, Trump complained that the Islamic Republic could not be trusted to honour an agreement. The rebuke is ironic given his own track record of withdrawing from international pacts. “It was a deal that was done, then they broke it. They always break it,” Trump told Fox News, referring to the memorandum of understanding that briefly halted the war. His criticism drew sharp scrutiny, considering Trump previously pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord and scrapped the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal during his first term. Tensions escalated when Trump stated his intention to charge a toll on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi replied sarcastically on X, suggesting that Trump had inadvertently legitimised Tehran’s position to levy fees in the vital waterway. “POTUS is absolutely right,” Araghchi wrote. He added mockingly that the mooted 20 per cent tariff was too high, and that Iran would be fairer in setting prices, a direct jibe at Trump’s reputation as the author of ‘The Art of the Deal’. Although Trump recently claimed he had brought peace to the Middle East through the signing of the MOU weeks ago, he has now changed his narrative. In a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump described the deal as merely a test that Iran failed to meet and said it meant very little. The collapse of the MOU underscores a harsh reality for Washington: Iran continues to dictate the dynamics of the conflict by exploiting its geographical advantage in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s negotiating team, led by Vice President JD Vance, is seen as having failed to anticipate loopholes in the MOU’s legal language that allowed Iran to gain new leverage. While physical confrontations have resumed, including a US drone strike on the Bandar Abbas Naval Base on 12 July 2026, some analysts see room to avoid all-out war. Trump has so far shown no desire for a ground invasion of Iran’s oil production hub on Kharg Island, which is predicted to result in heavy US casualties. For its part, Iran is also maintaining escalation limits by not indiscriminately attacking civilian infrastructure, although one errant US strike was reported to have killed 168 children at an Iranian school earlier this year. Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, told CNN that diplomatic space still exists despite the ongoing tit-for-tat strikes. However, he warned the situation could spiral out of control if the nightly exchanges continue without clear rules of engagement. Now, nearly five months into a conflict he claimed he had already won, Trump faces a major unanswered question: how to exit this war without losing face politically or strategically.