The president is behaving as if the battleground is the same, but it isn’t. Iran has leverage and knows it
And so to war. Again. After a ceasefire and a hiatus, Donald Trump is now into the second day of a new phase of bombing Iran, with the US military claiming to have struck 170 Iranian targets in the past 48 hours.
This is no surprise. Speaking at the Nato summit in Ankara this week, Donald Trump said he believed the US-Iran memorandum of understanding was “over”. He described Iran’s leaders as “evil, sick people” and threatened renewed military action and even a new blockade of Iranian ports, while also leaving the door open to further negotiations.
Sina Toossi is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, where his work focuses on US-Iran relations, US policy toward the Middle East and nuclear issues