President Trump's self-declared “forever ceasefire” with Iran has now lasted 59 days, but the political and military tensions it was meant to ease are only deepening. The White House is caught in a diplomatic trap: Trump wants a deal to avoid the unpopularity of renewed force, but Iran's hardliners are making that impossible.
Behind closed doors, Trump's negotiators—Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—insist that Tehran is serious about an agreement. But on the ground, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), led by Ahmad Vahidi, is acting in direct contradiction to those claims. The result has been a crisis inside Iran's government: President Masoud Pezeshkian submitted his resignation to the Supreme Leader's office last weekend, citing his effective exclusion from major decisions and warning that hardline factions within the IRGC have seized control.
“I have been effectively excluded from major and vital decision-making processes in the country,” Pezeshkian said, according to his resignation statement. “The vacuum created by this situation has enabled hardline factions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to take control of affairs. Under these circumstances, I am unable to run the government.” The White House appears unwilling to accept that the IRGC now runs Iran, not the civilian leadership.
Trump's fourth objective for Operation Epic Fury—the military campaign against Iran—explicitly demands that Tehran stop arming and funding terrorist proxies abroad. But Iran has made the survival of Hezbollah a red line. For Israel, that group is an existential threat. For Trump, Israel's determination to eliminate Hezbollah “endangers Washington's efforts to secure a ceasefire extension with Iran,” as one administration source put it, and could derail any hope of reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump's frustration boiled over in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to accounts of the conversation, Trump told Netanyahu, “You're f---ing crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” The call came after Trump asked Netanyahu not to launch a major raid on Beirut and separately appealed to Hezbollah leaders to stop firing at Israel. Both requests were ignored.
As Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna noted, Trump “is reluctant to abandon the ceasefire, because he would then have to do the other thing he's threatened—and that's to put the U.S. into an offensive posture again, which is unpopular with the American public.” This reluctance has only emboldened Tehran. On Tuesday, Iran fired missiles and drones at Kuwait, the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, and a U.S. air base in the region. U.S. Central Command said it “successfully defeated multiple Iranian ballistic missiles and drones” and conducted self-defense strikes on Qeshm Island. Kuwait's foreign ministry condemned the attacks, noting they “targeted vital and civilian infrastructure including Kuwait International Airport, killing one person and injuring another.”
Iran claimed the strikes were retaliation for a U.S. missile hitting an oil tanker that tried to breach the blockade. The IRGC said the attacks “should serve as a lesson.” Hardline parliamentarian Esmail Kowsari called for even stronger confrontation, arguing that Americans “understand nothing except the language of force and power.”
Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon that negotiations continue, but he warned Iran: “It's time, one way or another, for you to make a deal. You've been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!” He is now demanding specific nuclear concessions in writing as part of a preliminary agreement. Iran responded with missiles.
The White House is running out of options. Unconditional surrender from the IRGC—Iran's center of gravity—may be the only outcome that resolves the standoff. But that would require Trump to follow through on his threat to resume Operation Epic Fury, this time with a commitment to finish the job. The alternative is a slow-motion defeat that undermines U.S. credibility across the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the political fallout at home is mounting. House passes resolution to halt Iran conflict, defying Trump, signaling bipartisan unease with the administration's Iran policy. And in a separate development, Trump signs order to reclassify 8,000 federal policy workers as at-will employees, a move that could reshape the federal workforce as the Iran crisis unfolds.
