Iran’s strategy to simply outlast Trump’s presidency

commentary Meanwhile, U.S. oil reserves hit a new low as the economy teeters Published August 16, 2026 6:30AM (EDT) Demonstration in support of the Iranian government on March 22, 2026, in central Tehran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images) A version of this essay first appeared in Crash Course, Salon's free morning newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus more of Salon’s bold journalism on how policies, movements and culture wars affect real people. By now most of us have heard the acronym TACO, for Trump Always Chickens Out, but I was recently introduced to NACHO, which means Not a Chance Hormuz Opens. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about these cutesy insults — Donald Trump surely enjoys them, given his apparent enthusiasm for Mexican food — but appropriate or not, the labels seem accurate. On Monday, Iran announced the strait will remain closed until Trump gives in to their demands, which include, according to the New York Times, “the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade and sanctions on Iran, the withdrawal of American forces from around the country, the payment of war reparations, the release of frozen Iranian assets, and the end of attacks on Iran’s allies in the region.” Trump is so eager to claim victory in the war he started alongside Israel that he might even be willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, unnamed U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal. The president has also made his own list of demands, not all of which are coherent, that includes compensation for the 18 U.S. service members killed since the war began. In a Truth Social post, he also demanded that “compensation should be paid to the families of the hundreds of thousands of innocent protestors that Iran has killed over the last 50 years, not to mention the 52,000 that have been killed in the last five months.” Iran’s timetable of negotiations is reportedly designed to drag out past the midterms, with the expectation being Republicans will get clobbered in elections over high gas prices and the deeply unpopular war. Let’s not pretend Trump truly cares about dead Iranian citizens, given how many have been killed by U.S. and Israeli bombs. But even if Trump were to agree to the Islamic Republic’s terms tomorrow, Tehran seems unlikely to serve up the victory he so badly craves. Iran’s timetable of negotiations is reportedly designed to drag out past the midterms, with the expectation being Republicans will get clobbered in elections over high gas prices and the deeply unpopular war. Such a loss could lead to Trump’s third impeachment — a very big if! — or at least hobble any further funding for the conflict. But failing that, Tehran’s Plan C could already be coming clear: Just wait till Trump is gone. As reported by the International Business Times, Majid Shakeri, a senior adviser linked to Iran’s parliament, has urged the nation’s leaders to avoid both open war and a definitive agreement with Trump. The best strategy, he argues, is simply to wait until the end of Trump’s term, writing on X, “The path to victory in this war is neither just fighting nor just reaching an understanding. The path to victory is ‘managing the process of neither war nor peace, up to the point of victory.’” Similarly, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi told PBS NewsHour on Tuesday that “One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition, so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost.” Start your day with essential news from Salon. Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course. While such a pathway is not Iran’s official policy, it nonetheless seems like a plausible outcome. But waiting until Jan. 20, 2029, when Trump’s second term will end — assuming he doesn’t die first, get impeached and removed from office, or try to break the Constitution badly enough to somehow serve a third term — could backfire. (That might mean an end to Iran’s problems, but it certainly wouldn’t be for Americans. A Tucker Carlson win in 2028 might sound like a joke now, but so did Trump in 2015.) At any rate, the president’s war with Iran is clearly unsustainable in the long-term, and the U.S. may have to bow out sooner rather than later. Since attacking Iran, the U.S. has increasingly ran low on weapons stockpiles. A recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies details why this is happening; it’s not just the Iran war, but the entire spectrum of how the military operates, including the Pentagon’s budget process and how the U.S. has engaged in recent wars, including under the Biden administration. While I’m skeptical of such reports being used to further inflate the military-industrial complex — look no further than Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s demands for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget — numbers are numbers, and you can’t bomb something with what you don’t have. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy announced Monday that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell by 6.1 million barrels to just under 300 million barrels last week. That’s the lowest the SPR has been since 1983. For this and numerous other reasons, such as the recent jobs report that shows how badly the economy is faring under Trumponomics, many folks are comparing the president to Jimmy Carter, who famously faced his own economic challenges and stalemate with Iran during the 1979-1980 hostage crisis. But really, this level of incompetence is in a league of its own. There are other dumb acronyms for the Trump administration, continuing the taqueria theme, such as EMPANADA, for Everybody Makes Promises and Nobody Actually Delivers Anything, and TAMALES, for Trump Always Messes Around, Leaves Everybody Shafted. I have my own feelings about this era, steeped in euphemism, but whatever people decide to brand it, there’s no denying reality: As we should’ve learned with Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on, you can’t just drop bombs on countries and expect them to do your bidding. Or as I might put it, SALSA: Someone Always Loses to Stupid Aggression. That someone is inevitably us. 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