This is neither peace nor war, and everyone’s a winner and a loser

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The Iran war is an unusual conflict in which both sides are suffering massive losses while proclaiming that they are winning or have won.

They’re both right − and both wrong.

With skirmishes continuing in the Middle East and with negotiations flagging, the two sides have entered a kind of shadow period that is neither peace nor war. The ceasefire has ceased to end the firing. But in a month’s time it hasn’t led to any breakthroughs either.

Nor has it broken the will of the two sides, which have been engaged in a struggle that is really the latest manifestation of a cycle of simmering and flaring violence that has lasted for nearly a half-century. The two countries are the international versions of Kramer vs. Kramer, the cinematic legal and marital drama that was released in 1979, the year the U.S.-Iran conflict began.

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Both sides are issuing a combination of hype and snipe, the latest coming from U.S. President Donald Trump. “There’s no pressure,” he said. “We’re going to have a complete victory.”

And yet there is pressure.

It comes from U.S. domestic politics, where extended military engagements − with the exception of the Second World War − have often prompted an erosion of public support and where Republican control of Capitol Hill is at stake. It comes from Iran, where economic distress and public despair are mixing with the determination of the country’s theocratic leadership to press on. It comes from international sources, where there is growing uneasiness, if not a sense of crisis, over soaring energy and fertilizer prices.

But the situation on the battlefields − the most important battlefields now, the negotiating table, the public airwaves and exchanges of social-media explosions − is at an impasse. It almost resembles the trench warfare of the First World War, as the two sides seem to be digging in for an extended standoff.

The U.S. and Iran are separated by something old (seething resentments on both sides, plus the continuation of Iran’s nuclear-weapon project), something new (restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that controls a fifth of the world’s oil supply) and something blue (the prospect of extended worldwide economic distress).

Both sides have domestic divisions.

In the U.S., those divisions are rooted in partisan resentments intensified in the Trump years; fissures in the MAGA movement, which considers overseas military engagements a betrayal of its fundamental principles; and gasoline prices that Tuesday were US$4.50 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.

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Though public opinion in Iran is difficult to measure, public displeasure with the government reached explosive levels earlier this year, almost certainly aggravated by the misery of homelessness, food shortages and infrastructure destruction and disruptions caused by U.S. and Israeli air strikes.

For the U.S., the hope is that Iran’s suffering will eventually prompt it to collapse, much the way both Nazi Germany in 1940 and Great Britain in 1944 and 1945 hoped that relentless bombing would prompt their opponents to buckle.

Both sides in this 21st-century conflict say they are committed to a negotiated peace. Both sides say they are willing to restart the hostilities. Both sides would profit from the former and suffer from the latter. While Mr. Trump has proclaimed that the ceasefire is on “life support,” medical experts say life support measures can be a bridge to survival − or can merely prolong the path to death.

Mr. Trump’s prognosis is telling. He likened it to a situation “where the doctor walks in and says, ‘Sir, your loved one has approximately a 1-per-cent chance of living.’”

At the same time, he is proposing a suspension of the federal tax that adds 18.3 cents to each gallon of gasoline and 24.3 cents to each gallon of diesel fuel. The tax is considered a user fee for the country’s interstate roadways and since 1956 has been employed to bolster the Highway Trust Fund.

“It’s a small percentage, but it’s, you know, it’s still money,” Mr. Trump said. “As soon as this is over with Iran, as soon as it’s over, you’re going to see gasoline and oil drop like a rock.”

States add additional levies that range from California’s 70.92 cents to Alaska’s 8.95 cents.

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A reduction in federal gasoline taxes requires the approval of Congress, which has never granted it. Such plans were floated in 2008 and 2022 and came to nothing, but there is now support on Capitol Hill from lawmakers ranging from the conservative Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to the liberal Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. The Blumenthal proposal would offset the losses to the highway fund by providing additional funding that the Bipartisan Policy Center said would add to the budget deficit.

Meanwhile, an estimated 1,600 ships are caught in the Strait of Hormuz, accounting for about two weeks’ worth of passage.

“The Trump administration has helped the Iranians weaponize the strait. Now it is a straitjacket on global trade,” said Barry Appleton, the interim director of the Balsillie Legal Advisory Centre in Waterloo, Ont., and co-director of the Center for International Law at New York Law School.

“The Iranians hadn’t realized the true value of the strait. … But now they will get a lot more from the Americans and from everybody because they will put tolls on a waterway where there once was free passage.”