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THERE IS NO END TO THE WAR WITH IRAN  
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David Dayen
May 8, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ How the haphazard ending to the war won’t divert from the
terrible path Donald Trump has led the world down. _

Motorists drive past a billboard showing the Strait of Hormuz and the
sewn lips of President Donald Trump, in downtown Tehran, Iran, May 2,
2026. , Credit: Vahid Salemi/AP Photo

 

_This story was first featured in the Amercan Prospect's __Aftermath_
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Dayen exploring the economic consequences of the war in Iran. To have
these stories delivered to your in-box as soon as they are published,
__sign up for the newsletter here_
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Usually at the top of every edition of Aftermath, we update current
developments aimed at a permanent ending to the war in Iran. But today
I want to reflect on how the idea of “ending” the war is a kind of
fallacy, both because the end isn’t really an end in material terms,
and because it will do nothing to slow down an ongoing crisis
triggered by the ridiculous decision to start bombing. Cheery stuff in
this edition of Aftermath.

Every day we wake up to talk of a peace deal, and every day an oil
trader makes money off it
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peace breaking out that the U.S. initiated military strikes on
Thursday aimed at Iran’s Qeshm Port, a round of fire that was
somehow deemed too “low level” to break the cease-fire. But sure,
we’ll get to peace someday soon.

On Wednesday, we heard about a one-page memo
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would end the war. (Funny, the Trump administration told Congress last
week that the war was already over.) But the details of the memo just
outline _another_ set of negotiations: one to reach agreement on
opening the Strait of Hormuz, and another on Iran’s nuclear program.
So there are talks over a deal to have more talks.

The Iranian leadership is biding its time
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before making its next move. And why wouldn’t they? It’s become
public that President Trump desperately wants a deal completed
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before his summit in China on May 14-15. Every day closer to that
gives the Iranians more leverage to set terms, as well as giving the
Chinese the upper hand on other matters like Taiwan, if Trump has to
beg them to fix the Middle East situation for him.

The blockade that Trump imposed on Iranian exports is supposed to be
debilitating Iran, forcing them to come to the table. But Iran
pre-positioned its oil resources
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to avoid economic damage from a blockade, with tens of millions of its
barrels of oil floating at sea, and land routes opened up for the
rest. While the domestic economy is in trouble
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why Iranian citizens were protesting the regime in the first
place—the oil industry that is the source of the regime’s wealth
is trundling along
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Indeed, U.S. intelligence now indicates, according to _The Washington
Post_, that Iran can outlast a blockade for several months
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not only because of oil mobility but because it continues to hold
significant stockpiles of missiles and weapons. So if Iran can wait
Trump out, and he needs a deal in a week, who has the leverage?
Whatever you’re seeing in the media today about the state of
negotiations will be better than the deal Trump actually gets, given
these dynamics.

And that deal, when it happens, bears no relationship to the stated
objectives of the war. The U.S. and Israel said they wanted to
eradicate Iran’s nuclear program and change its regime. The regime
is now composed of more hard-liners than before, and Iran’s nuclear
capability has not budged
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since last summer. Now the two sides are negotiating the opening of
the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the conflict, and the
terms of Iran’s nuclear program, which they were negotiating before
the conflict. Moreover, the compromise being contemplated involves
Iran pausing uranium enrichment in exchange for the U.S. lifting
sanctions and unfreezing Iranian funds. That sounds suspiciously like
the deal President Obama struck in 2015
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that Trump ripped up when he took office, complete with the “bags of
cash” sent to Iran that Trump flipped out over back then.

All this war has done is killed thousands of people, opened a new
front for Israel
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in Lebanon, damaged most U.S. military sites
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and most energy production facilities in the region, led to oil spills
that are visible from space
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created a shipping bottleneck that will take at least a year to fix,
raised domestic gas prices to a record for this time of year
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cost American consumers $34.3 billion and counting
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airline [[link removed]] with more likely to come
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and led us down an imminent path to physical shortages
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of critical commodities
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like oil, including in the United States
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I have never in my life seen a war that achieved literally none of its
objectives while directly causing this many devastating costs, and I
lived through Iraq and Afghanistan.

THE AFTERMATH

That’s especially true because the war’s end, as stated above,
won’t end the war, or at least won’t end the consequences of it.
Oil prices are not going to return to prewar levels
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for a long time. Fertilizer shortages have already damaged at least
one harvest. Commodities that derive from oil and gas like plastics,
or commodities reliant on Gulf-area production like aluminum, will not
bounce back immediately. Neither will semiconductor production that
depends on natural gas
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and helium
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that comes from the region.

Ships aren’t even all that likely to travel through the strait if
everything is still under negotiation. The ill-fated Project Freedom
to liberate commercial ships from the region has ended
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utter failure, with a grand total of two ships making it through. The
Saudis wouldn’t let the U.S. use their bases or airspace
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for the operation, as they saw it as leading to a resumption of a hot
war. Every ship will not risk missile damage until something is
definitively in place. That will take some weeks, and every day of the
shipping crisis will take another week to resolve.

Physical shortages or higher prices for necessities like food and
energy inevitably spur economic hardship that leads to social unrest,
political chaos, and internecine conflict. Despite the happy talk that
America is “shielded” from these consequences, we’re seeing
these outcomes as we speak. High stock prices are wishcasting, fueled
by investors who want the war’s end to solve everything.

Today, Whirlpool talked about a “recession-level industry decline
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as it released first-quarter earnings, with nobody wanting to make
big-ticket purchases. McDonald’s, with its finger perhaps most
directly on the pulse of the average consumer, said consumer spending
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is “certainly not improving, and it may be getting a little bit
worse.” When energy and food take up a higher share of the monthly
budget, demand for optional goods and services falls
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And those optional luxuries support jobs in travel, transportation,
tourism, and a host of other industries. Having a better recession
than the rest of the world is cold comfort.

We’re going to be talking about the Iran war for much longer than
there was an Iran war. Not everybody has caught up to how this has
fundamentally changed the world. But they will.

_David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is
the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and
Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s
Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast __Organized Money_
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* U.S.-Iran war
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* Iran-U.S. negotiations
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* Consequences
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