Trump, Tehran, and Israel still see victory as possible; the war has not yet reached the point where cost and reality force strategic retreat.
On Monday, 3 Farvardin 1405 (March 23, 2026), Donald Trump, the President of the United States, announced that he was negotiating with figures inside Iran and that a diplomatic and lasting solution to the current tension and war might be found. He also backed away from the 48-hour deadline for attacking Iran’s electricity infrastructure and postponed it for five days. On the other side, Iran denied any negotiations whatsoever with Trump and his team.
Throughout the day, even stranger reports emerged. Trump spoke of negotiations with the “respected Leader” in Iran — though apparently not Mojtaba Khamenei, and in any case he does not even know whether Mojtaba is alive. The name of Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, was also raised as a negotiating party. In Iran, however, all these claims were denied. The only point not denied was that the United States had proposed a meeting in Pakistan involving J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice president, or Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, and that Iran had not yet responded.
That is the broad outline of events. But from the very beginning, the larger question was whether the three sides to the conflict — the United States, Israel, and Iran, or at least Tehran and Washington — had in fact reached, after four bloody weeks, a point at which they might test the path of negotiation.
What a “Moment of Truth” Looks Like
In every war, when “absolute and lasting victory” becomes impossible for either the attacker or the defender, a “moment of truth” emerges. It is the moment when both sides bring what they had hoped for down to earth. In other words, they become aware, to some degree, of the objective reality of their strength, endurance, and capacities, and they see how much of what they imagined about the war and its outcome is actually possible, and which desires they must abandon.
Perhaps the example of this moment of truth that is most familiar to all of us is the meeting in 1367 (1988) when state officials told Ruhollah Khomeini that the condition of the war, the country, and the economy was not good, and that achieving “absolute victory” in the war would require a long list of resources and fighting forces. That was the moment when truth showed itself. “Truth” appeared in the form of the bitter chalice that the first leader of the Islamic Republic drank sip by sip as he accepted the ceasefire.
There have been no shortage of such moments in American history as well. One of the clearest examples is the end of the Vietnam War. It was a war that began with the belief that the United States could, through its military superiority, stabilize a desired political order in South Vietnam and prevent the spread of communism. But as time passed, the gap between the desired image and the reality on the ground deepened. The U.S. military could win many operations and inflict heavy casualties on the other side, but it could not turn its military superiority into a stable political order.
The moment of truth for Washington came when it became clear that continuing the war would lead neither to victory nor even to preserving the status quo, but would merely drive up costs — both on the battlefield and inside the United States. Widespread domestic protests, pressure from public opinion, economic attrition, and human losses all showed that “continuing” no longer meant “winning.”
The result of that confrontation with reality was the Paris Agreement of 1973, an agreement meant to make possible a face-saving American withdrawal from the war. American forces withdrew, but what had been imagined as the “preservation of South Vietnam” quickly collapsed. Only two years later, in 1975, Saigon fell, and the image of helicopters evacuating the last personnel from the roof of the U.S. embassy became one of the defining symbols of that “moment of truth”: the moment when the distance between desire and reality could no longer be denied.
In fact, the United States in Vietnam reached that point not in one specific battle, but through a gradual and lengthy process in which it had to choose between continuing an endless war and accepting its limitations. The second choice meant accepting failure in its original aims, even if, in official language, it was narrated as a “responsible end to the war.”
Not Yet at the Breaking Point
This is the same pattern repeated in many wars. It is the point at which military forces put everything they have on the table, yet the political and strategic goals of the conflict remain out of reach. In this merciless moment when truth reveals itself, the fate of the war no longer depends on military capacity, but on the capacity to endure the continuation of the conflict.
Have the United States and Iran reached that point? If we do not want to be overly optimistic, the answer is no. Not, of course, because the war is not at an impasse. But for now, the two elements of time and cost have not yet grown large enough to act like a needle and burst the bubble of each side’s fantasies and assumptions.
It is clear that in the first phase of the war, the United States and its partner Israel have achieved only tactical gains. The leader of the Islamic Republic and a number of military, political, and security officials have been killed; part of the Islamic Republic’s naval capacity, part of its missile capacity, and some of its security centers have been destroyed; and control of Iran’s skies is in the hands of the United States and Israel. But these were not the reasons the war was started. These are tactical gains on the battlefield. What were, and what are, the goals of the United States and Israel? The destruction of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear, proxy, and missile programs, with “regime change” as the extra prize on top. To be sure, they are not especially insistent on whether that prize is secured or not. If it happens, all the better; if it does not, they will still declare victory on the basis of those three achievements.
Which one of these three goals has actually been realized? Almost none of them. Which of them has come close to realization? Almost none of them. Is there a low-cost path to achieving these goals? For now, no.
That is the situation on the American and Israeli side of the war. On the Iranian side, the situation is much the same. The daily bombing of cities and round-the-clock targeted assassinations are not conditions any government would consider desirable. But Iran too, like the United States and Israel, has achieved notable tactical gains. Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz. It has shifted the cost of the war from two actors onto the global economy. In its offensive missile campaign against Israel, U.S. regional bases, and the Gulf states, it has so far been successful. More importantly, despite relentless bombardment, it has managed to keep the most important element of its offensive strategy — its missile and drone cities — operational.
Tactical Gains Are Not Strategic Victory
But are these tactical gains the ultimate aim of Iran in the current war? No. Has Iran managed to create a new security balance that would provide durable protection for itself? No. Has it created an ecosystem of “bearable coexistence” as an alternative to the current hostility? No.
Both Iran and the United States and Israel are still caught up in the euphoria of the tactical gains of the first four weeks of war. For Iran, that euphoria lies in not collapsing, in gaining control of the Strait of Hormuz, and in carrying out daily attacks on Israel and the Gulf states. For the United States and Israel, it lies in killing leaders of the Islamic Republic and striking military, political, and economic infrastructure inside Iran.
The moment of truth in war comes when doubt begins to take root on all sides. For now, all three sides in the war still believe that their dreams can be realized. Iran wants, in addition to preserving its nuclear, proxy, and missile capacities and continuing its previous crisis-producing security strategies, to take control of the Strait of Hormuz as well and, as they put it, “put the Gulf countries back in their place.” The United States and Israel, too, want to destroy Iran’s proxy, missile, and nuclear capacities and “throw the Islamic Republic — or at least its unconventional security strategies — onto the ash heap of history.”
Has the moment of truth arrived in this war? This war has still not reached the point where reality takes the place of fantasy. For now, all three sides to the conflict still regard absolute victory as both probable and possible.
