Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, warned in a July 18 analysis on Substack that the U.S. and Iran are each independently arriving at the same dangerous conclusion: that diplomacy is no longer possible, and that only further military exhaustion of the other side can change the equation.
Parsi writes that the growing view in Tehran believes that as long as Washington retains the option of returning to war, negotiations serve little purpose, since the U.S. will always be tempted to improve its position through force when available. He cited Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s July 18 statement that Trump’s conduct has proven that “the signature of the U.S. President is utterly worthless and devoid of credibility.”
On the U.S. side, Parsi argues that Trump has concluded that Tehran’s stubbornness stems from Washington not hitting Iran hard enough during the earlier 38-day war, and is now hoping that a few more weeks of renewed strikes will degrade Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and force its hand. Parsi calls this “at best, a perilous gamble,” and one that is seemingly indifferent to costs for Gulf states, the global economy, and U.S. troops.
Parsi noted Iran has deliberately kept its retaliation moderate, striking only in response to comparable U.S. attacks on Iranian infrastructure, while still showing that it can penetrate American and regional air defenses, as shown by the recent killing of two U.S. service members. Nevertheless, if this dynamic is not changed, it only spells disaster for this region, and the world more generally. Parsi called this hardening of views “not an adjustment to reality” but “a profound failure of imagination and statecraft.”
