Why Is Trump Holding Off on Attacking Iran?
Because the countries around Iran asked him not to go back to full war, and his own intelligence services told him new strikes would not buy him anything. Reuters reported on Saturday, November 14, that President Trump has told senior advisers in recent days he may hold off on attacking Iran — on one condition: no new provocations from Tehran or from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. He said it in meetings with his national security advisers, after a series of intelligence briefings. He has not made up his mind about how the war ends. He is holding off on how it continues.
The plain reality is the distance between the plan and the pause. On October 31, Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman he was planning to attack after the elections. The crown prince pleaded with him to hold off, arguing that economic sanctions were already working. The war Trump launched with Israel in February has pushed fuel prices up around the world, and the voters have already delivered their verdict on it: a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken just before the November 3 elections found 55 percent of Americans said the war was not worth the cost, and Vice President JD Vance cited the war as the reason Republicans lost control of Congress.
What the White House claims is strength, not retreat. "As Commander-in-Chief, President Trump is the architect and sole decision-maker who holds all the cards and will always ensure that America's interests are protected," a White House official said in a statement. "The United States is in a very strong position with control of the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian economy collapsing. Only President Trump knows what he will do, and when." Israeli officials, for their part, have kept lobbying the administration to launch another military campaign, a U.S. official told Reuters.
A hold-off that lasts only until the other side moves is not peace. It is a pause with a trigger on it — and both sides know where the trigger is.
The common-sense principle is simple: a threat you do not have to carry out is worth more than a strike that changes nothing. American intelligence agencies have assessed that the naval blockade and the sanctions are hurting Iran's economy and will keep the pressure on — and that renewed strikes would not significantly shift Iran's demands in negotiations. The consequence is a war now being fought with pressure instead of bombs: the blockade stays, Washington is moving to cut off weapons and sanctioned goods reaching Iran by land and through the Caspian Sea, and in Congress the incoming Democratic majority is moving the other way entirely, to cut the war's money off — our blog's report is here: Democratic senators move to defund Trump's Iran war through the funding bill.
The details that matter are these. The private pause follows a public one: on Monday, November 10, Trump said he would hold off on fresh strikes "for the time being" after appeals from the region, including White House talks with Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, naming Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan has spoken with Trump three times since October 28, and the November 7 call stressed that tensions between Iran and the U.S. need to end. Iran's own truce proposal — end the port blockade, lift some sanctions, stop the bombing, and Tehran stops its Hormuz blockade, with nuclear talks later — is still on the table and still rejected: Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Tehran's conditions "outrageous and ridiculous and really not realistic," the same week Trump pulled Vance off the Iran track, as our blog reported here: Trump pulls Vance off the Iran track and rules out any deal. The military option has not gone away: a third aircraft carrier is moving toward the Middle East, bombing Iran's underground nuclear sites is still an option on the table, and Trump was briefed on weapon stockpiles drawn down to worrying levels. On Thursday he said it in his own words, and it is the sentence the whole pause hangs on: "I could end it immediately, but at the request of the nations that I am looking to protect, we are doing it a little bit longer way, a bit more civilly."