Commentary: Trump’s ‘little war’ with Iran just got a lot bigger - CNA

The conflict is becoming a struggle to determine the future of the wider Middle East and America’s role in it, says Marc Champion for Bloomberg Opinion.

US President Donald Trump salutes as members of the military carry the casket of a soldier who was killed during an attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan during a dignified transfer of his remains at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware on Jul 22, 2026. (File photo: Reuters/Evan Vucci)

LONDON: It is an unintended feature of United States President Donald Trump’s Plan B for defeating Iran – economic strangulation – that the more successful the policy becomes, the more risk the men who run the Islamic Republic are willing to accept to fight it.

Judged on that metric, the American blockade and sanctions are working, but they’re also raising the stakes beyond what the US is willing to pay.

This raises the question of how long and disruptive the showdown with Iran is going to be, now that the US president has said he expects it to continue through the November midterms.

At that point, Trump believes it will stop quickly, because the Iranians will no longer have the elections as leverage, implying that they’d then be ready to make a deal. That’s optimistic.