Trump abandons Hormuz operation a day after announcing it as US-Israel campaign on Iran reaches 60 days with regime intact
Two months into the US-Israeli war on Iran, intensive bombing has failed to decapitate the Iranian regime or degrade its military capabilities, while Iran's continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatens the global economy. President Trump announced a military operation on May 4 to force the strait, then dropped it the next day; Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the war 'finished' the same day, only for Trump to counter with the threat of 'much stronger' bombings absent diplomatic progress. Iran's allies struck the United Arab Emirates on May 5, while a ceasefire that has held since April 8 has left the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran's strait closure both in place ahead of Trump's May 14-15 Beijing visit.
The US-Israeli war on Iran has reached its third month with neither of its declared objectives met, according to a Le Monde editorial published May 6. Despite a particularly intensive bombing campaign, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have not produced the regime change they sought in Tehran, nor have they stripped the Iranian government of the means to harm its adversaries — a point underscored on May 5 when Iran-linked forces struck the United Arab Emirates.
Tehran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz, in place since the war began, has handed the regime an asymmetric weapon. The waterway carries roughly a fifth of seaborne crude trade, and its continued closure has put the threat of a major economic shock on the table at a moment Washington is preparing to re-engage Beijing: Trump is due to travel to the Chinese capital on May 14 and 15.
US messaging on the war has fractured publicly within a single news cycle. On May 4, Trump announced a military operation to force passage through the strait. By May 5 the operation had been abandoned. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, declared on the same day that the war was "finished" — a statement Trump then contradicted by warning of "much stronger" bombings if diplomacy did not advance. Le Monde wrote that Washington's word "has rarely been so devalued" and that the contradiction is feeding a dangerous Iranian commitment to escalation.
A ceasefire formally in force since April 8 has frozen the conflict without resolving it. The US naval blockade of Iranian ports remains in place, and so does the strait closure. Iran has separately proposed reopening the strait in exchange for the lifting of the blockade — a side deal Washington has not acted on. The editorial framed a first-stage agreement as the trade Tehran has already signalled: restored freedom of navigation in Hormuz in return for the end of the blockade of Iranian ports, with reciprocal concessions both sides will need to accept.
The deeper dispute is the Iranian nuclear programme. Iran is a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and denies any weapons intent, but its uranium enrichment levels are not consistent with purely civilian use. The priority, the editorial argued, must be a return of robust International Atomic Energy Agency inspections — both to constrain enrichment and to track a stock of highly enriched uranium that was probably buried during US bombings in June 2025.
That stock built up after Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated under Barack Obama. The current administration has repeatedly insisted it could secure a tougher deal in its place, but has not. Tehran's economy, drained by sanctions and inflation, gives it reasons to accept inspections in return for sanctions relief; for Washington, the off-ramp is a programme back under monitoring without an open-ended war. Both sides will have to abandon maximalist demands for either of those outcomes to materialise.