The conflict has morphed into a volatile standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, as the economic costs mount and President Trump faces a political backlash at home.
On Thursday morning, Washington time, a senior Iranian official wrote on X that the country’s fighters were hiding in sea caves near the Strait of Hormuz, preparing to “devastate the aggressors.”
Eighteen minutes later, President Trump posted on Truth Social: “I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat” that is “putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Mr. Trump’s war on Iran, interrupted by a cease-fire that he extended indefinitely this week, has morphed from all-out bombardment to a volatile, costly standoff at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Neither side appears eager to return to the violence that ensnared much of the Middle East before the April 7 cease-fire, though both insist they are ready for it. And neither side is showing signs of capitulating to the other’s demands. The result is round after round of taunts, threats and maritime incidents, with many of the tensions playing out on social media even as the economic costs mount and Mr. Trump faces a political backlash at home.
Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist and vice president at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said she had assumed that a diplomatic deal would resolve the standoff quickly, given the economic and strategic costs to the United States of the Strait of Hormuz’s staying closed. But Ms. Maloney said she was now adjusting her expectations amid Iran’s determination to maintain control of the strait as leverage and the strategic quandary that Mr. Trump has found himself in.