"The principals need to speak truth to power. And the president needs to be smart enough to listen," wrote Daniel R. DePetris — advice that comes amid a diplomatic pause the United States and Iran have only just extended.
April 21 ceasefire extension and a fragile diplomatic window
President Trump’s April 21 decision to extend his original two-week ceasefire with Iran — taken less than 12 hours after he had expressed reluctance to do just that — has, at least briefly, halted the shooting. The extension gives both sides more time to salvage a diplomatic process that the author describes as “defined by misleading statements, rhetorical chest-thumping, and conflicting agendas.” But the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz and the negotiating leverage each side holds remain unresolved.
2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA and the "maximum-pressure" strategy
DePetris traces the current predicament back to 2018, when President Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA). The administration then launched a “maximum-pressure” strategy intended to keep Iranian oil off global markets and cut Iranian-linked banks out of the international financial system, in the hope that Ali Khamenei would “come back to the table on U.S. terms.”
That calculation, the piece argues, was mistaken: Iran “took advantage of the U.S. withdrawal by freeing itself from the deal's nuclear restrictions,” producing more and faster centrifuges, expanding enrichment beyond the treaty cap of 3.67 percent, and restricting International Atomic Energy Agency access.
By November 2023, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was roughly 22 times larger than the deal had allowed, the article reports — a quantitative marker the author uses to show how the pre-war status quo deteriorated after the U.S. exit from the JCPOA.
Iran’s enriched uranium and the limits of coercion
DePetris contends that the United States’ coercive campaign has not produced the desired outcome. He notes that “despite last June’s U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the thousands since Feb. 28, Iran still has roughly 1,000 pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium” — a stockpile the author calls “leverage that Tehran wouldn’t have if Trump had chosen to stay in the agreement.”
The article frames this as a repeat of earlier assumptions: that sufficient pressure would compel Iran to capitulate. Instead, the pressure has afforded Iran “more chips to play with.”
Strait of Hormuz: traffic collapsed and new bargaining chips
Before the war, roughly 120 tankers transited the Strait of Hormuz daily, carrying about one-fifth of the world’s crude oil. According to DePetris, the U.S. and Israeli military campaign “changed the status quo virtually overnight.” The author reports that traffic through the waterway has since plunged by 95 percent, contributing to price hikes “on everything from fuel to fertilizer.”
The piece describes Tehran’s response as effectively closing the chokepoint and “picking and choosing which vessels could enter,” while Washington’s blockade of Iranian ports has incentivized Tehran to prolong its closure. Tehran, the article says, has offered to re-open the waterway if Washington ends the war, lifts the blockade and guarantees not to bomb in the future — terms that would require substantial U.S. concessions. DePetris argues that “unplugging the strait is now at least as important to the Trump administration as accounting for Iran’s nuclear material.”
What this means for policymakers, commercial shipping, and presidential leverage
- Policymakers and the interagency: DePetris urges a “robust, operational inter-agency process” and an expanded inner circle, arguing that different departments will offer divergent views and that “a full-fledged debate” with constant feedback is how policy should function. He warns that stubbornness and unwillingness to recognize mistakes will exacerbate the problems policymakers seek to solve.
- Commercial shipping and the energy market: With daily tanker transits reduced from about 120 to a reported 95 percent lower volume, the piece stresses direct economic impacts — higher fuel and fertilizer prices — and suggests that shipping actors will watch for whether Washington meets Tehran’s conditions to re-open the strait.
- The president and negotiators: DePetris contends that settlements are likely to require U.S. concessions, potentially including “an internationally guaranteed security commitment that the United States will refrain from going to war against Iran in the future,” concessions he says “will be difficult for Trump to swallow.” He concludes that any deal, as presently situated, is likely to be “more satisfying to the regime than it needed to be.”
DePetris’s central judgment is stark: repeating the same assumptions about coercion — without admitting past mistakes or broadening the policymaking process — risks ceding U.S. leverage and prolonging a costly standoff. The ceasefire extension of April 21 buys time, but the author argues that what follows will depend on whether U.S. decision-makers open their deliberations to challenge and adjust the strategy on offer.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
