For years, U.S. President Donald Trump berated his predecessors for plunging the country into “forever wars” in the Middle East. His war on Iran may not last forever, but he is now finding it very hard to extricate the United States from a conflict that he has good reason to regret.

Over the weekend, Trump insisted that a deal to end the war with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz was “largely negotiated” and nearly done. Iranian officials also suggested that they were close to agreeing to a memorandum of understanding with the United States that would stop fighting on all fronts and lift a U.S. naval blockade. The terms of this new agreement, however, were unclear and it seemed that the two sides remained far apart on important issues, likely including Iran’s willingness to make immediate concessions about its nuclear program. That uncertainty has now turned into doubt. On May 25, U.S. forces struck targets in the south of Iran, spurring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to promise retaliation, with future negotiations and the ostensible cease-fire now in the balance.

Trump’s war Iran has raised the haunting specters of interventions past. During congressional hearings in late April, U.S. Democratic Representative John Garamendi called the war with Iran a “quagmire” and a “political and economic disaster at every level.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded aggressively, mocking the idea that a two-month ⁠mission was a quagmire, before going on to accuse Garamendi of being defeatist and “handing propaganda to our enemies.”

Perhaps quagmire was not the best metaphor. It is so often associated with the Vietnam War, in which U.S. troops were bogged down for years. Iran is also not going to resemble one of the “forever wars” that followed the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan, in 2001, and Iraq, in 2003. Indeed, precisely because American leaders now fear such quagmires, they are reluctant to send significant ground forces into situations in which they may get stuck.

Instead, in the current Iran conflict, the United States is relying on missiles, airpower, and weapons systems enhanced by artificial intelligence. Fighting in this way, however, means that the application of military power can only ever be coercive, pressuring the enemy in the hope that it eventually complies with U.S. demands. The United States cannot simply take what it wants, as it did when it marched on Baghdad and toppled Saddam Hussein’s government. The Trump administration’s frustration today is that the Iranian regime is still refusing to comply—as further evidenced by the latest round of negotiations—and it is not obvious how Tehran can be compelled to give in. Hegseth’s bluster could not hide the fact that the core objectives of Operation Epic Fury—notably, effecting regime change and eradicating Iran’s nuclear program—had not been achieved. And with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the overall situation was worse than it had been before the start of the operation.

Trump’s gambit may not turn out to be a long war, but it has already failed as a short war. Operation Epic Fury did not produce the sort of victory claimed by its leaders. In this respect, it shares some of the features of the wars I discussed in an essay in Foreign Affairs last year, in which I warned against the “short-war........

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