Prepare yourself for the long game. Can there really be any other conclusion than this war will enter the ‘never-ending’ category after Donald Trump spoke at the weekend? Stumping (such a marvellous American term) for votes at a political rally in the suburbs of New York, the US President in his normal unabashed style paid no reference to his promise of a short, sharp war or to his famed ‘drill, baby drill’ and the promise of lower oil prices. He instead extolled the virtue of the current war in that it was “doing a great service for the world;” that “a very evil country” should not have a nuclear weapon, with the cost being how Americans must accept higher gasoline prices. 

This admission without using such words, collides at the time of the ending of the 60-day memorandum of understanding. Tehran and Washington are now supposed to, under the terms of the MoU, hold negotiations in which a final agreement in ending the war might be achieved. It is difficult to describe how much scorn this whole process is held in by every citizen of this planet, and adapting the idiomatic bad language, are tired of all this ‘urine’ and vinegar. It goes without saying that Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi is not yet prepared to resume negotiations as it was the Americans who violated the MoU, and that Washington needs meet Iran’s demands, which as everyone realises is fantasy, before it will contemplate any sort of fresh accord. Fantastical is not only the remit of Tehran. Washington manages to conjure up fancy on a daily basis, with unceasing statements of the war being nearly over, and ‘he was only kidding’ explanations when Trump uttered that the US might declare Hormuz as sovereign territory. However, how must the presidential servers explain away the Hormuz repetition heard yesterday, let alone Fox News quoting Trump as saying, "if Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the (expletive) out of them." This is in response to Tehran’s claim that a deal with Muscat was close at hand in opening Hormuz, something the US believes undermines its efforts to bring pressure to bear on Iran.

 
Whatever fatigue our fraternity and indeed, the wider investment populace, is feeling toward the Iranian war, it is nothing compared with those who really have skin in the game. The USS Abraham Lincoln while not nearing the record time an American aircraft carrier has been deployed, has still been at sea for over 260 days, most of which has been in servicing the Iranian war. There are of course vociferous denials from the US Defence Secretary and the President alike when asked on the poor conditions sailors are now facing aboard the famous US ‘flat top’.  There have been reports of poor plumbing, food shortages, personal product scarcity, an inability to stay in touch with loved ones at home, leading to mental health issues in some of the 5,000 strong crew; made all the worse by a lack of any calls to port in the whole campaign. Wherever the truth lies, it cannot hide from how the top dog CentCom commander Admiral Brad Cooper visited the USS Abraham Lincoln and that it is now due to make for home as it rotates with the USS George Washington, which was near Malaysia with a feasible ability to arrive in the conflict area by the end of this week. It is not just the missile arsenal of the United States being depleted; a like-for-like ship replacement can only lead to the same problems, therefore, there is a rundown in ideas.

The numbers run into millions of Iranians who are now struggling to make ends meet. The Iranian economy was already squeezed by sanctions before this face-off war had begun. Last year, the process of hyperinflation was started when the Iranian government approved a money printing splurge in order to finance the 60 percent increase in the basic minimum wage. As much as Iranians have developed a siege mentality in dealing with bombing of its nation, there is no escaping, and according to the latest report by the Statistical Centre of Iran, released at the end of July, year-on-year inflation readings of 88 percent. As noted by Al Jazeera, food inflation stood at more than 128 percent compared with a year earlier, meaning that the same food basket cost roughly 2.28 times what it did in July 2025. However, one wonders if the appalling state of housing, employment and other economic woes are bad enough to bring further civil unrest so brutally quashed over the end of last year and the beginning of this one. The autocrats of Iran have no problem deploying lethal force against its own civilians; undertaking mass arrests, imprisonments and executions while keeping every person in a state of ignorance by controlling electronic communication. Being so well dug in at home, immune from both an internal uprising and attacks from the US, emboldens Iran. So much so that it has promised an offensive of its own. A senior diplomat told Reuters that a “fully offensive” posture will be undertaken if the US does not negotiate a permanent end to the war. "Iranian entities must be prepared to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and wider region […] and conduct a "timely and precise" military attack to break the U.S. naval blockade if diplomacy failed.”

The memorandum of understanding was always far-fetched; it was an apparatus of buying time. Sadly, time decay has eroded the value of this option and the premium paid to delay the exercising of a decision is worn through by all the trappings of bottleneck economics. The global centre of axis has shifted to sit over Iran and affect this world in all manner of ways which have not even yet be witnessed, let alone thought of. Short of carrying out his threat of bombing civilian bridges and power plants and risking his presidency being remembered as an administration of war crime, or even more unlikely, putting US boots on the ground, this has all the earmarks of an off-ramp-free grind. Strung-out US warfare capability and 92 million potentially starving and getting poorer daily Iranians is just a narrow example of the fallout of this unnecessary vanity project. The MoU is dead, long live the standoff.

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