He still thinks overwhelming American power will eventually force Tehran to give in, and political scientist Ian Bremmer says that's the mistake keeping this war alive.
Instead, Iran has shown it can keep raising the economic cost of the war without crossing Trump's red lines.
Ian doesn't think Iran believes it can defeat the U.S militarily; it believes it can make continuing the war more painful than ending it.
And so far, it's working.
Trump keeps threatening to destroy Iran's infrastructure, eliminate its leadership and dramatically escalate the conflict.
But Ian points to something more revealing than Trump's rhetoric: His actions.
Despite months of fighting, Trump has avoided the biggest escalations.
No ground invasion, no sustained campaign against Iran's energy sector, and no full-scale assault on the country's leadership.
Even after American casualties, his instinct has repeatedly been to play them down rather than use them to justify a much wider war.
And Tehran has noticed.
It increasingly sees a president who talks like he's preparing for total war but behaves like someone searching for an exit.
The bigger problem, Ian says, is inside the White House itself.
Trump's advisers know the military and economic costs are mounting, and many want the war to end, but very few are willing to tell Trump the uncomfortable truth:
Iran has far more leverage over how this ends than Washington expected.
Until Trump accepts that reality, Ian believes a genuine compromise remains unlikely.
@ianbremmer
