He's counting 3 quotes from Trump in 24 hours: "we're low keying it," "we're semi-negotiating," "it always works out."
Aguilar's blunt take: those sound less like a commander in chief and more like an 8-year-old explaining a bad report card.
Meanwhile there are sailors on the Abraham Lincoln eating whatever's left in the galley and hoping the interceptors work.
Here's the part that actually worries him: Iran just signaled through Ghalibaf's office that they're done negotiating with Trump entirely. They're going to wait him out until 2029.
Iran's been under sanctions for over a decade; they can absorb pain most of the region can't. So they're betting they can simply outlast this administration.
That's the dangerous move, Aguilar says, because it takes away Trump's off-ramp. If Iran won't give him anything to claim as a win, he's left with three options to save face before the next election: control of the strait (window's closing), the nuclear file, or regime change.
None of those get solved with airstrikes. That's already been tried.
He's got a physics metaphor: potential energy. All the pieces for a ground option are already staged: Green Berets, Kurdish partners, two carrier groups, a brigade of the 82nd sitting in the region.
Nothing's stopping it except the decision to actually drop it.
He thinks that decision gets made before Trump leaves office, not because the war is winnable, but because the alternative is running for reelection with nothing to show for it.
The stat that stuck with him: World Bank growth forecasts for Gulf economies just got cut from 4.5% to 1.3% in a year.
Everyone's feeling this. Iran's just better built to sit through it.
