May 26, 2026
The responses to the latest attacks between the US and Iran during the supposed ceasefire have been telling.
Tehran called the US strikes on its missile launch sites and boats a flagrant “violation” of the ceasefire and threatened to retaliate.
The United States, meanwhile, assured that the ceasefire was still “ongoing,” despite casting Iran as the aggressor.
A spokesman for US Central Command accused Iranian boats of “attempting to emplace mines” in the Strait of Hormuz. That would be a remarkably provocative act, especially in the context of what appeared to be some of the most serious peace talks to date. But then the spokesman added: “U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.”
This kind of response has become par for the course.
And the pattern reinforces how apparently anxious the Trump administration is to bring the war to an end — a dynamic that is hurting the United States’ leverage.
The most recent episode involves what the US military called “self-defense strikes” targeting missile launch sites and boats near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Later in the day, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that it “shot down a US drone and forced a US drone and fighter jet to flee,” casting it as a “reciprocal response.”
But while Iran’s response was defiant, the US response was less so.
In addition to US Central Command assuring the ceasefire remained “ongoing,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio twice talked around the strikes when asked about them while traveling in India. The first time, he talked broadly about peace negotiations. The second time, he talked about the need for the Strait of Hormuz to be open.
The situation harkens back to a pair of episodes in early May.
In the first one, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine at a briefing cited Iran firing nine times at commercial vessels and seizing two container ships, as well as “more than 10” attacks on American forces. But he instantly qualified that all were “below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point.” He cast it as “low-level kinetics.”
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked whether the ceasefire was over, he assured reporters it was not.
He at one point seemed to cast what was happening in the strait as distinct from the broader war. And he urged Iran to “be prudent” and make sure its military actions didn’t cross the “threshold” for violating the ceasefire.
A few days later, the US struck military facilities it said were responsible for attacking US warships in the strait.
But President Donald Trump again downplayed it.
“The ceasefire is going. It’s in effect,” he told ABC News in early May. He described the US attacks as “just a love tap.”
As with today, while the Trump administration assured the public that ceasefire was intact, Iran said it had been violated and responded with what it claimed to be “reciprocal” strikes.
And then there’s arguably the biggest potential violation of the ceasefire: Iran keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed.
When Trump announced the ceasefire on April 7, he was unambiguous that it would only last as long as Iran reopened the strait.
He said on social media that, “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.”
That “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE” reopening of the strait, of course, never happened. The administration tried to put a good face on it in the days that followed and cited supposed progress in reopening it. But the US is now seven weeks into the ceasefire, and the strait remains a logjam.
By trying to keep the ceasefire going and downplaying Iran’s provocations, the Trump administration is betraying a readily apparent anxiousness to avoid resuming the war and an eagerness to cut a deal
To that point, Trump has repeatedly ignored his own deadlines for Tehran to make a deal and declined to restart large-scale hostilities, despite his frequent threats.
And that posture is undermining his negotiating position. Iran seems to be gambling that Trump is in a bigger hurry to bring the war to a conclusion than it is.
The divergent responses to the latest attacks only back up that belief.
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