Iran Used the Sixty Days

DOHA, QATAR—Iran put President Trump in a catering box.

After the Secret Service secretly moved Trump between aircraft because of a security threat, Iran’s embassy in South Africa circulated a meme showing the American president stuffed inside an airport catering box. The operation worked, and the President was never at risk. Iran took the story anyway, and what spread was a picture of an American president hiding from Iran.

Iran stripped the context from an image and pushed it onto American phones. Iranian state media amplified it. Explosive Media, the Iranian state-linked operation producing bizarre AI-generated Lego-style videos mocking the United States, shifted into English after the U.S.-Iran war began. Canada’s Rapid Response Mechanism estimates that at least 83 million users saw its videos during the first month.

The 60-day negotiating period in the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding expired Monday with the two sides farther apart than when the clock started. No compromise over Hormuz, and the detailed nuclear negotiations promised under the MOU never began. Iranian hardliners increased missile and drone production and expanded operations in the Red Sea.

United States — Pressure Rising

American gasoline averages $4.06 a gallon today. A year ago it was roughly $3.14, a 29 percent jump. President Trump is now telling Americans that higher prices at the pump are part of the cost of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Brent crude traded at about $89 a barrel Monday after gaining more than 5 percent last week as tanker attacks in Hormuz and a Houthi strike on Saudi energy infrastructure pushed the war back into the market.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent now promises more economic pressure against Iran. When that announcement came, a Gulf foreign-policy expert looked at me, pointed at his watch and chuckled: “Now? Where was this on January 8, 2026, or the last week of February?” He is right. Washington has already sanctioned more than 1,000 targets since Trump returned to office, yet China bought more than 80 percent of Iran’s shipped oil based on 2025 data. Announcing another sanctions package will not fix that. The money moves through Chinese refineries, banks, digital exchanges, front companies and shadow fleets, and each route has to be found and closed before the next one opens. That is a daily enforcement job, and Washington is not staffed or organized to do it daily.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent part of last week on Katie Miller’s podcast discussing Pop-Tarts, Tupac and family life, which is not in itself a scandal. But the same week, with the Iran talks stalled, Rubio met Austria’s foreign minister and called his Greek counterpart, both of whom then spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. Vienna houses the IAEA and Greek owners control a large share of the world’s tanker fleet, which made both governments obvious channels to Tehran long before month six of a war.

Another foreign-policy specialist put the deeper problem to me this way: Trump has to understand the cultural dynamic between the United States and Iran. The State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs has people who know the history, personalities, factions, language and culture, but they are not driving the policy. His description was less diplomatic, and deliberately overstated: “They can’t even change the toner cartridges in their copy machines without worrying about upsetting the White House.”

AP reported that more than 80 positions were cut from Near Eastern Affairs, the dedicated Iran office was folded into the Iraq office, and career specialists say their advice increasingly goes unheeded. More than 3,800 State Department employees have left since Trump returned to office. The government cannot pressure a regime when it no longer has the people who understand Iran.

RealClearPolitics generic congressional vote average has Democrats ahead by 6.8 points, and House Democrats need only a net gain of three seats to take the House. Republicans’ best political break may be that Democrats do not have a Rahm Emanuel circa 2006 obsessively recruiting candidates who fit the districts they need to win. Emanuel found military veterans, sheriffs, law-enforcement figures and others who could win where a generic national Democrat could not. Democrats gained 30 House seats.

Republicans get an opening when Democrats hand them a swing-district candidate whose defund-the-police or open-border record can be cut into a 30-second ad. Iran does not need to defeat Trump on the water. It needs the war and gas prices to keep bleeding into November.

Iran — Pressure Steady To Rising

Iran is getting poorer. The IMF projects the economy will contract 5.4 percent this year, with average consumer inflation of 68.9 percent. Iranian families eat the inflation. Ships won’t sail if a drone is headed for their engine room. Gulf governments worry their air defenses won’t stop a missile headed for their refineries, while consumers in the West and Asia pay more for fuel. The American strategy is attrition: hold the pressure until the Iranian economy gives out. Tehran is working on the assumption that American voters tire of a war and $4 gasoline before that happens.

Then came Kurdistan. Less than a day after Axios reported that Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani had served as a Trump administration backchannel to IRGC commander Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, Kurdish authorities said two explosive-laden Hadid-110 drones launched from Iranian territory targeted the private office of Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and the home of the head of the region’s Security and Intelligence Agency outside Erbil. No casualties were reported.

Axios also reported that Nechirvan Barzani had offered to help restart U.S.-Iran negotiations. The drones arrived the following day, aimed at the Kurdish leadership.

The IAEA’s last estimate put Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent at 440.9 kilograms. Inspectors still lack a complete accounting, and the detailed nuclear negotiations envisioned under the MOU never started.

Hormuz — Pressure Rising

Five ships Saturday. None Sunday.

Before the war, more than 130 vessels a day passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Three ADNOC-operated tankers were attacked last week, according to the United Arab Emirates. The MOU was supposed to reopen Hormuz. Sixty days later, the Strait is again close to a standstill.

Diplomats can reopen Hormuz on paper. Whether it reopens depends on captains and their insurers.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates production shut-ins averaged 5.5 million barrels a day in July. Global oil inventories fell by an average of 4.2 million barrels a day during the second quarter, and EIA expects another 3.8 million-barrel daily drawdown in the third quarter. Its current forecast does not see production and trade patterns generally returning to prewar conditions until early 2027.

Gulf States — Pressure Rising

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on August 7, pledging to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. Two days later, the Iran-aligned Houthis attacked Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery. The Houthis are testing what counts as an attack.

The Gulf states want American protection, but they also know they will still live next door to Iran when the American aircraft carriers leave. Tehran works that fear constantly.

The Second Map

For months, I have argued that Trump needs a White House Pressure Cell that forces Treasury, State, Defense, Energy and intelligence to work from the same daily map.

In 2025, the administration put most Voice of America employees on leave and later cut USAGM and VOA staffing by 85 percent. The Middle East Broadcasting Networks, home of Alhurra, lost roughly 90 percent of its staff. They needed an overhaul. Washington should have rebuilt them for the media battlefield of 2026. Alhurra’s credibility depends on its journalism being real. Countering Explosive Media is a separate job that needs its own staff and budget.

Instead, Washington tore down much of its overseas communications machinery just as Tehran learned how to put an Iranian message onto tens of millions of Western phones.

During the Iraq Surge, we connected what happened in the field with Washington, coordinated across agencies, moved facts quickly, and worked with credible outside validators. We did not win every argument, but somebody owned the map.

Who owns it today?

A real Pressure Cell would know every hour where sanctions are leaking and which ships are moving, and it would have the authority to act on that without a policy meeting. It would broadcast in Persian and Arabic, showing Iranians the distance between what the regime tells them and what they pay for bread, and naming the officials who have grown rich while inflation runs at 68.9 percent.

The 60-day MOU period is over. The deal is far away, and Iran spent the time preparing its military, strengthening its hand at sea and sharpening its information operations. Washington still has vastly more power than Tehran, distributed across agencies that do not coordinate it, which is not the same as having a strategy.

After nearly six months of this war, that is what I take away from Doha.

Now, please, somebody own the map.

Mark Pfeifle, a member of the TIPP Insights Editorial Board, served as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications and global outreach at the White House from 2007 to 2009. He runs the crisis management firm Off the Record Strategies.