It’s essentially closed. Even right now the PP is calling it closed.
Amid tensions that seem to evolve into a new form every day, one reality stands out more than anything else: the United States still has not decided what kind of conflict it is truly trapped in.
If bombing alone could have changed the equation, Washington would never have abandoned it in favor of blockades and gradual pressure tactics.
And if containment had proven effective, there would have been no need for limited and scattered confrontations in the Strait of Hormuz.
The constant shift in strategy reflects a picture of confusion and urgency from a power that increasingly sees time working against it.
The United States can neither enter a full-scale war nor stabilize the current state of semi-suspension in its favor.
As a result, it remains stuck somewhere between war and ceasefire — unwilling to retreat far enough to acknowledge failure, yet unable to advance decisively enough to settle the battlefield.
The outcome has been a series of limited and carefully controlled confrontations: tensions designed to generate pressure without escalating into total war. Yet even this prolonged state of uncertainty has gradually begun to work against Washington.
The Strait of Hormuz is no longer merely a maritime corridor; it has become a stage on which the credibility of American power is being tested. The world now watches daily to see whether the United States can still project the authority it once did.
Every time tensions rise without producing any meaningful shift in the balance, the perception grows stronger in global public opinion that the era of uncontested American hegemony is nearing its end.
Failure in such an arena is not merely a military setback; it represents the slow erosion of the prestige and deterrent image that for decades formed the backbone of Washington’s foreign policy.
In this context, the passage of time has become the factor the United States fears most.
Washington seeks rapid and decisive results because it understands that every day without a tangible achievement helps solidify a reality that previously did not exist.
The inability to restore the Persian Gulf to its former order gradually reinforces the perception that America can no longer guarantee security, free passage, and unquestioned dominance in the way it once could.
This has also deepened the economic and political dimensions of the crisis. Continued tensions in Hormuz have not only affected global energy markets and international trade, but have also created serious fractures within America, and between the United States its former allies.
Many countries are no longer interested in prolonging confrontation; instead, they are searching for ways to reduce tensions and reach accommodation, knowing that the continuation of this situation could impose costs far beyond those of a regional crisis.
On the other side, Iran — shaped by decades of sanctions and sustained pressure — views this war of attrition very differently from the United States.
A country that has lived for years under economic and security restrictions now sees time not as a threat, but as part of its strategic leverage.
This is precisely why Washington’s maximum-pressure tactics no longer produce the effect they once did.
The image of America in Tehran today is no longer that of an invincible power, but rather of a rival that, despite all its military and media capabilities, has struggled to achieve its objectives.
For this reason, the issue is no longer simply about the passage of several ships or even a specific political dispute. What is unfolding in Hormuz is a battle over the future order of the region — a struggle in which the United States is attempting to prevent the consolidation of a growing perception that its influence in the Persian Gulf is in decline.
Washington’s insistence on returning military vessels to the region is therefore less an operational necessity than an effort to preserve the image of power that for years cast an uncontested shadow over the region’s waterways.
But the battlefield, contrary to America’s wishes, has entered a phase of attrition.
The longer this situation continues, the harder it will become to return to the past.
The central question is no longer who struck first or which side issued the harsher threats. The real question is which power can endure time itself.
And in this contest,
the signs increasingly suggest that time, more than anything else, is working against the United States.
