A stalemate is the least admired of diplomatic outcomes. It resolves nothing, satisfies no one, and is counted as a victory only by the weaker party, for whom survival is achievement enough. But this is the condition into which the war between Iran and the United States has settled and, after 107 days of hostilities, the one both sides have finally made formal. On June 17, Tehran and Washington signed a deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz and ends the American naval blockade while doing nothing to address the two countries’ underlying disputes. The deal offers Tehran genuine relief: Washington will immediately waive sanctions on Iranian oil, begin releasing frozen Iranian funds, and commit to a reconstruction package worth at least $300 billion. But every hard question about Iran’s nuclear program, its missile program, and its network of proxies has been punted to an undetermined point in the future.

For U.S. President Donald Trump, this is not a great outcome. When Trump launched the war against Iran in late February, he promised Americans that he would end the country’s nuclear program, dismantle its missile capacities, and perhaps destroy the Islamic Republic itself. He failed on every count. In fact, the war showed that Tehran is more resilient than many analysts expected. The regime endured months of pain—including the assassination of almost its entire top leadership—and emerged intact. By shutting off the Strait of Hormuz and sending energy prices skyward, Tehran even proved that it has a tool it can use to coerce other governments, Washington included. Rising gas costs, after all, are part of what prompted Trump to end the conflict.

Still, this result doesn’t need to be a defeat for the United States. Washington achieved some tactical successes during the war, and it conceded relatively little. On the whole, the deal is mostly a return to the prewar status quo. Yes, American officials still need to manage Iran’s nuclear aspirations, missiles, and proxies. But the United States has been able to do so for the last 20 years without resorting to conflict. It can do so once more.

OVERPROMISE, UNDERDELIVER

From the moment it began bombing Iran, the United States put itself in a difficult position by defining victory in maximalist terms. In announcing the war, Trump declared that Washington would not only eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. It would also “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.” American troops would “annihilate” the Iranian navy and “ensure that the regime’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world.” He called on Iranians to take to the streets to topple their government. The president, in other words, laid out extraordinarily lofty objectives.

Not surprisingly, Trump failed. The United States and Israel did quickly kill off almost all of Iran’s top officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But Tehran swiftly replaced them and kept fighting. Washington claimed it had largely destroyed Iran’s military industrial capacity. But Tehran intensified its missile attacks against American bases in the region, on the oil and gas infrastructure of neighboring Arab countries, and on military and civilian targets inside Israel. Most important, Iranian officials figured out that they could shutter the Strait of Hormuz, creating energy shortages around the world and putting pressure on U.S. officials.

Eventually, Trump bowed to reality and struck a cease-fire with Iran. In the initial aftermath, the hostilities simmered more than they stopped, as Israel focused its attacks on Hezbollah positions across Lebanon in defiance of Tehran’s insistence that the cease-fire also extended to the Israelis. The American military and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps also sporadically attacked each other’s positions around the Strait of Hormuz. All along, Washington refused to back down from its maximalist demands as part of peace talks. Soon, the United States resorted to blockading Iran in hopes of forcing it to yield. But the pressure again failed, and by the start of June, the U.S. intelligence community determined that the regime could hold out indefinitely. The Trump administration was thus left with no option but to settle for a deal that ends all fighting in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The president has tried to sell the new cease-fire as a victory, arguing that Iran’s ongoing isolation and increased vulnerability to American strikes (the United States did, indeed, substantially weaken Iranian defenses) will eventually force the country to surrender. But Tehran has a strong claim that it won, too, and its story of victory is both simpler and better matched to the facts on the ground. As Iranian leaders correctly point out, the regime survived a multi-week bombardment by two more powerful opponents. It has held on to hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium and retains the capacity to enrich more. Most important, it has demonstrated that it can dominate the world’s most important thoroughfare for oil.

This does not mean that Iran is suddenly a great power or that the Islamic Republic has overcome its many crises of legitimacy. Its economy and infrastructure were under severe strain well before the war, leading to massive nationwide protests in January that the regime could stop only through brutal repression. Now, the country’s material picture is considerably worse, thanks to the U.S. and Israeli bombardment. Yet the regime’s geopolitical hand has improved even as its domestic position has deteriorated. By seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran has acquired a bargaining chip it did not previously hold, affording it more leverage as it negotiates over nuclear issues and looks to make sure that Washington doesn’t attack it once more.

BITE THE BULLET

The Islamic Republic is well practiced in the art of the stalemate. For nearly 50 years, after all, it has defined itself in part by engaging in an unending competition with Washington. In doing so, it learned to tolerate significant U.S. pressure. In fact, the regime has actively sought to keep relations with the United States in an unpleasant equilibrium, ensuring there is neither too much progress (which would compromise the regime’s revolutionary commitment to opposing Washington) nor too much tension (which could result in a full-scale invasion). The United States, by contrast, has never felt as comfortable with these conditions. U.S. officials have long demanded that Iran roll back its nuclear program, dismantle its missile arsenal, and eliminate its network of proxies—none of which is achievable if the two sides remain in a deadlock.

This asymmetry makes the stalemate much harder for Washington to accept than it is for Tehran. The United States simply cannot tolerate Iranian regional dominance, whether it is achieved through Shiite networks in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen or through a nuclear deterrent. But as the last few months have made clear, war is not the right way to stop it. Instead, these concerns require different, more targeted instruments.

Consider Iran’s missiles and armed proxies. Thankfully for Washington, these issues generate intense regional opposition and the threats they pose can be checked by the states most exposed to them, namely Israel and the Gulf monarchies. Israel can sustain credible deterrence, and the Gulf monarchies can harden their air defenses in the near term while pursuing, over the longer run, a strategic accommodation with Tehran built on economic and cultural ties. The United States, for its part, can bolster American security assistance to these countries as part of a strategy of containment. This would allow Washington to manage the stalemate in a manner that does not tax U.S. resources and thus endanger American interests in the region.

The United States cannot count on its partners to manage Iran’s nuclear program. But it has other tools it can use to handle this threat. Tehran may never agree to give up enriching uranium altogether, but the Iranian government still has an incentive to strike a deal that imposes meaningful limits on its program in exchange for desperately needed sanctions relief. Such an agreement might engender resistance among Iranian hard-liners, who are averse to any kind of compromise with Washington. But as long as the deal affirms the regime’s sovereign right to enrich, Iran’s more pragmatic elements could present it as a major concession wrung from a hardline U.S. administration forced to abandon its maximalist demand that Iran end its nuclear program altogether.

Washington’s Gulf Arab partners would likely back such an agreement. Having now been directly and repeatedly attacked by Iran in retaliation for hosting U.S. bases and having suffered the economic consequences of the strait’s closure, these countries have every reason to prefer a contained Iran to one that goes to war. In fact, most of the Gulf monarchies have actively pushed for de-escalation and dealmaking. But Israel will not be supportive. That country sees Iran as an existential threat that must be beaten into submission, and it has thus worked to keep the peace talks from succeeding. The Israeli military, for example, struck the Beirut area on June 14, just as Tehran and Washington were finalizing their agreement. Iran, in turn, geared up to strike back until American diplomats promised to force the Israelis to stop attacking Hezbollah—allowing the deal to be completed. But Washington should expect more of the same going forward, including the possibility that Israel will try to reignite the war by striking Iran’s nuclear facilities directly. To prevent such an outcome, the United States will have to exercise the leverage it holds over its ally—such as by conditioning arms sales, withdrawing intelligence assistance, and no longer providing diplomatic protection. At the same time, it should offer Israel security assurances so that the country does not feel like it must attack Iran.

Doing all this will not be easy, and not just because Washington wants to provide extensive support to its Israeli partner. There are also many American foreign policy elites who simply refuse to admit that the United States cannot beat Iran and are thus still treating the current impasse as an intermission before restarting the war and achieving a conclusive victory. Yet the reality is that Iran has shown it can withstand extreme pressure and impose serious costs on the United States, including when its offensive capabilities are badly degraded. Even if Washington could muster the resolve required for a protracted ground invasion, this particular administration does not have the vision and discipline such an operation would demand. All renewed conflict would do is burn through Washington’s munitions and interceptors, spark worldwide inflation, and test the patience of U.S. partners.

It is thus time for the United States to acknowledge the truth: it is caught in a stalemate. It should stop musing about how to conclusively defeat Iran and start figuring out how to peacefully manage a tricky, confrontational relationship. Such work is hardly glamorous; draws never are. But it is the only way Washington can actually keep Tehran in check and preserve U.S. power in the Middle East.