On 36th Day, Trump-Netanyahu War in Iran continues with no immediate end in sight

After downing U.S.F-35, Tehran feeling more confident to continue the fight

By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers

NEW YORK: The war that President Trump promised would last “four to five weeks” has entered its 36th day on April 4 with no ceasefire in sight, no formal peace talks, and a United States Air Force pilot still missing somewhere in the rugged terrain of western Iran — a haunting symbol of a conflict that has drifted well beyond its original boundaries.

What began on February 28 as a U.S.-Israeli air campaign framed around eliminating Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capability has spiralled into a multi-front regional war touching Lebanon, Iraq, the Gulf states, and now the skies above Dubai. The human cost is staggering: over 3,500 Iranians killed according to rights groups, 1,368 Lebanese dead, 13 American service members lost, and 365 U.S. troops wounded in an operation the Pentagon has formally designated “Operation Epic Fury.”

Inside the White House, the calculus has shifted markedly. The original stated objective — destroying Iran’s military infrastructure, eliminating the nuclear threat, and forcing a change of strategic behaviour — has given way to something more modest and more urgent: find an exit that allows Mr. Trump to declare victory.

Gas prices have surpassed $4 a gallon across the United States. The President has requested a staggering $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027. Thirteen soldiers are dead. Reports suggest Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, has privately warned that aides are giving the President a “rose-colored view” of the war’s impact at home. The political arithmetic is souring.

“His objectives are unclear,” former National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Saturday. “Trump’s address to the nation failed to clarify whether the goal is regime change, dismantling the nuclear program, or targeting missile capabilities.”

Mr. Trump has publicly dangled both escalation and diplomacy in the same breath — threatening to strike Iran’s power plants, bridges, and oil wells while simultaneously suggesting a deal could be reached within two to three weeks.

Crucially, U.S. intelligence now assesses that Iran is unlikely to reopen the Strait of Hormuz anytime soon, using it as its primary leverage. Washington is weighing, according to reports, whether to accept a deal that leaves Hormuz partially constrained — a significant retreat from earlier demands.

A ground invasion of Tehran, once floated by some Gulf allies, appears to have been quietly shelved. U.S. special forces did enter Iranian territory on Friday night — but solely to rescue the crew of a downed F-15E fighter jet, not to hold ground.

This is, fundamentally, an air war, and Washington appears to have accepted that limitation. The question is how to wrap it up before the domestic political costs become unmanageable.

Israel’s objectives in this war have always been broader than Washington’s. Where the U.S. focused on Iran’s nuclear and missile capacity, Israel saw an opportunity to do something it has attempted for two decades: permanently degrade Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in southern Lebanon and sever the supply lines that Iran uses to arm it.

Israeli jets have struck bridges in eastern Lebanon to block Hezbollah reinforcements, killed the commander of a central Iranian ballistic missile unit in Kermanshah, eliminated Iran’s oil-revenue chief Jamshid Eshaqi, and struck the IRGC’s financial headquarters in Tehran.

The IDF’s public accounting is explicit: Iran funnelled roughly $2 billion annually to Hezbollah in 2025, hundreds of millions to Hamas, and tens of millions to Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces. Israel intends to sever those arteries permanently.

In Beirut’s southern suburbs, Israeli airstrikes resumed Saturday morning, with two loud explosions heard before dawn. At least 1,368 Lebanese have been killed since March 2. Three Indonesian UN peacekeepers were wounded Friday in an explosion at a UNIFIL facility — the third such incident in days, prompting France and India to call for accountability.

Israel shows no sign of winding down its Lebanon operations even as Washington searches for an off-ramp. The divergence in timelines — an American president eager to declare victory and come home, an Israeli military methodically working through a target list — may prove to be the alliance’s central tension in the weeks ahead.

For the citizens of Tehran, the war arrives not as a single catastrophic moment but as an accumulating series of deprivations. Power outages darken neighbourhoods for hours. Internet blackouts cut families off from news and from each other. And increasingly, pharmacies are running low on medicines they cannot replace.

The consequences of strikes on Iran’s pharmaceutical infrastructure are now being felt on the street level. On March 31, Israeli-U.S. strikes hit Tofigh Daru, one of Iran’s largest pharmaceutical companies, which produces cancer treatments, cardiovascular drugs and immunomodulatory agents.

A week later, the Pasteur Institute — founded in 1920, the country’s primary centre for vaccine production and infectious disease research, and a collaborator with the World Health Organization — was struck.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, himself a heart surgeon, wrote on X: “What message does attacking hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and the Pasteur Institute convey?”

The WHO’s director-general confirmed that two departments of the institute work directly with the global health body, and that verified attacks on healthcare in Iran now number over 20 since March 1, resulting in at least nine deaths.

A newly constructed psychiatric hospital in Tehran was heavily damaged on March 29 with roughly 30 patients inside. The Ali Hospital in Khuzestan was forced to evacuate entirely. A Red Crescent warehouse in Bushehr province was struck by drone fire Friday, destroying emergency vehicles and relief containers.

Iran is not a country that imports most of its medicines — it manufactures a significant share domestically. The strikes on that manufacturing base are designed to degrade not just military capability but civilian resilience.

Whether humanitarian corridors, Indian LPG shipments (seven tankers have now crossed the Strait), or any form of organised Arab-state relief will compensate for these losses remains deeply uncertain.

The Arab League has issued statements of concern but no member state has committed material aid to Tehran openly — a reflection of the complex reality that many Gulf states privately welcomed the degradation of Iranian power even as they publicly deplored civilian suffering.

The most consequential variable in the war’s resolution is a body of water 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. Iran’s continued effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz — or its credible threat to do so — has sent oil markets into sustained turbulence and made the conflict a global economic event, not merely a regional one.

The U.S. has doubled its insurance guarantee for tankers attempting the passage to $40 billion. India, with seven LPG tankers successfully transiting, has signalled it will not allow the strait to choke off its energy supply entirely.

But U.S. intelligence assessments, according to Reuters, suggest Iran views the strait as its ultimate trump card and will not relinquish that leverage until it extracts meaningful concessions — likely some form of sanctions relief or security guarantee.

There is no honourable exit available to Iran that does not include keeping that card in play as long as possible. For Washington, the calculus is whether accepting a partial Iranian climb-down — one that leaves Tehran’s regime intact and its leverage diminished but not eliminated — can be sold domestically as a win.

For Israel, any deal that leaves Hezbollah rearmed and resupplied will be unacceptable.

The gap between those positions is still wide. But the direction of travel, for all three parties, is toward some form of negotiated de-escalation dressed up in the language of military triumph.

The United States will claim it neutralised Iran’s nuclear and missile threat. Israel will claim it broke Hezbollah’s supply chain. Iran will claim it survived the most powerful military coalition in the region’s history and forced a negotiation.

All three claims will contain partial truths. None will be the whole story. And for the families of the dead — in Tehran, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, in the towns of southern Lebanon, and in the homes of thirteen American service members — no narrative framing will make the arithmetic of loss add up to anything but loss. (IPA Service)