After two months of conflict, neither a deadly bombing campaign nor a blockade on Iranian exports has forced Tehran to make the concessions the Trump administration is seeking.

The campaign has intensified in recent weeks, targeting Iran’s oil exports and financial networks while a naval blockade has disrupted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for global energy flows. U.S. officials argue the combination of military pressure and economic isolation is intended to weaken Iran’s capabilities and force it back to the negotiating table on more favorable terms.

While the U.S. has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of top military and political figures, the regime itself remains intact. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was selected to succeed him, and leadership remains firmly hardline.

Aaron David Miller, a former State Department Middle East negotiator and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, said the administration may have misjudged the type of negotiating partner it would face.

HORMUZ CHOKE POINT PERSISTS AS IRAN HALTS OIL TRAFFIC DESPITE TRUMP CEASEFIRE

«Trump was looking for an Iranian Delcy Rodriguez,» he told Fox News Digital. «More likely, he’s going to end up with an Iranian Kim Jong Un.»

He expressed doubt that any decisive victory was possible while the current Iranian regime remained in power.

«And we do not have the capacity to remove the regime.»

The standoff increasingly has become a test of whether U.S. pressure can be converted into political concessions — or whether it is instead being diluted through workarounds, institutional resilience and competing constraints.

So far, analysts say, Iran has proven more capable of absorbing and rerouting pressure than Washington has been able to translate it into durable gains.

On Monday, Iran floated a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for relief from the blockade, while deferring negotiations on more contentious issues.

But analysts caution that such proposals do not address the core dispute and may not even mean the same thing to both sides.

«What the Iranians mean by opening the straits, and what Trump means, may be two different sorts of things,» Miller said.

At the center of the standoff is Iran’s nuclear program, where the gap between the two sides remains wide. The Trump administration has pushed for Iran to eliminate its uranium enrichment capability entirely, while Iran insists that enrichment is a sovereign right and non-negotiable — leaving little room for compromise.

CENTCOM shared footage of strikes against airplanes amid Iran war (U.S. Central Command on X)

That divide continues to block a broader agreement, even as both sides explore more limited steps to reduce immediate tensions.

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«It’s almost unimaginable that this administration and the Iranian leadership are willing to make the kinds of concessions that would allow this administration to walk away with a win,» Miller said.

«Iranians are willing to give concessions, but Trump is looking for capitulation,» said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft think tank. «And you can’t get a country to capitulate unless you have defeated them.»

Instead of folding under pressure, Iran largely has responded by adapting. 

Despite the blockade, Iran has continued to move at least some oil through workaround methods, including sanctioned vessels, smaller ports and alternative routing strategies, even as overall exports have come under strain.

Those efforts have expanded in recent weeks. Reports indicate Iran is exploring overland shipments, including potential rail exports to China, while vessels have increasingly rerouted through Iranian territorial waters or controlled shipping corridors to bypass restrictions.

«The United States successfully closes off one avenue for them, and slowly but surely they are finding workarounds,» Parsi said.

The financial impact of the campaign has been significant, even if uneven. Estimates vary, but some analysts put Iran’s potential losses from the blockade at roughly $400 million per day, largely driven by disrupted oil exports and reduced access to hard currency.

At the same time, Iran has not been fully cut off. The country has continued to generate billions in oil revenue in recent months, underscoring both the scale of the pressure and its limits.

While a sustained drop in oil revenue would strain the government’s official budget and force cuts to public spending, the country’s most powerful institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, operates through its own economic networks, including smuggling routes and cross-border trade.

That allows key parts of the regime to continue functioning even under heavy sanctions, meaning economic pain often falls unevenly — hitting civilians before it weakens the state’s coercive apparatus.

«Trump was looking for an Iranian Delcy Rodriguez. More likely, he’s going to end up with an Iranian Kim Jong Un.» (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/The Associated Press )

Even attempts to directly destabilize Iran’s leadership have not fundamentally altered that dynamic. U.S. and Israeli operations earlier in the conflict killed Khamenei along with dozens of senior military and political figures.

Yet the regime has remained intact, with power consolidating among remaining political and security elites aligned with hardline positions.

How long Iran can sustain that posture remains uncertain. Miller said a prolonged blockade could eventually force a breaking point — but only if Washington is willing to maintain it.

«If the administration is prepared for six months to keep up this blockade, I think they could probably break the Iranian economy,» Miller said.

But he cautioned that such timelines are difficult to predict and that even U.S. intelligence lacks a clear picture of when economic pressure might translate into political concessions.

That uncertainty raises a broader question about the sustainability of the strategy. While Iran’s leadership may be willing to absorb significant economic pain, the U.S. faces its own constraints, including potential strain on military resources and growing risks to global energy markets.

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«There are no midterms. There are no primaries. There are no sell-by dates for Iran,» Miller said. «And Trump has a sell-by date.»

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. 

For now, both sides appear to be waiting for the other to lose the political will to sustain the standoff, with global energy markets caught in the middle.

Audias Flores Silva, “El Jardinero”, era uno de los posibles sucesores de «El Mencho».

También arrestaron al presunto operador financiero del CJNG

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is drawing scrutiny for cozying up to Chinese AI governance officials while championing policies that critics say would hamper America’s ability to compete with Beijing in the global artificial intelligence arms race.

Sanders, who caucuses with Senate Democrats and is a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, is expected to be speaking at a panel discussion on Capitol Hill Wednesday alongside Xue Lan, a professor at the CCP-funded Tsinghua University and chairman of the Ministry of Science and Technology-backed New Generation Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional Committee. 

In attendance will also be Zeng Yi, who is the Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance and is also tied to the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Governance Professional Committee chaired by Lan. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Max Tegmark, who will also be speaking at the event, indicated the event will focus on «AI existential risk and international cooperation.»

Critics from the White House, the data center industry, and major tech-policy think tanks have argued Sanders is proposing policies that would slow the construction of the very infrastructure needed to keep the United States ahead in the race for AI dominance. Now, Sanders is facing more heat for holding an event on Capitol Hill with two Chinese Ministry of Science-linked officials who support China’s preferred AI governance model.

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«I think Senator Sanders’ concerns about AI are overstated, but I respect them. We should be asking questions about child safety, community impact, and economic displacement,» China policy expert at the Hudson Institute, Michael Sobolik, said. «What we shouldn’t do is partner with foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party in those discussions.»

Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., pointed out that Tsinghua University is «one of China’s top universities with direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party.»

«This is the same China that just blocked Meta’s $2 billion deal to acquire Manus AI, a startup whose founders had already moved to Singapore and whose deal was already done and closed. Beijing decided it did not matter. They stepped in, killed the deal, and restricted the founders from leaving the country while it was under review,» Harrigan wrote in a Monday post on X ahead of the slated panel discussion on Capitol Hill. 

«China is aggressively locking down their most powerful AI assets and shutting American companies out,» he continued. «Bernie Sanders wants to hand them a seat at the table to help decide how America handles the same technology.»

«Holy sh–,» Ruthless Podcast co-host Comfortably Smug posted on X.

«It’s a bit on the nose that communist Bernie Sanders is looking to the Chinese Communist Party for their ‘leadership’ on AI,» conservative commentator Steve Guest posted on X.

Fox News Digital reached out to Sanders’ office but did not receive a response in time for publication.

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In March, Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, which would impose an immediate federal ban on the construction or upgrading of new AI data centers until Congress passes a broader regulatory framework. Sanders’ own office said the bill is designed to «slow down the development of AI,» and Sanders has separately argued that AI threatens jobs, privacy, democracy, the environment and «maybe the human race.»

U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hold a press conference to announce the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act at the US Capitol on March 25, 2026 in Washington, DC.  (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Even Democrats have balked at the policy proposal, with Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., calling the moratorium «idiocy» at an artificial intelligence summit in D.C. last month, warning it would give China an edge in the AI race.

Cy McNeill, the senior director of federal affairs at the Data Center Coalition, a pro-industry group, said a freeze would risk «rationing access to digital services,» impair U.S. competitiveness and hit Americans’ daily lives. The Center for Data Innovation, a tech-policy think tank, similarly argued the bill relies on «well-worn anxieties» and does not justify halting data-center construction.

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Lan, as chair of China’s national expert committee for AI governance, and Li, who told TIME last year that he is «highly involved in policymaking through national governance committees» in China, both have championed governance models that would expand China’s role in writing global AI rules that clash with a freer, more competition-driven U.S. strategy.

Yi has argued that China and the world need mandatory safety and ethics frameworks and more international cooperation, according to comments he made to TIME. He also helped develop UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of AI, the first-ever global standard on AI ethics.

Lan, meanwhile, helped establish a CCP-backed national AI safety body to help «bridge» the gap between technical experts and policymakers, according to TIME.

«China has chosen the path of top-down government control to drive its AI industry. While this strategy affords the CCP some advantages, the American model of bottom-up, free-market capitalism has long been the engine of innovation for the world, and it is more efficient in the long run,» House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie wrote in a February policy review for the Hatch Center.

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A processor chip featuring the flags of the United States and China is shown on a motherboard with a world map background in a 3D render. (Kritsapong Jieantaratip/Getty Images)

«The stakes couldn’t be higher,» Guthrie continues. «China already deploys next-generation technologies to advance many of the regime’s most sinister goals focused on enhancing the power of its Orwellian surveillance state utilizing advanced computing. Even more concerning to the American public is the threat of an adversary’s technology stack serving as the building blocks for future advancements or as a strategic chokehold.»

«The way to beat China in the AI race is to outrace them in innovation, not saddle AI developers with European-style regulations,» Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has also said. Growth and development of new AI technologies will bolster our national security, create new jobs, and stimulate economic growth»