{"id":202505,"date":"2026-03-05T19:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/iran-wants-blood-as-trump-says-us-can-fight-forever-what-to-expect-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T19:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T19:26:12","slug":"iran-wants-blood-as-trump-says-us-can-fight-forever-what-to-expect-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/iran-wants-blood-as-trump-says-us-can-fight-forever-what-to-expect-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran wants 'blood' as Trump says US can fight 'forever'. What to expect. – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran doesn\u2019t want to talk. It doesn\u2019t want to parley. And it\u2019s not sitting down with President Donald Trump<\/a>.
Even as Iran endures devastating airstrikes<\/a>, the country’s surviving leaders have determined “it has to really draw blood” before negotiating an end to the ongoing war<\/a> with the U.S. and Israel, Trita Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in an interview.
The stalemate comes as Trump and top military leaders have predicted more U.S. military deaths, wealthy Persian Gulf allies are pushing for a quick conclusion to the war and oil prices have spiked.
Amid punishing blows from the United States and Israel that have killed more than a thousand people<\/a> \u2013 including its longtime, all-powerful supreme leader Ali Khamenei<\/a> \u2013 Iran\u2019s leaders believe they must inflict serious pain<\/a> before negotiations to end the war can begin, experts say.
“They don’t have to win the war,\u201d Parsi, an expert with contacts in Iran\u2019s government and security services, told USA TODAY. \u201cThey have to ensure Trump’s presidency is on the brink of destruction before they lose. That’s when they believe Trump will pull out \u2013 due to the costs.”
This wasn’t the outcome Trump wanted.
On Sunday, March 1, as the war entered its second day, Trump told The Atlantic magazine that the Iranians \u201cwant to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them.\u201d
But Ali Larijani, Iran\u2019s top security official, shot down the suggestion. \u201cWe will not negotiate with the United States,\u201d he said in a series of social media posts. \u201cTrump plunged the region into chaos with his \u2018delusional fantasies\u2019 and now fears more American troop casualties.\u201d
Larijani said Iran would keep fighting, \u201cregardless of the costs and will make the enemies sorry for their miscalculation.\u201d\u00a0
Experts say Iran\u2019s leadership has determined that \u2013 despite a vast imbalance in military power \u2013 it must cause serious political and economic pain to the U.S. and Israel before agreeing to a ceasefire.
They believe Washington will only bargain in good faith, producing a lasting end to hostilities \u2212 and the Islamist regime’s survival \u2212\u00a0if Trump is damaged by the political toll of U.S. deaths and rising prices, according to this reading of Iran\u2019s clerical government and security apparatus.
So far, however, that strategic desire reads like fantasy: As the U.S. destroyed much of Iran’s military capability and sunk most of its navy, American war deaths have held steady at six service members.
Iran’s reluctance to negotiate despite large military and civilian losses<\/a> is based on hard lessons, experts said.
By acting with relative restraint \u2013 avoiding attacks on U.S. and Gulf nation targets during earlier military flare-ups with Israel \u2013 Iran suffered a “deterrence failure,\u201d said Kelly Greico, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think-tank.
Iran financed the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and has seen its influence in the region wither as Israel killed as many as 20,000 Hamas fighters in a war that took the lives of 70,000 Palestinians, and assassinated the longtime leader of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militia.
On April 13, 2024, Tehran launched 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles against Israeli targets after an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, killed top officers of its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. A U.S.-led coalition joined Israel\u2019s defense, blowing nearly all of the projectiles out of the sky, and Israel suffered only minor damage.\u00a0
Less than six months later, on Oct. 1, 2024, Iran attacked again, this time to avenge Israel\u2019s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah<\/a>, a key ally, and the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh<\/a>. Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles, again causing minor damage.
In neither case did Iran turn its guns on the gleaming towers and valuable oil and gas facilities of Washington\u2019s wealthy Gulf allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.\u00a0
Even in June 2025, when Israel launched a surprise attack that killed scores of top Iranian generals and nuclear scientists, with a reported death toll topping 1,000, Tehran refrained from widening hostilities.
Iran fired more than 1,000 drones and 550 ballistic missiles at Israel in the 12-day war, killing 32 civilians. A small attack, which experts regarded as token Iranian retaliation, on a U.S. base in Qatar caused minor damage after U.S. bombers destroyed three Iranian nuclear facilities.\u00a0
\u201cIf you are sitting in Tehran and you are looking at this war, the conclusion is that the restraint you showed was a deterrent failure,\u201d Grieco, a former professor at the U.S. Air Force\u2019s Air Command and Staff College, told USA TODAY.
Iran\u2019s leaders, she said, will feel a need \u201cto raise the cost of the conflict.\u201d
Now, Tehran wants Trump and the Israelis to feel pain \u2013 to truly need a ceasefire \u2013 before it will rejoin negotiations. That\u2019s the only way for a deal to stick \u2212 and for the brutal Iranian regime to survive, analysts said.
\u201cIran doesn\u2019t want to be exposed to Israeli air strikes at will\u201d after a new ceasefire, said Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. \u201cThis means exacting a very high price from Israel and from Trump in this war.\u201d
Iran\u2019s attacks in the region are already squeezing U.S. allies, and may soon affect the U.S. economy.
The conflict has closed the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, the narrow sea route for 20% of the world\u2019s oil exports. Qatar, a global supplier, has paused production of liquified natural gas amid Iranian airstrikes, while oil giant Saudi Aramco\u2019s 550,000 barrel-a-day Ras Tanura refinery was targeted by two Iranian drone attacks.
Iran has also hit European targets, striking a British air base on Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and a French base in the UAE, while the NATO defense alliance said it shot down a missile that entered Turkish airspace.
And on March 2, Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, inviting retaliatory strikes that killed scores and sent tens of thousands of residents fleeing southern Lebanon and Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs.
Oil prices soared on Tuesday, March 3, to their highest levels since 2024.
The missile and drone attacks are \u201ccausing economic damage,\u201d Bazzi said. \u201cIt\u2019s no accident Hezbollah got involved just as the oil markets and the stock markets<\/a> were opening\u201d following the war’s first salvos on Feb. 28.\u00a0
President Trump now warns Americans to expect several more weeks of conflict.\u00a0
Trump has mused on different endgames. He\u2019s demanded Iran forgo nuclear weapons, which it already had done \u2212 to wide skepticism.\u00a0
He\u2019s also called on unarmed Iranian citizens to overthrow the brutal, 47-year-old clerical regime and seize power themselves \u2013 somehow with the help of the very security forces<\/a> that were gunning them down in the thousands during protests just six weeks ago.\u00a0
And he\u2019s suggested a resolution similar to the one he achieved in Venezuela, in which the U.S. would reach an accommodation with Iran\u2019s leaders without seeking full regime change.\u00a0
But \u201cmost of the people we had in mind are dead,\u201d Trump said March 3. \u201cNow we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we\u2019re not going to know anybody.\u201d
Trump worried about installing a new leader \u201cwho\u2019s as bad as the previous person.\u201d
So far, Iran\u2019s leaders aren\u2019t asking for approval from the American president.\u00a0
\u201cTrump wanted a short, concise war, while the Iranians are taking it to a new dimension of organized, global chaos,\u201d Ali Hashem, a veteran journalist and columnist in the Persian Gulf, told USA TODAY. \u201cThe Iranians knew they would have to face their destiny, while Trump was engaged in wishful thinking.\u201d
Now, the question is which side can hold out before casualties increase and stocks of ammunition decrease.\u00a0
Iran has launched more than 2,000 drones and 500 ballistic missiles at U.S., Israeli and regional targets, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said March 4. Pre-war assumptions put the number of Iranian ballistic missiles at 2,500, Grieco said.
While the gap in military power between Tehran and Washington \u201cis so wide, it\u2019s hard to describe it,\u201d Bazzi said, Israel and other U.S. allies have shrinking supplies of the missile interceptors that so far have prevented serious bloodshed on their side amid more more than 700 Iranian deaths.\u00a0
Air defenses have likewise kept U.S. troop casualties to six war dead.\u00a0
\u201cIt\u2019s really a race between Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles and drones, and the Israeli, American and Gulf interceptors,\u201d Grieco said. \u201cIt\u2019s clear the Israelis and the Americans are hunting those missile facilities<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0
Bloomberg News, citing sources and documents, reported March 2 that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were asking their allies to nudge Trump towards a speedy end to the war.
The UAE was asking allies to help shore up its air defenses, while Qatar had only four days of Patriot Missile stocks remaining, the Bloomberg report said.\u00a0On March 5, Italy announced it was moving air defense weapons to help defend the Gulf emirates.
Trump said on social media the U.S. has enough weaponry to keep fighting “forever.” But he didn’t address the question of air defenses.
Once the interceptors start to run out, Grieco said, \u201cyou have to make hard choices of what to defend\u2026at the intersection of material and lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Iran doesn\u2019t want to talk. It doesn\u2019t want to parley. And it\u2019s not sitting down with President Donald Trump.Even as Iran endures devastating airstrikes, the country’s surviving leaders have determined “it has to really draw blood” before negotiating an end to the ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel, Trita Parsi, vice president of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":202506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-202505","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}