Why Bringing Down Oil's Price Is So Hard

And all this assumes an agreement will be reached soon. It could take longer. The negotiations have been difficult, at least in part because each side is convinced it holds the cards and can wait the other out.

President Donald J. Trump's team thinks the pummeling we've given Iran's economy has left it in such catastrophic shape that the Iranians will have to sweeten their terms. The Iranians think Trump can't afford to go into the midterm elections with gas prices high. Which side has the greater tolerance for pain?

By all accounts the president wants an end to the war. There have been reports that he's“bored” with it. Frustrated is perhaps more accurate. The war hurts him politically. It's beginning to feel like a quagmire, the kind of thing candidate Trump promised to keep the country out of.

It's unlike quagmires past, however. It's only lasted three months, and more than half of that period has been a ceasefire. Earlier quagmires went on for years and took thousands of American lives.

Still, this war qualifies for inclusion on a different dishonor roll. It's yet another demonstration of how difficult it can be for a great power to triumph over a seemingly much weaker power.

Among the other examples are the US failure to defeat Vietnam, the Soviet Union's inability to subdue Afghanistan and the agonizing US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this century. And then there's Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has now gone on longer than the Soviet Union's World War II.

A digression:

The Russians have been aiding Iran with intelligence and materiel. Trump's critics cite this as an example of how little the US benefits from the president's bromance with Vladimir Putin.

The critics have a point but, if Trump were to push Putin, Putin could respond that he'll stop helping Iran when we stop helping Ukraine – which we still are doing, though not anywhere near as much as in the past.

The Chinese, meanwhile, are aiding everyone, though some more than others. The drones that all of the parties use in both wars – the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Iranians and, yes, even the US – contain critical Chinese components.

End of digression.