Five months into what historians will likely call the 2026 Iran war, Washington finds itself in a posture it has occupied before, in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan: too deep in to walk away cleanly, not deep enough in to call the thing won. The problem is that he keeps returning to the threat as leverage, and leverage that is never cashed in eventually stops being believed. The third, and the one Washington resists hardest, is that “no deal” is not a neutral default while the war grinds on. The actual off-ramp was visible back in May and June, when Gulf states first talked Trump down from strikes and a framework nearly held. It is visible now in the Oman-brokered talks over Hormuz shipping, however tentative.