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Any day now, the war with Iran will be over—even though, we’ve been told, it has also been over for quite some time. This past weekend, President Trump assured the country that a deal was imminent, but by Wednesday was telling everyone not to hold their breath. Which feels about right for a war that was supposed to last four to six weeks, or two weeks, or two days, depending on which of the administration’s forecasts you pick.

Open hostilities officially concluded after 39 days, on April 8, with a ceasefire. Which is why, according to Pete Hegseth, Trump doesn’t need congressional authorization for the war: because 39 days is demonstrably fewer days than the 60 days after which such authorization is required.

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During said ceasefire, however, Iran and the U.S. have continued shooting at each other, on and off, which would seem to indicate that the firing has not, in fact, ceased. Israel, meanwhile, had to be coaxed into a separate ceasefire in Lebanon to mollify the Iranians into pausing hostilities against the U.S. and its Gulf allies. But despite that ceasefire, Israel has pushed even deeper into southern Lebanon in response to continued Hezbollah attacks, demonstrating that the ceasefire on which the second ceasefire had been partly predicated wasn’t quite a ceasefire either.

So, for those keeping track at home, Iran and America are still shooting at each other but are not at war because there’s technically a ceasefire—but are also not not at war because a ceasefire isn’t a comprehensive solution and there’s no deal to end the war. But worry not, because a deal to end the war will be coming any day now, as it has been for two months.

But what, exactly, would peace with Iran entail? Trump has, at times, talked about a limited deal, like one that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That crucial economic chokepoint, of course, was wide open before Trump launched the war on February 28, but now is under an Iranian blockade in addition to an American counter-blockade—even though both constitute acts of war and therefore violations of the aforementioned ceasefire. Right? (As Robert Malley, Obama’s chief negotiator with Iran, told NPR this morning, “I guess it’s a ceasefire?”)

At other times, the president has discussed an Iran deal that would be much broader and more definitive. Depending on the day, such an agreement might—or might not—include Iran turning over its enriched uranium in exchange for sanctions relief and the return of frozen assets. This week, that proposition grew broader still after Trump demanded that, on top of everything else, a whole array of Muslim countries, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, sign on to the Abraham Accords—i.e., recognize Israel in exchange for American sweeteners, as the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Morocco did in the first Trump administration. (All the countries Trump approached in this go-round summarily rejected the idea, not having been consulted in the first place.)

Then this morning, Axios, that herald of all the Iran deals Trump has almost reached this spring, reported that the U.S. and Iran had reached a deal—except it still needed Trump’s approval. On closer inspection, the big scoop turned out to be an agreement to extend the ceasefire for 60 more days—even as the U.S. and Iran were actively exchanging fire—and begin negotiations for a nuclear deal. Maybe. That’s progress, right?

As I wrote at the beginning of the war, back when Trump and his allies were struggling to articulate its aims—regime change? stopping the nuclear program Trump claimed to have already “obliterated”? degrading Iran’s military capability? all of the above?—not being clear about your objectives is actually a great tactic. If no one knows what your goals are, no one will know when you’ve failed to meet them.

Call it strategic ambiguity, gaslighting, or simply bullshit artistry, it’s also a recipe for endless war, wrapped in endless denial. We have now, thanks to this administration, entered a conflict that continues to smolder beneath the fig leaf of a ceasefire, even as the shooting persists and negotiations stretch out so endlessly that a meaningful, lasting resolution is always just over the horizon. A true forever war. (Just don’t tell Wall Street.)

For my generation, forever wars meant bloody, ruinously expensive, and ultimately pointless adventures in Middle Eastern nation-building—neocon fever dreams of forcing the light of democracy onto the unenlightened world. Now, as Netanyahu and Putin have shown, forever wars are also the perfect tool for reversing democracy and preserving one’s power at home. For the autocrat, or the aspiring authoritarian, the prospect of an existential threat to the homeland justifies unprecedented remedies. A conflict can no longer simply be managed; its root causes—Putin’s favorite term—have to be eliminated.

But the enemy gets a say, and this line of thinking is existential for them, too. So the fighting drags on for years—as it has in the Donbas, in Gaza, and in Lebanon—despite the various ceasefires along the way. All this suits men like Putin and Bibi just fine, because in wartime, emergency measures—like, say, suspending elections or redirecting domestic spending toward the military—become permissible. If it happens that such measures consolidate their grip on power at the expense of democracy, well, the threat is existential, so they simply have to be taken.

Trump, it must be said, is still very focused on having elections—provided  his acolytes win them—but the seed has obviously been planted. “So you’re saying during the war you can’t have elections,” he joked last August as Volodymyr Zelensky sat next to him in the White House. He said this because Ukraine, too, has suspended elections under martial law as a result of the war, with the support of parliament—and because a quarter of the country’s population is displaced by a war they didn’t start. “So, let me just say, three and a half years from now,” Trump mused, “if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections. Oh, that’s good.” Trump jokes are always part confession, part trial balloon, part actual attempt at humor, and given his constant, overt flirtation with a third term, it’s not a crazy thing to think about.

But you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand how an endless war warps a society, how it fritters away its resources and wears down its social fabric. Just ask J.D. Vance.

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