‘Trump Wants To Humiliate Tehran’: Experts Warn Miscalculation By Either Party Could Renew Conflict
‘Trump Wants To Humiliate Tehran’: Experts Warn Miscalculation By Either Party Could Renew Conflict Published By, Last Updated: May 19, 2026, 17:07 IST US-Iran tensions
‘Trump Wants To Humiliate Tehran’: Experts Warn Miscalculation By Either Party Could Renew Conflict Published By, Last Updated: May 19, 2026, 17:07 IST US-Iran tensions persist as both sides refuse key concessions, experts warn miscalculation could spark war. Tehran parliament mulls bounty bill targeting Trump and Netanyahu. A photo of wreckage and remains of targeted and crashed aircraft in Iran, provided by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Image: AFP) With US President Donald Trump holding off new military strikes on Iran, experts are no longer concerned with how long the tensions will persist but whether a miscalculation by Washington or Tehran will cause a new conflict, according to Reuters. While the US wants Iran to halt uranium enrichment for 20 years and also send its stockpiles to the US, Iran has demanded an end to strikes, security guarantees, war reparations and recognition of its sovereignty over Hormuz.
Reuters quoted Iranian officials saying that concessions on their missile programme, nuclear capabilities or control of the Strait are not policy tools but ideological pillars of the Islamic Republic’s survival – giving them up is not compromise, it is surrender. Iran-US War News Live Updates State Department Iran official Alan Eyre, who took part in previous US-Iran talks, said an agreement may be out of reach. “These two sides will never reach a deal. Trump doesn’t want to just win, he wants to humiliate Iran and be seen as having crushed Iran." “There is one major problem with this theory: We have already tested it, repeatedly, and Iran did not capitulate," said Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher on Iran at Israel’s Institute for Security Studies and former head of the Iran branch in Israeli Defense Intelligence.
“We’re in a war of attrition with the prospect of a new US-Israeli attack growing by the day," a regional official told Reuters. Reuters quoted Citrinowicz pointing out that overestimating pressure and underestimating Tehran’s resilience carries its own danger. “It raises the risk that Washington once again enters a confrontation expecting coercion to produce capitulation, and discovers, too late, that the regime was prepared to absorb far more pain than anticipated," he said. Interestingly, Tehran’s parliament is gearing up to vote on a bill offering rewards for whoever assassinated President Trump and PM Netanyahu, according to a report by The Telegraph UK. The proposed bounty legislation is being viewed as a shift from previous religious fatwas and propaganda campaigns to a more formal, parliamentary action amid a fragile ceasefire between Tehran and Washington.
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