Next step in the war: Iran wants 'blood'; Trump says US can fight 'forever'

Dan Morrison, USA TODAYThu, March 5, 2026 at 8:01 AM UTC

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Iran doesn’t want to talk. It doesn’t want to parley. And it’s 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 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 hundreds – including its longtime, all-powerful supreme leader – Iran’s leaders believe they must inflict serious pain before negotiations to end the war can begin, experts say.

Marked for death: How Oct. 7 attack sealed Khamenei's fate

1 / 0Latest photos capture US and Israeli strikes against Iran

Smoke rises following an explosion, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Tehran, Iran, February 28, 2026.

'Regardless of the costs'

"They don't have to win the war,” Parsi, an expert with contacts in Iran’s government and security services, told USA TODAY. “They have to ensure Trump's presidency is on the brink of destruction before they lose. That's when they believe Trump will pull out – 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 “want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them.”

But Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, shot down the suggestion. “We will not negotiate with the United States,” he said in a series of social media posts. “Trump plunged the region into chaos with his ‘delusional fantasies’ and now fears more American troop casualties.”

More: Iran war drives up frustration, gas prices across nation

1 / 0Photos show retaliation strikes on Israel after Iran attack

Children run to an underground shelter amid reports of incoming missiles on February 28, 2026 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Iran launched a wave of missiles at Israel after the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran early this morning, killing Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz declared a state of emergency, as Israelis braced for the retaliation.

Larijani said Iran would keep fighting, “regardless of the costs and will make the enemies sorry for their miscalculation.”

Experts say Iran’s leadership has determined that – despite a vast imbalance in military power – 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 − and the Islamist regime's survival − if Trump is damaged by the political toll of U.S. deaths and rising prices, according to this reading of Iran’s 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.

'Deterrence failure'

Iran's reluctance to negotiate despite large military and civilian losses is based on hard lessons, experts said.

By acting with relative restraint – avoiding attacks on U.S. and Gulf nation targets during earlier military flare-ups with Israel – Iran suffered a "deterrence failure,” 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.

Graves are being prepared for the victims following an Israeli strike on a school in Minab, Iran, March 2, 2026. This image was provided by the Iranian Foreign Media Department.

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’s defense, blowing nearly all of the projectiles out of the sky, and Israel suffered only minor damage.

Less than six months later, on Oct. 1, 2024, Iran attacked again, this time to avenge Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a key ally, and the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. 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’s wealthy Gulf allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

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.

“If you are sitting in Tehran and you are looking at this war, the conclusion is that the restraint you showed was a deterrent failure,” Grieco, a former professor at the U.S. Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College, told USA TODAY.

Iran’s leaders, she said, will feel a need “to raise the cost of the conflict.”

Now, Tehran wants Trump and the Israelis to feel pain – to truly need a ceasefire – before it will rejoin negotiations. That’s the only way for a deal to stick − and for the brutal Iranian regime to survive, analysts said.

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Aftermath of an air strike on a police station in Tehran on March 2, 2026, amid the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.

“Iran doesn’t want to be exposed to Israeli air strikes at will” after a new ceasefire, said Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. “This means exacting a very high price from Israel and from Trump in this war.”

Iran’s 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, the narrow sea route for 20% of the world’s oil exports. Qatar, a global supplier, has paused production of liquified natural gas amid Iranian airstrikes, while oil giant Saudi Aramco’s 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.

A person rides a scooter as smoke rises in the Fujairah oil industry zone following a fire caused by debris after interception of a drone by air defenses, according to the Fujairah media office, amid the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran, in Fujairah, UAE, March 3, 2026.

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’s southern suburbs.

Oil prices soared on Tuesday, March 3, to their highest levels since 2024.

The missile and drone attacks are “causing economic damage,” Bazzi said. “It’s no accident Hezbollah got involved just as the oil markets and the stock markets were opening” following the war's first salvos on Feb. 28.

What's the endgame?

President Trump now warns Americans to expect several more weeks of conflict.

Trump has mused on different endgames. He’s demanded Iran forgo nuclear weapons, which it already had done − to wide skepticism.

He’s also called on unarmed Iranian citizens to overthrow the brutal, 47-year-old clerical regime and seize power themselves – somehow with the help of the very security forces that were gunning them down in the thousands during protests just six weeks ago.

And he’s suggested a resolution similar to the one he achieved in Venezuela, in which the U.S. would reach an accommodation with Iran’s leaders without seeking full regime change.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, the head of the judiciary and Alireza Arafi, deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts, attend the meeting of the interim leadership council of Iran in an unknown location, amid the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran, in Iran, March 1, 2026 in this handout photo from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

But “most of the people we had in mind are dead,” Trump said March 3. “Now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”

Trump worried about installing a new leader “who’s as bad as the previous person.”

So far, Iran’s leaders aren’t asking for approval from the American president.

“Trump wanted a short, concise war, while the Iranians are taking it to a new dimension of organized, global chaos,” Ali Hashem, a veteran journalist and columnist in the Persian Gulf, told USA TODAY. “The Iranians knew they would have to face their destiny, while Trump was engaged in wishful thinking.”

Deadly missile race

Now, the question is which side can hold out before casualties increase and stocks of ammunition decrease.

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 “is so wide, it’s hard to describe it,” 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.

Air defenses have likewise kept U.S. troop casualties to six war dead.

“It’s really a race between Iran’s ballistic missiles and drones, and the Israeli, American and Gulf interceptors,” Grieco said. “It’s clear the Israelis and the Americans are hunting those missile facilities.”

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.

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, “you have to make hard choices of what to defend…at the intersection of material and lives.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Iran wants to ‘draw blood’ before talking to Trump

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