U.S. and Iran resume daily airstrikes in a battle over the Strait of Hormuz, with no end in sight

Neither one is backing down. The U.S. and Iran are back to bombing every day in a bid to control the Strait of Hormuz. And neither is backing down, showing the limitations of President Donald Trump’s reliance on escalating airstrikes to bend Tehran to his will.While the Trump administration says it is open to diplomacy, Iran so far has refused to loosen its grip over the crucial oil shipping corridor in the Persian Gulf. It is raising questions about the strategy for the next phase of the conflict as intensifying attacks have collapsed an interim ceasefire deal, left additional American troops dead and sent U.S. gasoline prices back up — posing new problems for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.Even with glimmers of hope for talks, the sides could be headed back to all-out war, with Trump warning that “every time Iran kills an American Soldier” going forward, “they will pay for that killing many times over.”The renewed escalations reflect “a fundamental misreading of the Iranian psyche and a lack of learning” from previous fighting, said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.“I think it’s driven by a calculus on either side that they can double down on military escalation as a way of breaking the impasse and getting the other side to relent,” Yacoubian said. “The danger, of course, is that the more escalatory it becomes, the harder it will be to seize any potential opening back to diplomacy.”