Good morning! Today is Tuesday, April 28th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. W. James Antle III argues Trump's five-month Iran war is sliding into the same trap that ensnared Bush — a regime too damaged to deal with but not collapsed enough to replace, with no face-saving exit on offer for Tehran. On day twenty of the ceasefire, Iran proposes reopening the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade, tabling the nuclear question, and signaling it would rather negotiate with J.D. Vance than Witkoff or Kushner. Iain Macwhirter warns that Trump's leaked threat to "review" British sovereignty over the Falklands has united the UK right against him and handed Keir Starmer the cover he needs to pull Britain back toward the European Union. and now for the details. We begin this morning with the war in Iran, now stretching well past the four-to-six-week timeline the White House first promised. President Trump bristled last week when a reporter pressed him on the duration, pointing to a chart of America's longer conflicts — World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq — and insisting that, at five months, his Iran campaign is, by comparison, brief. He told CNBC he would have "won Vietnam very quickly" and finished Iraq on a similar timeline, attributing the difference to management. As W. James Antle III writes, that confidence is precisely where the trouble begins. Antle argues that Trump's previous successful interventions worked because they stuck to militarily achievable aims and ended quickly. Venezuela, whatever one thinks of its wisdom, was short and, in the immediate term, functional. What turns short wars into long ones, Antle contends, is the attempted political transformation of foreign countries — particularly in the Middle East. George W. Bush had no trouble toppling Saddam Hussein or the Taliban; he had every trouble replacing them. Trump, Antle notes, has no appetite for nation-building. But the alternative is either a political vacuum or doing business with the very regime you went to war to dismantle. In Venezuela, the remnants cooperated. In Iran, they have not — and may be hardening. That, Antle writes, is how nations slide into nation-building they never wanted, and eventually into the sunk-cost fallacy of a forever war. Trump, he concludes, appears more eager than Tehran to end this, which is why the ceasefire has largely held. But Trump keeps demanding a face-saving exit for himself without offering one to the other side, and the longer that goes on, the more the cost falls on his party and his legacy. That ceasefire entered its twentieth day on Monday. Harrison Berger reports that, according to the Associated Press and Axios, Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the United States lifts its maritime blockade, with nuclear enrichment questions tabled for later. Tehran has signaled it would dilute its enriched uranium under international supervision as part of a comprehensive deal, but it insists enrichment itself is nonnegotiable, and that any settlement must include a ceasefire in Lebanon. A senior Iranian official told Drop Site News that further talks make little sense until the blockade is lifted, and added that Iran does not trust envoy Steve Witkoff, views Jared Kushner with greater skepticism still, and would prefer Vice President J.D. Vance at the table. Iran's foreign minister met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. Meanwhile, a proposed law in Iran's parliament would authorize its armed forces to target what it calls hostile vessels in the Strait, requiring passage fees paid in rials. Israeli airstrikes continued in the Beqaa Valley and southern Lebanon; Lebanon's Health Ministry reported fourteen killed Sunday. Brent crude closed above $108 a barrel, and AAA put the national average for gasoline at $4.11. Turning to the Atlantic alliance, a leaked Pentagon report suggests the United States may "review" its recognition of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands — apparent retaliation for Prime Minister Keir Starmer's refusal to back American military action in the Strait of Hormuz. "They weren't there for us," a Pentagon spokesman said. Argentine President Javier Milei, a close friend of President Trump, has long made *Las Malvinas* a nationalist rallying cry. As Iain Macwhirter writes, this is a peculiarly inept move. The Falklands, he points out, are not a colony in any meaningful sense. There were no indigenous Falklanders when the British arrived in the eighteenth century, the population is overwhelmingly British, and in a 2013 referendum only three residents voted against remaining a British overseas territory. Argentina's claim, Macwhirter argues, is a metaphysical dispute between empires that no longer exist. He notes Trump's intervention follows his January remarks dismissing British combat sacrifices in Afghanistan and Iraq — where 457 British soldiers died — comments that alienated even his natural a
