President Donald Trump on Tuesday scuttled his plans to impose a 20% toll on every ship the U.S. Navy escorted through the Strait of Hormuz, as hostilities with Iran drift along with no harbor in sight. “Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” he wrote.

The announcement reverses Trump’s Monday declaration that “the U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”

Trump’s toll announcement accompanied news that the U.S. would reimpose its blockade of Iranian shipping, while allowing ships from other nations to transit the Strait of Hormuz freely. Although Trump reversed himself on the toll, the blockade remains in effect.

“Nobody should be charging to use geographical waterways. That’s something that is the foundation of maritime law, and it seems like we’re getting away from that,” urged Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-N.C.) Monday on “Washington Watch.” “It sends very problematic signals as to what the future of the economic status of the strait is going to be with respect to tolling. … I don’t think we have fully seen the international reaction, particularly from all of our allies to this potential solution.”

According to President Trump, “highly productive conversations” with foreign leaders induced him to reverse himself on a Hormuz toll.

Trump’s maritime policy maneuvers came in reaction to the resumption of hostilities. Over the weekend and into Monday, Iran fired on U.S. military facilities around the Gulf region, as well as on civilians in neutral countries, while the U.S. returned fire with devastating effect.

The belligerence contrasts sharply with the uneasy ceasefire that prevailed only days earlier. “It looked like we were on a path to potentially a diplomatic resolution [of] the war being over,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “Now it appears that all the diplomatic things are off the table, and we’re back right at it in open combat.”

“It’s really unfortunate,” answered Harrigan. But, “to some extent, with Iran’s history — 47 years of sponsoring terrorism and just being a source for chaos in the region and in the world over — this is kind of a predictable place for us to be.”

“That’s a consequence of us failing to put Iran in a box,” Harrigan declared, “where they had to make really tough choices between continuing to pursue red lines that were intolerable to the United States and its Western allies, and providing for the 92 million people inside of the country. … I don’t think that we did that. And that’s why we’re in the situation that we’re in.”

“I was disappointed that the president stopped and had a ceasefire in the first place. I think, once you decide to go, you’ve got to go — and you’ve got to go all the way,” Harrigan continued. “If you’re going to decide to kick the hornet’s nest —and this is the hornet’s nest of all hornet’s nests in the Middle East — if you decide to put your boot on their throat, you do not take your boot off until they are done breathing. We failed to do that, and we’re reaping the consequences of it now.”

The reason why Iran has proven to be such a hornet’s nest is that “the ideology driving this regime does not allow them to [be] dealt with as a reasonable nation,” Perkins said. As the recently departed Senator Lindsey Graham said, “Being part of the [Iranian] regime takes you out of the reasonable camp, [unless] you think it’s reasonable to want to make the entire world bend to your knee as a religion. They’re religious Nazis.”

Through the ill-timed ceasefire, the Trump administration has discovered that retreating from the cusp of victory entails the disadvantages of both belligerent and conciliatory strategies. Not only is our Navy tied up in a Middle East operation with no timetable for an exit, but the Strait of Hormuz has not been restored to its pre-war status, due to the ongoing threat of Iranian attacks.

“Now we’re looking at a very different strategic scenario, where we have allowed an influx of capital into the country because we lift[ed] sanctions for a period of time. We allowed vessels to leave the strait and enrich Iran and at least give them some breathing room,” Harrigan lamented. “I just would like everybody in Washington, D.C., to actually have eyes wide open with what the stakes are with the decisions that have to be made in the very near future.”

“One thing that’s absolutely clear is [that] both Republicans and Democrats agree that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” Harrigan added. “And we’ve got to keep that original mission in complete focus as we move forward towards a resolution.”

“However, it’s really complicated to get there from here, given the decisions that we have made up to this point,” Harrigan admitted. “This war should have been over a long time ago.”

The main disadvantage President Trump faces in the war, which only increases as the conflict drags on, is public polling. “The American people do not like this conflict. It’s got [a] 25% approval rating,” said Harrigan. “But everybody hates Iran. How do you square those two things? You square them with the right outcome,” he proposed.

For Harrigan, this means that the U.S. must no longer fight wars in half-measures but fight to win. “We’ve got to get away from using military force when we are not willing to use it completely, when we are not willing to operate the military in line with the doctrine that we have created (to achieve overwhelming, decisive superiority against our adversaries) and instead practice limited war,” he insisted. “Limited war, for the last 80 years, has done the United States of America zero favors.”

“What’s so frustrating for people like me who are veterans of the Global War on Terror, having won every single tactical engagement that I ever participated in, is that the United States continually struggles to turn tactical victory into strategic outcomes,” Harrigan complained. “That is no different here in Iran. And it’s not because we lack the capability to do it. It’s actually because we lack the principled decision-making to actually implement it.”

“We do not want to see us get into another situation where we end up in an endless conflict,” Harrigan continued. But, “in order to do that, you have to act decisively. We have not done that up to this point.”

“I was thinking about this over the weekend,” Perkins responded. “With the exception of the first Gulf War, where we went in with overwhelming force and we succeeded … since the Korean War, we have fought [with] this idea of containment … as opposed to victory, and it’s been seen in the outcomes.”

“When the president decides that we have to use force, we better darn well use that force and achieve the outcomes that we initially set out to achieve,” Harrigan summarized, “or all of this ends up being for naught, and we just end up chalking Iran up to another long line of foreign interventions that have not served the United States of America well over the last 80 years.”