President Donald Trump is rolling out yet another Iran war strategy in familiar fashion: with an all-caps threat.
But the world will, as usual, have to wait to see whether he folds when the political costs pile up.
Trump on Wednesday promised “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY” in a Truth Social post.
His new approach is something of a face-saver after he failed to bomb the Islamic Republic into surrender or to coax it to nuclear talks with sweeteners in a memorandum of understanding. It’s the latest dizzying twist in a conflict that has spawned more tactical shifts and course reversals than it’s possible to count.
The president has halted all conversations with Iran, and CNN reports his team has told political allies he’s settling into a war of economic attrition that he believes will demolish Iran’s economy and compel its capitulation.
“Right now, I think the situation is so good,” Trump said Wednesday of a war that he declared won after a few days but is now deep into its sixth month.
In a later social media post, he pledged to crack down on any country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran. He wrote: “Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — It all needs to stop NOW.”
“You know who you are,” the president added.
Many analysts are skeptical that the revolutionary regime in Tehran, known for inflicting intense repression and economic duress on civilians, will back down in its existential struggle with the US. After all, it’s endured decades of some of the world’s most punitive economic sanctions.
“Those who think that Iran will collapse under the pressure, I think they are mistaken, despite the economic situation,” said Daniel Citrinowicz, who served in Israel Defense Intelligence, including as head of the Iran branch in the Research and Analysis Division. Citrinowicz told CNN International on Tuesday there’s no sign Iran is easing its strategy of trying to pressure Trump through international markets. He added that while economic pressure could impose severe costs on Iran, “At the end of the day, I don’t see the Iranian calculus changing because of this pressure.”
To make any progress, Trump will not simply have to change that calculus in Tehran. He must first change his own behavior.
Destroying Iran’s economy would take months or even years. It would call for the kind of strategic patience that Trump almost never shows. Iran will not be alone if it gambles that the president will tire of his new plan long before it shows results.
Trump’s new approach may also depend on a diplomatic shift.
The White House is putting huge faith in military power to enforce a blockade on Iran’s ships and ports — epitomized by his misleading social media post this week declaring the Strait of Hormuz a new US territory. But a truly effective attempt to isolate Iran implies a major effort, spanning the Gulf, Europe and Asia.
There are plausible ways that the administration could impose genuine pain on Iran’s regime.
Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Ludovic Hood advocates a regional and international squeeze on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps revenues and a new move against its regional proxy network. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, he called for strengthened US ties with governments in Baghdad and Beirut to challenge Tehran’s power across the Middle East and advised Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to turn up economic heat on China, a major purchaser of Iranian oil. Hood argued that sustained economic pressure would exacerbate inflation and capital flight, triggering a banking crisis that could loosen the regime’s grip.
A blockade would be even more effective if the US enlisted allies to shut down the web of clandestine economic arrangements and trade routes Tehran has built to evade sanctions. But such cooperation is hardly in the administration’s wheelhouse. Washington’s diplomacy on Iran, led by Trump’s envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, has often been naive.
And the US president alienated allies by starting a war that threatened their national and economic security interests — then berated them for not joining in. This week, he threatened to bomb Oman over its stance in talks with Iran seeking to reopen the strait.
A total lockdown of Iran’s economy would not come without grave choices for Trump. For example, one impactful move would be to impose sanctions on Chinese banks involved in transactions over Iran’s illicit oil sales. But Trump will welcome China’s President Xi Jinping for a state visit in September — a highlight of his year. It would be a major surprise if he sours the atmosphere before then.
Will Trump stay the course or bluff and fold?
Even if Trump is willing to wait for his economic warfare to smother Iran, there’s another third variable: Tehran gets to respond.
It knows Trump is vulnerable just over two months from the midterms. And it seems bent on humiliating him just as completely as it humiliated President Jimmy Carter during the hostage crisis before the 1980 election.
Iran therefore has a powerful political rationale for denying Trump’s bid to quiet the war during the fall campaign. And it also has a geopolitical incentive to escalate in order to preserve its major war gain of being able to slow ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. New drone or missile attacks on shipping would push up economic costs for American voters and remind them how much they hate the war. If the president were to respond, he’d worsen the crisis. If he held back, he’d look weak.
A hot war or an economic one will leave openings for Democrats. “I’m not interested in a war of economic attrition with Iran, where the American people are the ones paying the price on our side of the equation, at the gas pump and at the grocery store,” Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw told CNN News Central on Tuesday.
Despite Trump’s latest social media outburst, there’s still no endgame within sight.
And the president is still wrestling with the question that entraps him: Will Americans’ tolerance for the fallout from the war run out before the regime’s does?
