The War on Iran Is Now an Economic One

The War on Iran Is Now an Economic One

HUGH FITZGERALD

For now, the American military campaign against Iran has been put on hold. President Donald Trump has now dropped all those deadlines for the Islamic Republic of Iran to comply with American demands that he kept extending. 

Now he has chosen to rely on severe economic pressure, hoping that eventually Iran’s impoverishment will become intolerable, leading to widespread popular discontent that may again threaten the regime. The blockade of Iranian ports has led to a 90% drop in Iranian oil exports. Estimates are that the blockade is costing Iran $400 million a day in lost oil revenue. 

And Iran is no longer able to receive shipments of food and medicines from its traditional suppliers abroad, who are now blocked from using Iranian ports. How long can the Islamic Republic survive under such conditions? More on the economic war against Iran can be found here: “Trump turns time into a weapon as Iran war shifts to economic pressure phase,” by Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, April 24, 2026:

When US President Donald Trump extended the ceasefire with Iran this week without setting an end date, he did more than buy time. He redefined what this phase of the conflict is about.

The instinctive reading of a ceasefire is that it signals de-escalation – a step away from confrontation. That Trump backed down. Got weak knees. Capitulated, as support for the war in the US continues to tank.

But that would be a misreading of the situation. The bombing may have paused, but the pressure on the Islamic Republic has not. It has merely changed form.

A more accurate way to understand the current moment is this: the war has not stopped; it has shifted.

For six weeks, the emphasis was on military force – US and Israeli strikes designed to degrade Iran’s military infrastructure and nuclear capabilities. That objective, by most accounts, was largely achieved. Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities are not today what they were before February 28. Not by a long shot.

Smoke and flames rise from the South Pars gas field following an Israeli strike, as seen through the window of a moving vehicle, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Asaluyeh, Bushehr Province, Iran, March 18, 2026, in this screen grab obtained from social media video.

But military action alone – at least since World War II – has rarely produced durable political outcomes. It can weaken, deter, and change the situation on the ground, but it does not, by itself, reliably produce the desired political results. The US experiences in Vietnam and Iraq are glaring examples of this.

What Washington is now attempting is something different: to turn those battlefield gains into leverage – and to do so not through continued bombing, but through sustained economic pressure….

For the US and Israel, this period allows for replenishment, repositioning, rest for pilots and air crews, and the quiet preparation of next steps should the current approach fail. The US is already moving a third aircraft carrier strike force into position.

In other words, it is not simply Iran that can take advantage of this time….

During a ceasefire, it’s not only Iran that can use the time to regroup and reposition its forces, and to bring out weapons it had not used before. So can the U.S. and Israel, replenishing their diminished stock of weapons, including drones and ammunition, adding new ships to enforce the blockade on Iranian ports, and giving their pilots and air crews a much-needed rest after the furious pace of their last bombing campaign, when they, hit 15,000 sites all over Iran.

But this, too, will not be simple. As Ben-Yishai pointed out, there are currently multiple centers of power in Iran: the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; the more pragmatic political echelon made up of the president, parliament speaker, and foreign minister; and Mojtaba Khamenei, the figure tabbed as supreme leader, but whose whereabouts and ability to function remain unknown.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is now believed to be in the ascendant in Tehran. It has taken over direction of the country; Mojtaba Khamenei is apparently physically and mentally incapable of assuming the responsibilities of rule. The “moderates” — President Pezeshkian, Parliamentary Speaker Ghalibaf, and Foreign Minister Araghchi — are all being sidelined by IRGC hardliners; Ghalibaf is already believed to have quit the negotiating team because the IRGC wanted him out.

As Trump puts it, when one weighs the hardship of higher prices at the pump against the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran, there is in his view only one choice: Americans must endure what he believes is a painful but temporary price rise, in order to save the world from a nuclear Iran.

Iran is now facing a complete economic collapse. Every day that the blockade continues costs the country $400 million. Americans have to pay more for gasoline, but what a small price that is to pay in order to prevent one of the world’s worst regimes from obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapon.