Iran

Tehran knows it does not need to defeat the United States in a conventional war. It can instead exploit the vulnerabilities of America and its Sunni Gulf allies by opening up new fronts. With shipping in the Strait of Hormuz disrupted, Saudi Arabia has been transporting oil via the Red Sea and keeping global energy markets just about under control. But that alternative Red Sea route is now being threatened and the economic consequences are becoming considerably more serious. Iran’s mullahs are widening their war with the US not only through direct attacks, but through their Shia allies and proxies across the Middle East. Earlier this month, the Iran-backed Houthis seized strategically important territory across Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

At a much-anticipated press conference Monday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent minced no words. The United States, he said, is now imposing unprecedented sanctions not only on Iran but on every country, corporation, bank, and shipping company that does business with that regime.   Thanks to these US policies, Bessent said, all Iran’s facilitators must now choose between economic ties with the US and those with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Do business with Iran and you will be severed from the US market and the entire dollar-based trading system, the centerpoint of the world economy.  That policy can be summed up in two words: “economic asphyxiation.

If you control the world’s largest economy, as the US does, and if your enemy depends on exports to the West, as Iran does, it should hardly be a surprise when the big economy decides to use its commercial and financial leverage.   That is exactly what the US is doing – and this week it announced it would ratchet up the pressure substantially. Some sanctions were already in place, most notably restrictions on Iran’s oil exports, enforced by the US Navy. What’s new is that those sanctions will be supplemented by a full range of additional sanctions on commercial and bank transactions routed through third countries.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has made many concessions in its long decline. Until now, it stood firm on one rule: women must remain covered. The veil, it has insisted since the 1979 Revolution, was a divine instruction. But apparently divine instructions can lapse. This summer, a young woman appeared at a pro-government rally in a pink top and acid-washed jeans, her hair loose on her shoulders. She addressed the camera while standing among a crowd of women veiled from head to toe. Rather remarkably, the footage went on state television. Five years ago, that footage would have been evidence for a prosecution. Now, it is propaganda. The veil used to divide the pious from the impious.

Iranians have adopted a new sport in the past few years: knocking the turban from a passing cleric’s head. There are points for technique and for how high and how far you can get their headgear to go. These are small acts of revenge against a hated religious elite who came to power on a wave of arrests and torture and who, as recently as January, ordered thousands of peaceful protesters to be shot in the streets. It’s also a symptom of something larger. Political Islam is in retreat across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. “The strange death of political Islam” is an idea that’s in the air at the moment. Rule by clerics, and by others who claim to speak in the name of God, is going out of fashion in the Islamic world.

As a UFC aficionado, President Donald Trump might know what a twister is. It works by cranking the victim’s head one way while controlling his hips in the other. Apparently, the pressure that this places on the spine is agonizing, leading to a rapid tap out or life-altering injuries to the back and neck. In the Middle East, the President finds himself in a geopolitical twister. On the one hand, Iran’s Memorandum of Understanding terms are too unpalatable for President Trump to swallow – crystalizing as they would an unambiguous defeat, with all the strategic and political consequences that that would entail. On the other, the US Air Force has been unable to suppress or interdict Iran’s missiles and drones.

The war in Iran rumbles on, in parallel to talks that are aimed at stopping it. Both sides would rather the war were over; this limbo is causing mayhem in Iran’s economy and politics, while MAGA too has been bent out of shape. Yet a reality might be starting to take hold in which fighting simply drifts aimlessly, much like the peace talks. And much like the ships that are stuck in the Strait of Hormuz, too. As both sides try to game the stalemate, unintended consequences are emerging The US is calculating that a naval blockade, in the absence of a memorandum of understanding, can economically constrict Tehran, narrowing its room for maneuver and eventually forcing Tehran back to the table.