In announcing what he called – with typical hyperbole – “the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country!”, Donald Trump appears to have abandoned both diplomacy – talks on the Strait of Hormuz have stalled - and his failed six-month military campaign against Iran.
His “new” strategy, in practice an extension of decades-long attempts to sanction Iran’s economy, is no more likely to succeed. Iran, which sees such renewed pressure as a threat to regime survival, is most unlikely to succumb.
“Operation Economic Fury”, announced by the US president and treasury secretary Scott Bessent, consists largely of threats to impose secondary sanctions on those states still trading legally or illegally with Iran. There is little reason to believe that it will shorten the war, as Trump promised.
Nor will it help, ahead of the US midterm elections, to bring down prices at petrol pumps, now as much a function of the global shortage of refining capacity as of crude oil shortages. Trump’s appeal to voters to accept the pain in the interest of preventing Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon is a desperate admission of the failure of his campaign.
RM Block
Moreover, as China warned yesterday, further targeting of its trade with Iran would provoke damaging retaliation. China buys 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports and threatening that risks exploding the US-China relationship only a month before presidents Trump and Xi Jinping’s Washington rendezvous.
The idea that the US can quickly cut off Iran’s imports and exports, or its access to cash, is fanciful. Iran has 3,600 miles of border with seven countries, impossible to close off. The history of economic sanctions is that they are a long road, requiring detailed negotiations with other countries and complex financial interventions. There are few quick wins and significant risks.
Trump’s new offensive will inflict more pain on Iran, but is likely to fail as surely as his military campaign, which has run into the sand.
