Editors at National Review Online ask whether President Trump is ready to “dig in” to the Iran conflict.
After months of on-again, off-again military strikes and rhetoric ranging from dovish to apocalyptic, President Trump has turned to a new strategy for Iran — economic warfare.
The U.S. has already been maintaining a naval blockade of Iran, and Trump is taking the strategy further, calling for a D-Day on the Iranian economy. On Monday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced what he portrayed as crippling new sanctions on Iran. “Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone,” he said in describing the new “Operation Economic Outcast.”
In addition to existing energy sanctions, the U.S. says it will include technology, shipping, and other sectors. The administration is making calls to different countries to join this economic isolation and threatening nations that still do business with Iran, including European countries and China, with secondary sanctions.
It’s not clear, though, what the follow-through will be, which renders the economic D-Day billing inapt; what made D-Day so decisive is that it wasn’t announced in advance, with the details TBD.
Surely, Iranian intransigence is based, in part, on the belief that Trump is always bluffing, and so overselling this latest tack is counterproductive. It didn’t help our credibility that Secretary Bessent said we aren’t acting on the sanctions immediately because we don’t want “to blow up the global financial system.” (Bessent has been using Treasury funds to buy back bonds in an effort to calm investors’ concerns about America’s ballooning $40 trillion debt.)
That said, we look to be in a better place than a couple of months ago. U.S. operations to get more ships out of the Strait of Hormuz have had some success, although it’s unclear how much (the price of Brent crude is still elevated compared to pre-war levels, but lower than it was during the height of the conflict). Meanwhile, reports from inside Iran point to a faltering economy that is experiencing runaway inflation, even before a further economic squeeze.
