The US naval blockade serves as an economic vise to capitalize on Iran’s prior military degradation. Allowing the blockade’s full impact to mature aims to deprive Tehran of hard currency, compel Chinese pressure for concessions, and reassert petrodollar dominance. This protracted squeeze seeks a durable settlement restricting nuclear and ballistic ambitions.
An emboldened and more capable Iran is a far worse prospect for US interests than a few weeks of higher gas prices.
Leo Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace, “Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait…There is nothing stronger than these two: patience and time.”
This adage is apt for the current moment in the war with Iran. The US naval blockade near the Strait of Hormuz flips Iran’s own strategic script back on the regime. It turns the economic hardship that Tehran intends to inflict on the world back to its source, and the result will be the United States and Iran negotiating a settlement to the current conflict.
For the United States to get what it wants and needs in a deal will take strategic patience and time—two commodities in needlessly short supply here.
Unfortunately, this means that worldwide gas prices will continue to increase and fertilizer and other essential commodities will remain in short supply for the foreseeable future. We need to be ready to accept this. Regardless of whether one supported this conflict or not, it is too late to turn back the clock.
The focus now should be on allowing the United States (and to a lesser extent Israel) to finish what was started—an aggressive challenge to a regime that for nearly half a century has murdered US citizens, destabilized an already volatile region, and pursued a nuclear capability that would allow it to blackmail the region and beyond. Our impatience to get gas back to under $3 per gallon shouldn’t drive us to accept any deal Iran offers and deprive us—and the world—a chance to constrain the Islamic Republic’s behavior.
If we are patient and allow the US naval blockade to take full effect, a humbler Iran is likely to return to the bargaining table. The Iranian regime will be forced to come to terms with its truly devastated economy and very limited options. It may finally be ready to seriously address issues such as the nuclear file, ballistic missiles, and support to its proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
The war could be won without another shot being fired.
The regime’s shutting the Strait of Hormuz and charging tolls in cryptocurrency or petroyuans for the select few it chooses to allow transit was not the result of any strategic brilliance. Rather, it was an opportunity the regime logically exploited because of either insufficient US planning or an overstretched US force that couldn’t properly attend to the unfettered transit of ships through the Strait while also conducting a relentless military campaign against the regime. If anything, the United States should have implemented this naval blockade weeks ago, when Richard Haass first suggested it.
If the newly instituted blockade of ships departing Iranian ports to transit the Strait of Hormuz is successful, the Iranian trump card over the strait will be lost. The Iranian regime will be deprived of desperately needed hard currency, and its Chinese sympathizers will be denied discounted oil purchases. This could lead to Chinese pressure on the regime to accept significant concessions in negotiating with Washington. As importantly, the petrodollar will retain its dominant standing as the fiat of choice in oil and gas transactions.
By the standards of modern armed conflicts, this has not been a protracted military campaign, and US actions have seemingly been limited exclusively to air operations. Without a doubt, the United States has dealt the Iranian regime a horrific military blow, destroying much of its nuclear, ballistic missile, and drone programs, along with its air defenses, air force, and navy.
It will take this already economically struggling country time and many billions of dollars to reconstitute its military and rebuild infrastructure damaged or destroyed in the conflict. This is time and money the regime hardly possesses as it wrestles with growing discontent from its citizenry. We need to use Iran’s sad economic state to our full advantage in all upcoming negotiations with Iran. Sanctions relief and rebuilding Iran’s economy should only come when the regime demonstrates a commitment to relinquishing its nuclear aspirations, ballistic missile programs, and support to terrorist proxies.
The intense military campaign is near its natural end, given that most military targets appear to have been successfully struck. Now, a final intense economic squeeze on what remains of this regime is the best chance for obtaining a negotiated settlement that checks and chastens Iran’s military ambitions for many years to come.
These are policy objectives that have eluded us for the past two decades but are now, with some patience, finally on the verge of being achieved. The alternative is unimaginable—an emboldened and angry Iranian regime that further threatens its neighbors and retains a path to achieve its nuclear ambitions.
So be patient, please.