Even before Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sets out new US moves to pressure Iran’s economy, things are looking increasing grim for Tehran; President Donald Trump is clearly winning and mainly needs to hold firm as the enemy tries to wriggle out.
Crucially, oil is now flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, meaning Tehran’s gambit of closing it has failed.
And the neighbors that Iran has been attacking have had enough: Its largest trading partner, the United Arab Emirates, last week cut off all transactions including financial ones.
Dubai for decades has been key to Tehran’s evasion of sanctions as well as over a third of its imports.
Iranian inflation was already running over 90% amid mass unemployment and other crises, leaving the regime increasingly unable to pay its regular army.
Now even the Revolutionary Guard should soon feel the pinch — endangering the regime’s ultimate linchpin.
Friday’s news was huge: US escorts now have oil flowing steadily through the Strait, with 200 ships a week (and rising) now transiting safely, up nearly 400% from just two weeks earlier.
That’s still below pre-war levels, but good enough (along with other shifts in production and export routes around the world) to keep oil prices manageable — albeit up painfully from January’s level.
Iran’s leaders are now doing another round of bad-cop/good-cop, with one set frothing at the mouth with threats while others insist they want peace and offer to renew negotiations — an “offer” that, if Washington bites, will quickly turn into demands for preemptive US concessions before they’ll even pretend to talk meaningfully.
The game is meant to support the narrative that Trump’s domestic critics keep pushing: the idea that Iran’s leadership was eager to negotiate a lasting peace, but then the US-Israel strikes killed those supposed moderates, allowing the “hard-liners to seize control” — and our only way to defeat those bad guys is to strike a deal with the remaining “moderates” so they can elbow aside the worst people.
The regime has been playing variations of this schtick for decades now, and Western liberals (especially in the media) keep falling for it, though the “good cops” never deliver any real change.
As Mark Dubowitz warned in The Post last week, Tehran may very well attempt one more gambit in this strategy: Using its husbanded missiles and drones (and perhaps its cyberwar capabilities) in the biggest blitz it can pull off in late October, right before the Israeli and US elections.
The idea is to create an air of crisis that panics voters in both nations, and so dislodges Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while handing Democrats solid control of Congress — and with it the ability to defund the Pentagon while miring Trump in yet another impeachment farce.
Trump and his team need to warn the American people of this possibility: Explaining that Iran is cornered, but still has a few teeth left and will do its best to break our will.
At this point, the two sides are in the final stages of staring each other down: Now is not the time for Washington to blink.
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