Don’t Relax Yet—Trump’s Iran Blockade Makes More War Likely

President Donald Trump, after threatening for weeks to bring the “hammer” down on Iran, said Monday that a U.S. escalation is “unlikely” and the war is “effectively over” militarily. Antiwar voices breathed sighs of relief, and oil prices continued to plunge amid surging hopes of lasting peace.

But there’s a big problem.

Trump also says he’ll maintain America’s crushing economic pressure campaign against Tehran, including the naval blockade on Iranian ports. Not only is the blockade itself an act of war under international law, but the campaign makes a resumption of all-out hostilities more likely, regardless of the president’s intentions, experts told The American Conservative.

“While the American economic warfare against Iran is causing significant damage to the Iranian economy, there is little reason to believe that the Iranian leadership will surrender in an existential war when the population has rallied around the flag following multiple American atrocities against the Iranian people,” said Brett Erickson of Obsidian Risk Advisors.

The Islamic Republic, Erickson noted, has retained its military capability to escalate the regional war, and the Trump administration shouldn’t assume the Iranians will “stand idly by while the United States devastates their economy and citizens.”

Erickson’s comments align with expert analyses provided to TAC in early September, days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out the so-called “Economic D-Day” strategy to cripple and isolate Tehran economically. “Iran will keep fighting despite the economic pain,” said Rosemary Kelanic of Defense Priorities. “This is an existential conflict for them, and besides, capitulation isn’t a serious option when Trump’s demands are so erratic.”

“We’ve seen repeatedly that economic pressure can severely hurt ordinary people without producing the political outcome Washington expects,” added Sina Toossi, an Iran expert at the Center for International Policy. “Tehran is more likely to look for ways to withstand the pressure and impose costs of its own, including through its leverage over Hormuz and regional energy flows.”

Those pessimistic assessments proved prescient: October was the worst month of the war for Iranian strikes on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for the global energy trade. Iran successfully kept oil prices elevated to maximize the political costs for Trump and the Republican Party, using last week’s midterm elections as leverage. That’s evidence not only of Iran’s intact military capabilities, but of its strategic patience and willingness to escalate amid U.S. pressure.

Nevertheless, after the GOP’s midterm elections rout, the Trump administration raised the pressure. It stood up “Task Force Iron Gate,” which expands the blockade on weapons shipments to Iran by targeting land routes and shipping in the Caspian Sea.

The operation is led by Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command and reputedly one of the most hawkish military officials advising Trump. While the president may hope to save face without reigniting a deeply unpopular war, Cooper’s operation only intensifies low-grade fighting that already risked spiraling into major hostilities.

The loudest advocates of the operation—like Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)— would welcome a return to major U.S.-Israel strikes. Before the war, groups like the FDD sabotaged U.S.–Iran diplomacy by pushing the White House to adopt hardline demands that Tehran plainly would not agree to, as TAC has reported. Now, they back a strategy of economic strangulation that could lead to the regime change war scenario they actually want.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to move an aircraft carrier—the USS Theodore Roosevelt—to the Middle East. In mid- to late-November, the U.S. is set to briefly have a rare three-carrier presence in the region. If Iran judges a big U.S. attack to be inevitable or nearly so, it could preemptively strike.

Moreover, political pressure on Trump to restart the war will rise in the coming weeks. December 11 marks a deadline for Congress to fund the federal government, and a growing number of Democrats want to use the occasion to cut funding for the Iran War. With Congress coming under Democratic control in January, the Washington War Party sees the next few weeks as a crucial window to “finish the job” against Iran. Israeli political developments only add to the sense of urgency: Opposition parties are trying to form a new government, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to provoke another round of war in a desperate bid to hold onto power.

Whatever Trump may say, the economic pressure campaign against Iran isn’t an alternative to war. Unless and until the president walks away from the conflict, opponents of this disastrous war should remain vigilant.