On Aug. 19, Iranian Central Bank Gov. Abdolnaser Hemmati offered one of the most candid accounts yet of the state of Iran’s economy, stating that Iran’s oil exports had almost stopped owing to the U.S. naval blockade. He added that Iranian industries had access to 30 percent less foreign currency than a year earlier. As a result, Hemmati said, the economic situation was even worse than in 2018 through 2020, when U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his maximum pressure campaign against Tehran.
That same day, Trump announced a new campaign of “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale” against Iran, warning that countries providing Tehran with “any type of lifeline” would face “TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”
On Aug. 19, Iranian Central Bank Gov. Abdolnaser Hemmati offered one of the most candid accounts yet of the state of Iran’s economy, stating that Iran’s oil exports had almost stopped owing to the U.S. naval blockade. He added that Iranian industries had access to 30 percent less foreign currency than a year earlier. As a result, Hemmati said, the economic situation was even worse than in 2018 through 2020, when U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his maximum pressure campaign against Tehran.
That same day, Trump announced a new campaign of “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale” against Iran, warning that countries providing Tehran with “any type of lifeline” would face “TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”
Hours later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared that the blockade would be combined with the toughest sanctions that the U.S. had ever imposed. Bessent added that the increased economic pressure could make another large-scale military operation unnecessary.
It now appears that instead of continuing bombing campaigns, the United States is relying on economic warfare and a naval blockade to secure Tehran’s capitulation. For Washington, this would minimize the risk to its forces and the pressure on its munitions stockpiles. For Tehran, in turn, this disparity of costs represents a challenge. As a result, Iranian political and military figures have called for Iran to respond with a more offensive military doctrine. They argue that Iran should now take steps to change the situation and make the United States pay much more for keeping the blockade in place.
For years, Iran relied on an approach known as “strategic patience” when facing pressure from Israel and the United States. Under this approach, Tehran responded to direct attacks but tried to limit the scale of its response. The goal was to impose costs without starting a wider war that could become an existential threat to the Islamic Republic.
Iran also used the so-called “axis of resistance,” a regional network of armed groups, as part of its strategy. These groups helped Tehran keep its conflict with Israel and the United States in the gray zone and much of the fighting away from Iranian territory. In January 2020, Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s Quds Force commander, was killed in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad International Airport. In response, Iran fired ballistic missiles at bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq, but it gave Iraq advance warning before the strikes, allowing the U.S troops to take shelter. Trump then decided not to retaliate.
In April 2024, an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members. Twelve days later, Iran responded by launching more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel. Most were intercepted, and no one was killed. Iran followed the same pattern later, particularly after the U.S. bombing of its nuclear sites in 2025.
All of these limited responses were designed to prevent a full-scale war with the United States, but in the end, they failed to do so. The limitations of this approach became even clearer on Feb. 28 as U.S. and Israeli strikes targeted and killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as well as top military commanders and political figures.
At this point, with nothing left to lose, Tehran reassessed its strategy. Seeing the stakes as existential, the regime hit back, attacking U.S. bases and infrastructure across the region and closing the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. naval blockade and economic pressure on Iran now pose a new threat that Iranian officials may consider to be “existential.” On Aug. 13, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. Navy could continue the naval blockade indefinitely. For Iran, each day that this situation continues means less oil revenue, less access to foreign currency, and more damage to an economy that is already in serious trouble.
Strategic patience was useful for the Islamic Republic as long as it could tolerate the pressure. But with the naval blockade, time is running out as Tehran loses leverage. The result has been a steady drumbeat of comments from Iranian officials threatening escalation. If Iran decides to take a more offensive approach, that doesn’t mean that Tehran wants a long war. The primary goal would be to make the blockade so costly that Washington would ease it or negotiate an end to it.
When Iran’s supreme leader appointed Ahmad Vahidi as the commander of the IRGC on Aug. 9, his appointment letter called for called for “maximum deterrence” and readiness to conduct “powerful offensive operations against the enemy.” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a senior advisor to the IRGC, made a similar point on Aug. 12, saying the appointment decree required the IRGC to develop the capabilities needed for an offensive doctrine. “The Guards should be able to carry out military operations in enemy territory when ordered,” Naqdi said. Days later, Yadollah Javani, the IRGC’s deputy commander for political affairs, made the same point, saying Iran’s actions remained defensive but could take on an offensive character.
On Aug. 17, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran would move toward a “fully offensive” posture as diplomacy reached a deadlock. The official also said that Tehran was ready to launch a “timely and precise” attack to break the U.S. naval blockade if talks failed.
On Aug. 22, roughly two weeks after becoming secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, a former IRGC commander, said in an interview with Iranian state broadcaster IRIB that the country’s defense strategy had changed. “Our defense strategy has evolved. Iran today will not be the Iran it was before the war,” he said, adding that there would also be changes in how the country conducts war and diplomacy.
Earlier in August, economist Majid Shakeri—an advisor to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker—argued that Iran should manage a long period of neither war nor peace. However, just 10 days later, after Washington announced its new economic pressure campaign, his language changed. “A military response by Iran to America’s economic attack is necessary, reasonable, and timely,” he wrote. “Now is the best possible time for military escalation by Iran.”
Shakeri was not alone in calling for a tougher response. Hours after Trump announced his new economic pressure campaign, Alireza Salimi, a member of parliament’s presiding board, warned that “if Iran cannot export its oil, no country will be able to export oil.”
Subsequent statements have hinted at what kind of escalation Tehran might envision. Earlier this summer, the hard-line newspaper Kayhan proposed attacks on important commercial centers and oil facilities in countries hosting U.S. forces. On Aug. 18, it called on the Supreme National Security Council to authorize “powerful offensive operations” to break the blockade.
On Aug. 19, Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Ali Abdollahi warned Persian Gulf states that helping U.S. military operations would mean joining the war against Iran. The next day, the IRGC-affiliated newspaper Javan published comments by Mehdi Mohammadi, an advisor to Ghalibaf, who said that Iran would tolerate the blockade only for a “reasonable period” before possibly resuming preemptive operations. He pointed to Yemen and the role that the Houthis could play around Bab el-Mandeb.
Later in the same Aug. 22 interview, Rezaei warned neighboring countries not to join the U.S. economic campaign. He said Iran would first ask them to stay out, but if they took part, Tehran would consider them enemies and target their interests. Iran would then prevent “a single drop of oil” from passing through the Persian Gulf, he said. Rezaei also noted that Iran had attacked U.S. bases but had not yet targeted American economic interests in the region.
The Financial Times, citing two unnamed Iranian sources, reported separately that Iran was considering attacks on subsea fiber-optic cables in the Strait of Hormuz if Washington resumed military operations.
These statements do not represent a specific plan nor official target list, but they nonetheless suggest that debate over a change in strategy has become more serious. Disrupting shipping or regional energy infrastructure would push oil and gasoline prices higher and add political pressure on Trump ahead of the November midterms.
On Aug. 20, Bessent said, “It is going to work in Iran, and we are going to collapse this regime.” Officials in Tehran are unlikely to see that statement as an offer to negotiate. Their response after Khamenei was killed showed that they make different calculations when they believe the Islamic Republic faces an existential threat. Closing the Strait of Hormuz was intended to shift more of the economic burden of the conflict onto the United States and global energy markets. But Iranian leaders may now believe that closing the strait alone has not put enough pressure on Washington to change its position.
If Iran decides to follow this path, it could open a Pandora’s box, because the United States may respond on a larger scale and the two sides could end up in another full-scale war. But Iranian leaders may also believe that continuing under the current conditions is no longer an option. Unless mediators bring Tehran and Washington back to talks and the two sides begin implementing their memorandum of understanding, Iran may decide to act before its economy becomes even weaker and it loses more leverage.
